M., in the introduction to this German translation and commentary of the sixth essay of Proclus’ Commentary on Plato's Republic, claims that the work is a foundational text of ancient literary theory, alongside Aristotle's Poetics, Horace's Ars Poetica and Ps.-Longinus, On the Sublime. That may be claiming too much, but both Proclus’ use of Neoplatonist allegorical interpretation to defend Homer against Plato and his development of a theory of three types of poetry – inspired, educational and imitative – are of considerable significance in the history of literary theory. As such they have rightly attracted increasing amounts of scholarly attention as interest has grown in the philosophy of late antiquity. Proclus’ essay was translated into French by A.-J. Festugière in 1970 and has been translated into English both by R. Lamberton in 2012 and, most recently, as part of the new CUP translation of the whole Republic Commentary by D. Baltzly, J. Finamore and G. Miles (2018). (It is a little surprising that M. shows no knowledge of the CUP translation. His book derives from a 2021 Ph.D. thesis, and one might have expected him to mention this translation in his introduction, alongside those of Festugière and Lamberton.) M. offers the first translation of the text into German together with a full commentary. The commentary is not line-by-line, but is structured according to the different chapters into which the text is divided in the sole surviving manuscript, offering a summary of each chapter followed by comment on the content. The comments on individual chapters include quotations of substantial passages from the translation, given in smaller type, and are generally presented in a very full and discursive manner. The work concludes with a résumé of the content of each section of the commentary. (The occasional use of smaller type for passages of comment, on pp. 125, 126 and 241, is presumably a typographical error. It should also be noted that the page references included in the conclusion do not correspond to page numbers in the book; they presumably relate to the thesis on which the book is based.) The volume is aimed at German-speaking Greekless readers, and so most, though not quite all, passages of Greek in the commentary are also translated into German. In the rest of this review, I will focus on the commentary rather than the translation, on the basis that it is the commentary that will be of most interest to readers of CR.
Since many of Proclus’ allegories involve interpreting Homer's gods in terms of Neoplatonic metaphysics, some wider knowledge of his thought is needed to understand what he is saying. M.'s commentary helpfully includes background material on aspects of Neoplatonic thought that are relevant to the individual chapters of the sixth essay as well as discussion of appropriate secondary literature. For example, pp. 136–9 expound Proclus’ interpretation of the Titanomachy and the Gigantomachy, drawing on passages from his Commentary on the Timaeus, his Commentary on the Cratylus and the commentary on the Myth of Er, which forms the 16th essay of the Republic Commentary; pp. 224–6 connect Proclus’ interpretation of divine laughter with parallel passages in Hermias and Syrianus; and pp. 236–40, on Proclus’ elaborate interpretation of the union of Zeus and Hera on Mount Ida, make use not only of Proclus’ Commentary on the Parmenides and his Platonic Theology but also of parallels in Hermias and of Proclus’ treatment of ἔρως in his Commentary on the First Alcibiades.
While M. owes many of his observations to earlier secondary literature on the sixth essay, as he acknowledges in his footnotes, he does offer some original insights. I was struck by the remark on p. 137 that Proclus’ approach to the Gigantomachy may owe something to the Battle of the Gods and the Giants in Plato's Sophist as well as by the suggestion in n. 455 on p. 210 that an allegory of the myth of Narcissus may lie behind the description of someone looking at their reflection in a river in Proclus’ Commentary on the Timaeus 3.330.9–24. I was less immediately convinced by the claims on p. 118 and pp. 338–9 for the significance of the possible allusion to Plato, Euthydemus 298b–c at In Remp. 70.22 or the view presented on pp. 319–21, that Proclus’ interpretation of Plato, Phaedrus 245a draws on Aristotle's theory of four causes, but these suggestions too deserve serious consideration.
The commentary includes some treatment of textual points, in particular a discussion on pp. 288–90 of the question whether Proclus’ essay was originally divided into two books as the word δεύτερον found in the manuscript at In Remp.154.13 might suggest. M. argues carefully and convincingly that such a division does not go back to Proclus himself. His discussions of other, small textual points are largely persuasive, but it should be pointed out that n. 503 on p. 226 and the corresponding n. 21 to the translation on p. 54 are mistaken in attributing the conjecture ἀκατάληκτος instead of ἀκατάληπτος in In Remp.127.24 to Heilmann; it is found already in Festugière and followed by both Lamberton and the CUP translators.
M. is on the whole well informed about the scholarly background to his work, but I noted a few errors and omissions. In addition to the failure to mention the CUP translation, it seemed to me odd to refer to the 1933 first edition of E.R. Dodds's edition of Proclus’ Elements of Theology rather than to the second edition published in 1963. I was also surprised to find M. taking it for granted on p. 180 that the Neoplatonist Proclus was the author of the Chrestomathy; this is not the standard view and needs to be argued for. Similarly, pp. 301–2 argue, on the basis of Proclus’ 43 references to the third-century Cassius Longinus, that he was probably familiar with the treatise On the Sublime, without any mention of the uncertainty surrounding the date and authorship of that work. Finally, some important parallel passages, noted in A. Sheppard, Studies on the 5th and 6th Essays of Proclus’ Commentary on the Republic (1980, p. 68 and pp. 80–1), are missing from the discussion of Proclus’ interpretation of Hephaestus as demiurge of the sensible world on pp. 222–4 (cf. also A. Sheppard, in: C.-P. Manolea [ed.], Brill's Companion to the Reception of Homer from the Hellenistic Age to Late Antiquity [2022], pp. 413–15). Despite these weaknesses, this volume is a useful addition to the literature on Proclus’ sixth essay. Not only will it undoubtedly be helpful to its intended readership of Greekless German speakers, but it also makes some valuable contributions to the overall understanding of Proclus’ interpretation of Homer and his theory of poetry.
