Proclus: Commentary on Plato's Timaeus, Vol. I

Only one of the many readings seems worthy of memory after being examined most diligently (p. 203, 31: "to the One itself" in the books; "to the super-essential One itself" in Psellus), although I would not think it should be accepted, since "super-essential" hyperousios is referred only to the gods in these commentaries.

But lest anyone say that we judged too hastily regarding a witness of the highest antiquity, it happened well that that very careless compiler brought together large parts of the commentaries in different places from two Proclian books—he did not realize he was drawing twice from the same source—of which one in truth seemed to have been of some value, a fact that Bidez shrewdly observed. On p. 175 ss, the greatest part was twice received into Psellus’s booklet; but the variant readings, when both pages are compared, vanish, apart from trivial ones which are not to be approved, so that the text emerges in a way that hardly differs from the Proclian codices.

Therefore, we owe to the not-so-good memory of Michael not only clear signs of a rashly lost text, but also very significant testimony concerning another Proclian codex that existed in Psellus’s library, which was quite good.

We have appended indices of authors, words, proper names, and grammatical observations. In the first, we have compared the places of poets and writers who were cited by the philosopher, whether with the author’s name mentioned or omitted, and we have prefixed to individual places whatever the commentaries contain for the illumination of literary knowledge and the lives and writings of the authors.

Into the index of words, we have received mainly Proclian terms, having omitted entirely the Platonic ones except for those which were of the greatest moment in the philosophy of the ancients as a whole and especially in the doctrine of the Neoplatonists.

The third, which is the index of grammatical observations, presents the more significant points by which Proclus deviates from usage.