Proclus

The Commentaries of Proclus on the Timaeus of Plato

Of that golden chain of philosophers, who, having themselves happily penetrated, luminously unfolded to others the profundities of the philosophy of Plato, Proclus is indisputably the largest and most refulgent link. Born with a genius transcendently great, and accompanied through life with a fortune singularly good, he exhibited in his own person a union of the rarest kind, in which power concurred with will, the benefit resulting from genuine philosophy with the ability of imparting it, and in which Wisdom was inseparable from Prosperity. The eulogium therefore of Ammonius Hermeas, "that Proclus possessed the power of unfolding the opinions of the ancients, and a scientific judgement of the nature of things, in the highest perfection possible to humanity,"1 will be immediately assented to by every one, who is an adept in the writings of this incomparable man.