PREFACE.

Conrad Gesner (1), and Fabricius inserted a certain particle into his annotations on Sextus Empiricus (2). I only know of Creuzer who has sent to press a fragment (3), not so brief, on union and beauty, having used the Darmstadt and Leiden Vossian codices.

Marsilio Ficino was the first in Europe to make the commentary of Proclus on the Alcibiades known, from which he published many fragments, translated into Latin, under this title: Proclus on the Platonic Alcibiades concerning the soul and the Demon; a work worthy of that Florentine president of the Platonic society, who, although he could have fought with his own strength and become famous with the same praise that Bruno, Campanella, and Pomponazzi did shortly after, preferred Plato’s fame to his own, and acted as the high priest of the Platonic cult. He could certainly not have deserved better of Plato than by extracting his Alexandrian interpreters, namely Plotinus and Proclus, from the shadows. In them, although Tiedemann (1) disagrees with us on this, is to be sought the whole and true reason for the Platonic doctrines, which occur scattered and randomly dispersed in the dialogues. It is very much to be desired, however, that Marsilio had achieved in Proclus the same as he did in Plato and Plotinus, and that he had not published fragments instead of the whole commentary on the Alcibiades. Yet there is certainly great utility in these fragments; for, besides a plain and perfect understanding of the philosophical sense, they have very few things that can be philologically censured. Nor do I hope it will be unwelcome to readers that I have restored in this edition those things which are nowhere found separated and which have never been reprinted since the year 1577.

(1) In Fragmentis Orphei In the Fragments of Orpheus, p. 407.
(2) Fabric. ad Sext. Empir. Fabricius on Sextus Empiricus, p. 397.
(3) At the end of the book of Plotinus on beauty, Heidelberg, 1814. Now, however, I hear that this most learned man will soon, as he promised, edit the entire codex of Proclus, together with the commentary of Olympiodorus on the same Alcibiades of Plato. I certainly congratulate all friends of ancient philosophy on this, and I only ask this for my own labors: that they may be useful to better works, and that they may not be entirely unworthy of being seen together with those of Creuzer.