With respect to the life of Proclus, it has been written with great elegance by his disciple Marinus; and a translation of it by me prefixed to my version of the commentaries of Proclus was published in 1788. From the edition of that life therefore, by Fabricius, the following particulars relative to this very extraordinary man are extracted, for the information of the reader who may not have the translation of it in his possession. According to the accurate chronology then of Fabricius, Proclus was born at Byzantium in the year of Christ 412, on the 6th of the Ides of February, and died in the one hundred and twenty-fourth year after the reign of the emperor Julian, on the seventeenth day of the Attic Munichion, or the April of the Romans, Nicagoras the junior, being at that time the Athenian archon. His father Patricius, and his mother Marcella, were both of them of the Lycian nation, and were no less illustrious for their virtue than their birth. As soon as he was born, his parents brought him to their native country Xanthus, which was sacred to Apollo. And this, says Marinus, happened to him by a certain divine allotment. “For, he adds, I think it was necessary that he who was to be the leader of all sciences, should be nourished and educated under the presiding deity of the Muses.” The person of Proclus was uncommonly beautiful; and he not only possessed all the moral and intellectual virtues in the highest perfection, but the vestigies of them also, which are ill nominated the physical virtues, were clearly seen, says Marinus, in his last and shelly vestment the body. Hence he possessed a remarkable acuteness of sensation, and particularly in the most honourable of the senses, sight and hearing, which, as Plato says, were imparted by the Gods to men for the purpose of philosophizing, and for the well being of the animal life. In the second place, he possessed so great a strength of body, that it was neither injured by cold, nor any endurance of labours, though these were extreme, both by night and day. In the third place, he was, as we have before observed, very beautiful. “For not only, says Marinus, did his body possess great symmetry, but a living light as it were beaming from his soul was efflorescent in his body, and shone forth with an admirable splendor, which it is impossible to describe.” Marinus adds, “Indeed he was so beautiful, that no painter could accurately exhibit his resemblance; and all the pictures of him which were circulated, though very beautiful, were very inferior to the beauty of the original.” And in the fourth place, he possessed health in such perfection, that he was not ill above twice or thrice in the course of so long a life as seventy-five years.
Such then were the corporeal prerogatives which Proclus possessed, and which may be called the forerunners of the forms of perfect virtue. But he possessed in a wonderful manner what Plato calls the elements of a philosophic genius.[1] For he had an excellent memory, learned with facility, was magnificent and graceful, and the friend and ally of truth, justice, fortitude, and tem-
- ↑ See the sixth book of the Republic of Plato.
