Taylor - Theoretic Arithmetic.pdf - Platonic Philosophy

xav~a apt0~ov 89' eau709.) Proclus likewise informs us, "that
the decad, as the Pythagorean hymn says, in mundane; and
that divine number proceeds from the undecaying retreats of
the monad, till it arrives at the divine tetrad which generated
the mother of all things, the universal recipient, venerable, the
boundary of all things, immutable and unwearied, and which
both the immortal Gods and earth-born men denominate the
sacred decad." Proclus adds, "that by the monad and its undecaying
retreats in these verses, that uniform and occult cause
the one being, (i.e. being characterized by the one, and which
is the summit of the intelligible order) is signified; but that
the divine tetrad is the evolution into light of intelligible multitude,
which the duad that is between the monad and tetrad
unfolds; and that the decad is the world, which receives the
images of all the divine numbers, which are supernally imparted
to it."*
The decad was called heaven, as we learn from the anonymous
writer, "from being the most perfect boundary of number,
whence also it was denominated the decad, being as it
were Was, the recipient, just as heaven is the receptacle of all
things." With respect to the epithet fate, we are informed by
the same author, "that the decad was thus called, because
there is no peculiarity either in numbers, or in things that exist
according to the composition of number, which is not spermatically
contained in the decad and in the numbers within it.
But it extends connectedly and consecutively to the numbers
posterior to itself. Hence it is fate, as being a certain connected
* IIporrat yap o OECOC aptOpo