Proclus

And here, said the barber as he groped in his dusty and dark corner, are more translations by this same Taylor, who indeed seems to have been a very notable botcher of ancient doublets.

This is the Fragments of Ancient Pythagoreans, this Plato's Dialogues, and here we have the lost writings of Proclus, surnamed the Successor.

Pray, Master Licentiate, where do these successors live? For I know no family of that name.

You mistake, you mistake, Master Nicholas, said the priest, not without smiling.

This Proclus was the successor of Plato, and so he said the last link of the Hermeic chain.

But let us have done with him, for I see on the shelf the triumphal chariot of Antimony by Basilius Valentinus, with Anima Magica Abscondita, and Lumen de Lumine by Thomas Vaughan, called an Alchemy Eugenius Philandlethis.

And just beyond is the victorious Philosophical Stone, and by St. Chrysostom, the Comte de Gabalis.

Well, we have summaries of many of the other myths and, uh, stories around Troy, um, in very short form, right? Something like, um, the, the library of Apollodorus, which gives a, a history of Greek myth or equivalent Latin version of Hyginus.

Um, and we have summaries from a guy named Proclus.

Um, but the dangerous thing about most of these, um, accounts is that they've been preserved in order to flesh out the details around the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Um, which means they've been selected from all the possible narratives.

So the philosopher Crantor, for example, often has had his writing be referenced as one of the reasons that later writers think that Atlantis was historical rather than fictional.

This isn't helped by the writing of Proclus in the fifth century AD, who claimed that Crantor's depiction of Atlantis came from the fact that he had traveled to Egypt and heard the story firsthand from priests there, as well as claiming to have seen hieroglyphics that seemingly confirmed the story.

Okay, my man.

So here's what Proclus proclaims.

He says, quote, "As for the whole of this account of the Atlanteans, some say that it is unadorned history, such as Crantor, the first commentator on Plato.

Crantor also says that Plato's contemporaries used to criticize him jokingly for not being the inventor of his republic." But copying the institutions of the Egyptians.

But I'm like, I see, you know, when I read Iamblichus and I read, you know, Justin Martyr and Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria, I'm like, these guys are really, really close.

uh and I think that's why they dislike each other so much it's like the narcissism of minor difference like you know no one no you don't ever you don't dislike anyone more than the people like you and it's you know it's always struck me that when I read yamblichus or Proclus I'm like this just really reads like John like John philoponus and stuff and I can see why they really disliked each other so much because I think they were much more similar than than they were willing to admit

Didn't Justin even, like the emperor Justin, recognize that and say, well, this Yamblican stuff is kind of a response to, it's similar to what the Christians are doing, but from a sort of pagan.

No, I think the Yamblicus and Porphyry are both, they're both in, you know, they're in direct competition.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's why, I think that's, again, I think that it was like a rear guard move.

Iamblichus was a rear guard move and Proclus too.

And I think that by the time that they made the move, I think that already the Catholics or the Christians had already outflanked them.

And there's a quote that is from one of the ancient writers, and it is terrible that I'm blanking right now on which one of them it is.

Was it Proclus? Who said that the Lord Apollo, he essentially always...

He gives a sign.

He does not give an exact answer, but he does give a sign.

Kewpie, the original Japanese mayonnaise.

It is true that Proclus, writing in the 5th century after Christ, tells us of stones and columns in Egypt on which the history of the island of Atlantis was engraved.

The statement may be false.

There are similar tales about columns set up by the Canaanites whom Joshua drove out, Procopius.

Probably in the Alexandrian age, when Egypt had ceased to have a history and began to appropriate the legends of other nations, many such monuments were to be found of events which had become famous in that or other countries.

The oldest witness to the story is said to be Crantor, a Stoic philosopher who lived a generation later than Plato, and therefore may have borrowed it from him.

The statement is found in Proclus, but we require better assurance than Proclus can give us before we accept this or any other statement which he makes.

Secondly, passing from the external to the internal evidence, we may remark that the story is far more likely to have been invented by Plato than to have been brought by Solon from Egypt.

i love it let's hit the orphic into that let's start there so here

uh orphism for me is the best way into platonic um mysticism and understanding um one of uh Platonisms all the way from Plato to the Neoplatonists like Iamblichus, uh, and Proclus, uh, this is the, uh, they called, uh, Orpheus, uh, the hierophant, right? Because he had gone farther than the philosophic.

He had leaped into this poetic, uh, that we can see liminally, right? That the songs that Orpheus sings or the poet sings and Milton sings that, that They, unlike the philosopher who, you know, is getting the theory of things.

These are the people.