by night and by day, and synoptically and judiciously committing to writing what he heard from Syrianus, made so great a progress in a little time, that by then he was twenty-eight years of age, he had composed a multitude of works and among the rest his commentaries on the Timæus which are truly elegant and full of science. But from such a discipline as this, his manners became more adorned; and as he advanced in science he increased in virtue.
Marinus after this, shows how Proclus possessed all the virtues in the greatest possible perfection; and how he proceeded from the exercise of the political virtues, which are produced by reason adorning the irrational part as its instrument, to the cathartic virtues which pertain to reason alone, withdrawing from other things to itself, throwing aside the instruments of sense as vain, repressing also the energies through these instruments, and liberating the soul from the bonds of generation. He then adds, “Proclus having made a proficiency, through these virtues, as it were by certain mystic steps, recurred from these to such as are greater and more telestic, being conducted to them by a prosperous nature and scientific discipline. For being now purified, rising above generation, and despising its thyrsus-bearers,[1] he was agitated with a divinely inspired fury, about the first essences, and became an inspector of the truly blessed spectacles which they contain. No longer collecting discursively and demonstratively the science of them, but surveying them as it were by simple intuition, and beholding through intellectual energies the paradigms in a divine intellect, assuming a virtue which can no longer be denominated prudence, but which ought rather to be called wisdom, or something still more venerable than this. The philosopher therefore energizing according to this virtue, easily comprehended all the theology of the Greeks and Barbarians, and that which is adumbrated in mythological fictions, and brought it into light, to those who are willing and able to understand it. He explained likewise every thing in a more enthusiastic manner, and brought the different theologies to an harmonious agreement. At the same time also, investigating the writings of the ancients, whatever he found in them genuine, he judiciously adopted; but if he found any thing of a spurious nature, this, he entirely rejected as erroneous. He also strenuously subverted by a diligent examination such doctrines as were contrary to truth. In his associations too with others, he employed no less force and perspicuity. For he was a man laborious beyond measure; as, in one day, he gave five, and sometimes more lectures, and wrote
- ↑ Socrates in the Phædo of Plato, Orphically calls the multitude thyrsus-bearers as living Titannically. For the thyrsus, says Olympiodorus, (in MS. comment in Phæd.) is a symbol of material and partible fabrication, on account of its divulsed continuity, whence also it is a Titannic plant. “For it is extended, says he, before Bacchus, instead, of his paternal sceptre, and through this they call him into a partial nature. He adds, “Besides the Titans are thyrsus-bearers; and Prometheus concealed fire in a reed, whether by this we are to understand that he draws down celestial light into generation, or impels soul into body, or calls forth divine illumination, the whole of which is ungenerated, into generation.”
