They say that the bee is sacred to the Muses, a teacher for human beings concerning the royal and political life. Therefore, if it pleases you to give the name ‘the bee’ to the summary of the opinions of the ancients concerning the speech of the Muses by Plato 17 and of the exposition of it that I am furnishing, the Muses will not blame you for using that name nor will Plato, the mouthpiece of the Muses as I think, who is treating the change of constitutions in this speech that he dedicated to the Muses.

He seems to me to be responding to those who lay claim to political knowledge that the change of constitutions from the higher to the next lowest does not come about by necessity.

There are three arguments in the ninth book of the Republic showing the happiness (eudaimonia) of the most just life and the wretchedness of the unjust. The first is made by analogy of ways of life with constitutions, the second from the means of judging, by which [types of individual] are judged more or less than one another,8 the third on the basis of the perfection in their activities, whether it is unmixed in any way with the opposite, or whether it is mixed. Since for some people the goal (telos) is pleasure, but for others it is intelligence (phronêsis), if it should be shown that the just man is superior in each individually and in both together, he would with good reason win the prize for victory, even if [his goodness] should escape the notice of both gods and human beings. This then was the challenge lying before Socrates.

When Socrates has established as rulers of the best political order those who are legitimately lovers of learning and who are not counterfeit philosophers, and when he has declared them worthy to be spectators of the universals – and the affairs which are governed by them will come to resemble those universals – he postulates that most of all they will understand this very last object of learning. Since his companions have asked for a discussion from him as to what this means, and what the final one of all the objects of learning hints at,18 he says that they have already heard this many times before, namely that this is the Good, which all things desire. And it is not possible to say where one should turn one’s thinking (dianoia),19 if one should neglect this axiom. He announces that he will show what exactly the good is.

Despite the title of Essay 12 (‘On the Cave in the Seventh Book of the Republic’), the text which survives deals not only, and in fact not primarily, with the famous image of the Cave, but also with the image which precedes it in the Republic, the Divided Line. Due to a lacuna in our essay, of uncertain length but of at least one entire folio, a large part of Proclus’ discussion of the Cave is lost to us. Proportionately, therefore, we have more remaining to us of the discussion of the Divided Line. By the nature of the passages which Proclus analyses here, there is some overlap with Essay 11 (in relation to the Good), and Essay 10 (in relation to the ascent through the distinct ontological levels).

The Tenth Book is divided into three principal topics. The first of these is directed towards a critique of poetry on the grounds that it is mimetic, but not educative of souls. The second establishes the immortality of the soul and reveals its kinship with the divine. The third provides the myth itself, which exhibits providence as a whole, both daemonic and divine, which governs souls both descending into becoming and transcending becoming, and the multi-form ways of each. These being the three subjects, it is clear that the first proposes to separate us from material images (eidôlon) and to lead us up from the illusions (phantasia) of false learning, because these draw us down to the very last of existent things, which are in fact partial (merikos) and imitative of existent things, but do not truly exist themselves, and [to lead us up] from what is simply and entirely a fictive life.

Socrates dealt with two arguments through which he supposes that the sameness of education and virtue for men and women is rendered unstable.98 One argument leads the doctrine to something contrary to received opinion (adoxos)99 (for, attempts to go from things that are contrary to received opinions have a capacity to refute (anatreptikos), while those that go from received opinions are persuasive (pithanos) relative to the propositions that are under examination). The other argument proceeds from what was agreed upon – [an assumption] through which he showed what justice is and arranged the entire political order.100

The General Introduction to volume 1 in this series provides an overview of Proclus’ Republic Commentary.1 We discussed the place of Plato’s Republic within the Neoplatonist curriculum and defended the conclusion that, while Proclus’ Republic Commentary is different in character from his (incomplete) line-by-line commentaries on Alcibiades I, Parmenides, and Timaeus, it is not merely a grab bag of disparate materials that is unified only by having the Republic as their subject matter.2 The seventeen essays that make up the Republic Commentary do cover the dialogue from beginning to end. The essays also differ from one another in character and tone. Some are expressly said to have been composed for one purpose (e.g. Essay 1 arises from a class on the Republic), while others were for special occasions. As we noted in volume I, Essay 6 reflects a lecture celebrating Plato’s birthday.