Proclus: Commentary on Plato's Republic: Volume 1

Description

The commentary on Plato's Republic by Proclus (d. 485 CE), which takes the form of a series of essays, is the only sustained treatment of the dialogue to survive from antiquity. This three-volume edition presents the first complete English translation of Proclus' text, together with a general introduction that argues for the unity of Proclus' Commentary and orients the reader to the use that the Neoplatonists made of Plato's Republic in their educational program. Each volume is completed by a Greek word index and an English-Greek glossary that will help non-specialists to track the occurrence of key terms throughout the translated text. The first volume of the edition presents Proclus' essays on the point and purpose of Plato's dialogue, the arguments against Thrasymachus in Book I, the rules for correct poetic depictions of the divine, a series of problems about the status of poetry across all Plato's works, and finally an essay arguing for the fundamental agreement of Plato's philosophy with the divine wisdom of Homer which is, in Proclus' view, allegorically communicated through his poems.

Dirk Baltzly is Professor and Head of Philosophy and Gender Studies at the University of Tasmania. He has edited and translated three of the six volumes of Proclus' Commentary on Plato's Timaeus (Cambridge, 2007-17). John F. Finamore is chair of the Department of Classics at the University of Iowa. He has edited and translated (with John Dillon) Iamblichus' De Anima (2002), and has published many articles on the Platonic tradition. Graeme Miles is Lecturer in Classics at the University of Tasmania. He is the author of Philostratus: Interpreters and Interpretation (2018).

'... this extraordinarily careful and scholarly rendering is clearly destined to remain the principal access in English to Proclus' thoughts on the Republic for the foreseeable future.' Robert Lamberton, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 'This is an excellent translation and edition that provides an opportunity to learn more about a topic nearly all of us need a better understanding of, late antique political theory ... a scholarly achievement of the highest order.' Polis