Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

philosophy in athens 839
contemporary audience. Marinus reports that Proclus had to leave Athens
for a year because of ‘a storm’. It seems pretty clear that this storm was a
disagreement with the Christian authorities. 11 Yet the school was not a
totally pagan enclave. The poet Christodorus of Coptos, whose name indicates
his Christianity, wrote a poem on the pupils of Proclus. The poem
does not survive and we do not know whether Christodorus himself was
among those pupils, but he must have had some connection with the
school, however indirect. Marinus mentions that when Proclus first arrived
in Athens he was welcomed by his fellow Lycian, Nicolaus of Myra, who
was studying in Athens. Nicolaus was a rhetor, whose Progymnasmata show
some knowledge of Platonism; his name suggests he was a Christian. Most
importantly, a significant body of research has drawn attention to the connections
between the work of the Christian author known to us as Pseudo-
Dionysius the Areopagite and the work of Proclus. In particular, H. D.
Saffrey has pointed out a number of close verbal echoes. Saffrey steers clear
of trying to identify Pseudo-Dionysius, but whoever he is, he appears
remarkably familiar with Proclus’ thought and Proclus’ phraseology.
Relations between pagans and Christians in Athens deteriorated during
Proclus’ lifetime. Marinus recounts that when the Christians removed the
statue of Athene from the Parthenon, probably around 470, a beautiful
woman appeared to Proclus in a dream and announced, ‘The Lady of
Athens wishes to come to live with you.’ Pagan worship, it seems, was
becoming a private and domestic affair. 12
Proclus’ philosophical views, like his religion, draw on a long tradition.
His reputation in modern times is as a great systematizer. His surviving
commentaries on Plato survey previous interpretations at length, while the
Elements of Theology is remarkable for its presentation of Neoplatonic metaphysics
as a series of axioms which follow deductively from one another.
The range and variety of his work have not always been fully appreciated.
He wrote short treatises as well as lengthy commentaries and, like many
philosophers of the period, his interests extended into mathematics on the
one hand and literature on the other. On the mathematical side, he wrote a
commentary on the first book of Euclid’s Elements. His literary interests are
evident not only in his comments on literary aspects of Plato’s work but
also in his writing of Hymns and his attempt, in his essays on the Republic,
to defend Homeric poetry against Plato’s attack.
Proclus taught and wrote in a tradition which placed no value on innovation
and originality. Philosophers of this period use appeals to earlier
authority as a way of arguing for their views. It is therefore difficult to
pick out Proclus’ own contributions to philosophy. The doctrine of the
divine henads which bridge the gap between the One and the rest of the
11 Marinus ch. 15.Saffrey (1975). 12 Marinus chs. 10, 30. Felten (1913) xxiff.Saffrey (1982).
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