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This chapter shows how Proclus and Damascius approached the myth of the Phaedo as a scientific text, with particular attention paid to their attempts to understand and support Plato’s remarks about four traditional problems regarding the Earth’s size, shape, stability and position. Although Plato makes assertions about the Earth’s occupying the middle position in the cosmos and being spherical, Damascius supplies an assortment of missing arguments. These range from astronomical arguments familiar from Ptolemy and Cleomedes, and physical and metaphysical arguments that have their source in the Timaeus and other staples of Platonism. When it comes to the size of the Earth, Damascius and Proclus acknowledge the disagreement between Plato on the one hand and Aristotle (who had astronomers such as Erastothenes on his side) on the other, and literally fight an uphill battle for their school’s founder by urging us to reconsider whether the mountain peaks we see are not to be taken as indications of the true size of the Earth’s surface. But it is perhaps Plato’s treatment of the Earth’s stability that most forcefully establishes his affiliation with the cosmological tradition. For here he produces an argument that resonates very strongly with arguments found in Anaximander (and Parmenides) and that was vigorously criticized by Aristotle. Here again, later Platonists are once more compelled to take a new look at the text and re-evaluate Plato’s relation to his predecessors as well as to his successor Aristotle.

The chapter analyzes the main features of Orphic gods. Most Orphic gods are the same as those of the Olympian religion. Yet there is a tendency in Orphism to identify gods with each other through various mechanisms, e.g. a god may be born more than once or reappears in another god. The Orphic tendency to unity may lead to an image of Zeus as supreme god who oscillates between creator god and a deity identified with the universe. The most un-Olympic of the features of the Orphic gods is the idea that human beings are of divine origin and can be re-integrated into their primitive condition. An important source for these themes is the Neoplatonic philosopher Damascius who gives evidence for the existence of three distinct Orphic theogonies.

This chapter examines the intellectuals in Alexandria who came to be involved in the riot of 486 involving Paralius. After demonstrating the nature of the anecdotes that circulated within the school of Horapollon and its associated intellectual circles, it shows that his school encouraged interpersonal ties which caused students to become invested in these traditions. Of particular interest, however, is the fate of these traditions after Paralius's beating. This act of violence and its aftermath frayed the strong personal relationships between teachers and students, while also changing the nature of communal discourse. As the community splintered, so too did its collective sense of the past. Among some philosophers, old traditions celebrating pagan resistance to Christian imperial power were disavowed silently, while others glorifying social withdrawal and a passive response to political pressure became more prominent. This process of development, which is on display within the various narrative levels of Damascius's Life of Isidore, created a number of distinct views of the ethical values appropriate for a pagan intellectual.

This chapter addresses the contributions of Proclus to the completion of the Platonic project. Proclus, living some two hundred years after Plotinus, extended the systematization of Platonism. Moreover, it is Proclus, in part through Pseudo-Dionysius, and in part through the Liber de Causis, who served as the gateway to Platonism for the next millennium. Proclus was at once full of admiration for Plotinus as an exegete of Plato and also frequently critical of him. As seen in both Plato and Plotinus, the fundamental systematic law of Platonism is expressed as “remaining,” “procession,” and “reversion.” In his Elements of Theology, Proclus connects the procession with the distinction between cause and condition in Phaedo and cause and accessory to the cause in Timaeus. The chapter then details the analytic prowess Proclus shows in discovering a deep problem in the systematic construction of Platonism. This is a problem that Proclus's student, Damascius, exploits in a remarkable way.

The third chapter is about a theogony that had been known to the philosopher Eudemus (fourth century bc), and all of the other fragments that modern scholars have associated with this theogony. The Neoplatonist Damascius (fifth century ad) says that the theogony started with Night, but modern scholars have tried to link this to other early fragments of Orphic poetry. This chapter discusses Aristophanes in the first section, and Plato and Aristotle in the second section, arguing that their scattered references to Orphic poems might not have been from the same theogony. The third section introduces the Orphic Hymn(s) to Zeus that appear in different variations, the earliest of which are from around the same time as these other fragments. The fourth section suggests that early Orphic fragments about Demeter and Dionysus are not from the Eudemian theogony.

This chapter is focused on the only two substantial sources for the Hieronyman theogony, the Christian apologist Athenagoras and the Neoplatonist philosopher Damascius. As shown in the first section, studying their approaches to the Hieronyman theogony is useful for introducing the problems that are encountered in chapters 5 and 6: namely, how apologists and Neoplatonists used Orphic theogonies, and how this affects one’s own interpretations. The second section reconstructs the Hieronyman theogony based on these two sources and questions their presentation in Alberto Bernabé’s collection of the Orphic Fragments. The third section looks at the narrative itself, questioning the influence of philosophy and eastern parallels for the time-god Chronos and the cosmic egg from which Phanes is born. The fourth section focuses on the birth of Dionysus, which appears in Athenagoras but not Damascius, and leads to the suggestion that this episode could have come from a separate poem.

This last chapter presents highlights from the history of the reception of Proclus’ thought. It starts with the reception in late antiquity and the Middle Ages (Greek, Arabic, and Latin tradition), and subsequently discusses Renaissance and modernity. For the Greek tradition, the authors show how Damascius and pseudo-Dionysius adopt and adapt Proclus’ thought, and briefly touch on a Byzantine critic of Proclus: Nicholas of Methone. For the Arabic reception the authors show how the Discourse on the Pure Good adjusts Proclean metaphysics to Muslim and Christian revelation. For the Latin tradition, Thomas Aquinas’ ‘triangulation’ between different sources, and the fourteenth-century German reworking of Proclus are presented. The authors then discuss the fascinating manuscript tradition of the Renaissance, the metaphysical/theological revival of Neoplatonism in the fifteenth–sixteenth centuries, the reception of Proclus’ mathematics and astronomy in early modern thought, and finally another revival of Neoplatonic metaphysics, in German Idealism.

Justinian’s closing of the Academy at Athens in 529 AD is a familiar story. Under pressure from the Christian emperor, seven philosophers, heirs to Plato’s teachings, left for Persia, which, they had heard, resembled their master’s ideal state under its king, Chosroes. On discovering how far it fell short of the ideal, they returned, to either Athens or Harrân, on the Persian border, where they set up a school. However, discussing in detail the relevant texts of Agathias, Damascius, and other neoplatonists, this chapter proposes that, under consideration, most of the familiar story unravels. It is not clear that Justinian “closed” anything, or that the “Academy” as it existed in the sixth century was actually continuous with Plato’s garden, or that the expedition to Persia was other than a kind of sabbatical. What remained of the school of Athens drew to a close later, and for different reasons.

This chapter discusses three philosophers in the Damascian tradition: Damascius himself, Simplicius in his Commentary on Epictetus’s Handbook, and Ps-Simplicius in his Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima. These philosophers develop the idea that the rational soul engages in a kind of activity that is strictly self-reflexive, but that can be either right or wrong. This is an activity by which the soul makes itself either better or worse. Ps-Simplicius spells out the nature of this activity in his account of the operation of rational faculties. This account makes it possible to explain what is distinctive about the rational capacity for assent. Because it is exercised self-reflexively, this capacity can be reason-responsive: one can assent (and revise one’s assent) on the basis of reasons. The chapter argues that the fact that human beings are capable of this kind of reason-responsiveness helps to explain why they are responsible for their actions.