PROCLUS ON THE TIMAEUS III [Tim. 31 B]

First, because visible things themselves are forms of light; for all colors are the offspring of light. Second, because sight itself is light, proceeding from an ethereal essence. And third, because sight and the visible object require light as a unifying agent if each is to exist in a state of activity, as is stated and demonstrated in the Republic [VI 507 D E] original: "Politeia". What is it that brings these two together? Light. Thus, if the world is to be visible, it will need fire for its generation. Furthermore, Pythagoras shows that the eye is analogous to fire in his Discourse to Abaris Abaris was a legendary Scythian priest of Apollo; this "Pythagorean" text is likely a later pseudepigraphal work. For the eye is the highest of the sense organs, just as fire is the highest of the elements; it employs sharp activities, as fire does; and its conical shape term: "conical" (kōnoeides) — referring to the visual cone in ancient optics bears no small resemblance to the pyramidal shape of fire In the Timaeus, Plato assigns the tetrahedron (pyramid) to the element of fire.

He did not say, however, that fire alone is visible; for that is false in two ways. First, fire itself, when unmixed with the other elements, is in no way visible but is only grasped by the mind; and second, nothing else would be visible if only fire were visible. It is one thing to be visible through fire and with fire, and another for fire itself to be the only visible thing. He did not say the latter, as it is refutable on two counts, but rather the former: that without fire, nothing is visible. From this you may grasp that all bodies participate in fire, though the fire differs in different things. For light is not the same as flame, nor is flame the same as a glowing coal term: "anthrax" — a burning coal or ember; rather, there is a "diminishing" term: "hyphesis" — a gradual lowering or abatement of intensity of fire from the heavens down to the earth, proceeding from that which is more immaterial, pure, and incorporeal down to the most material and dense bodies. Indeed, even beneath the earth there are streams of fire, as Empedocles also says somewhere [frg. 52 D.]:

These are the sigla for the medieval manuscripts used to reconstruct the text: M (Malatestianus), P (Parisinus), and Q (Marcianus).

1 see Aristotle On the Soul II 7. 419a 8; Plotinus Enneads 4, 5, 6 p. 448 with notes by Creuzer (p. 243) who conjectured "offspring" 4 "the" omitted in P 5 "to be" — 6 in the Republic MP: "to exist" Q 6 "but what" Q 7 "or the light" Q 10 see Phaedrus 250 D 12 regarding "conical" see Aristotle Problems 15, 6. 911b 5 "the emission of sight is a cone"; regarding "pyramidal" see Timaeus 56 B 13 "visible" omitted in P 17 possibly "the" [visible] 18 the second "the" omitted in MP 21 more correctly "another [in] others"; see p. 9, 3 22 see Aristotle Topics V 5. 134b 29 ff. 23 "the" PQ: "this" M 28 "but" P | see Lucretius 6, 883 ff. "beneath" in the manuscripts.