D. The Major Exegesis of Homer in the Commentary on the Republic

Proclus's Motives

In the anecdote from Marinus quoted above, Proclus indicates that, if the choice were his, the Iliad and Odyssey would disappear from the face of the earth along with all the other books of antiquity, excepting only the Chaldaean Oracles and the Timaeus . Why, then, did he devote over a hundred pages to the defense and explication of an author for whom he had so little use? The answer is clear from a careful look at the anecdote itself. Proclus is, indeed, dividing the literature of antiquity into two classes, but the criteria he applies are very close in spirit to those Socrates used in the Republic : he would retain the useful , and reject the potentially dangerous.

Implied but not stated in Proclus's discussion of the relationship of literature both to society and to truth is another twofold division, no doubt close to what Heinrich Dörrie perceived in Plotinus's attitude toward literature.^[59] Plotinus, Dörrie argued, made a sharp division between literature in which he was convinced some eternally valid truth, however veiled or distorted, must lie, and the other category, including all of tragedy and comedy, and presumably virtually all lyric poetry, for which no such claim could be made. Proclus seems to have divided up the works of the ancients in a similar manner, and though poetry from the second category appears with some frequency in Plotinus, Proclus seems largely indifferent to it, in spite of occasional echoes.^[60]

Proclus's definition of the first category of literature may appear naive to us, and his classification of Homer with the Chaldaean Oracles (which, Dodds argued, Plotinus ignored, "recognizing them for the theosophical rubbish that they are")^[61] may even seem hopelessly misguided. Nevertheless, it is hardly surprising that for Proclus the antiquity of a work should be an indication of its credibility, and Marinus's anecdote makes it clear that Proclus considered the Chaldaean Oracles to be ancient. The antiquity of the Orphic hymns, which he would also have placed in this category, was unquestioned, and they were widely believed to predate Homer. The myth, after all, makes Orpheus an Argonaut, and the voy-

[59] Heinrich Dörrie in the discussion of Cilento's paper "Mito e poesia nelle Enneadi di Plotino," p. 316.

[60] Cilento, "Mito e poesia," pp. 297-305. See also n. 45 above.

[61] Dodds, "Numenius and Ammonius," p. 11.

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age of the Argo took place a generation before the Trojan War. The special status Proclus gives the Timaeus among the dialogues of Plato no doubt stems from a belief on his part that it also tapped an older tradition, though he may have selected it because he perceived no irony or dramatization of false positions in it.^[62] Whatever their status in terms of the criterion of usefulness, it is clear that all the dialogues of Plato would be included with Homer in the category of works able to give an inkling of the truth.

For Proclus, this class of poets and writers constituted the "theologians"

. The expression is used in the headings of the second and third chapters of the sixth part of his commentary on the Republic (the section dealing with the defense of Homer), and it is clear that Homer is included. In the context, one might even say that he is viewed as preeminent among the

. The use of the term is not entirely consistent within the discourse, and at In Rep. 1.126.21, the

are clearly the explicators and not the creators of myth.^[63] However, in all other instances in the essay the term refers to the class of poets with special access to the divine. Homer is often said to speak "by divine inspiration" (

, In Rep. 1.112.2, etc.) and simply called "divine" (

, In Rep. 1.117.6; 123.4, etc.) and even the "best and most divine of poets" (

In Rep. 1.158.9, quoting Plato's Ion 530b).^[64] The expression

, however, does not belong exclusively to Homer, as its use at In Rep. 1.126.1 to refer to Callimachus demonstrates.^[65]

[62] Cf. Proclus In Rep . 1.159-64. The choice was, of course, not original. In the Neoplatonic tradition generally the Timaeus was viewed as Plato's crowning achievement. See Wallis, Neoplatonism , pp. 18-19.

^[63][64][65]

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Proclus makes it clear from the start of his discussion of Homer that it is, for him, an article of faith, consecrated by tradition, that Homer is to be numbered among "those who are knowledgeable . . . in teachings about the classes of the divine and those things that exist eternally."^[66] In order to defend that traditional evaluation, Proclus proposes to answer systematically the accusations raised against Homer by Socrates in the Republic . At the beginning of his discussion, which constitutes an extensive independent essay within the commentary and may well have existed as a separate work,^[67] he briefly considers the possible consequences of the Socratic attack on Homer.^[68] If, on the one hand, Socrates proves to have been correct in his accusations, then it will be impossible to respect the tradition of numbering Homer among the wise or, more important, among the sources of wisdom. Plato seems to be saying that Homer is unacceptable, and moreover that the whole of the traditional wisdom of the past, cloaked in the obscurities of myth and poetry, is to be rejected. This amounted to a cultural revolution of enormous implications, and one that was extremely discomforting to heirs of the Greek tradition who were intensely concerned with demonstrating the coherence and validity of that tradition.^[69]

Proclus is initially upset, then, at the prospect of losing Homer. But there is another side to the question. Socrates' attack may prove to be unfounded . Then what would happen to Plato's prestige and credibility? It is possible, to a considerable extent, to separate Socrates from Plato, and Proclus is prepared to do this, but on the other hand he claims that one may take the opinions expressed in the dialogues by "Parmenides, Socrates, Timaeus, or another of those who are divine in this way,"^[70] to

^[66]

[67] Cf. Festugière in the preface to his translation of the commentary, vol. 1, P. 7. This commentary differs from Proclus's other commentaries in its organization into separate essays, departing from the usual line-by-line elucidation of the text. Sheppard (Studies , pp. 15-38) offers a detailed discussion of the relationship of the two sections of the commentary concerned with poetry to each other and to the work as a whole.

[68] In Rep . 1.70-71.

[69] Cf. Phillip DeLacy, "Plato and the Intellectual Life of the Second Century A.D. ," passim, and particularly p. 10 on Aelius Aristides and Plato: "[Aristides] does not want to reject Plato, but only Plato's rejection of the Greek heritage. This predicament, I suggest, would face us too if we really took Plato seriously."

^[70]

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be the opinions of Plato himself. There were evident contradictions in Plato's attitude toward Homer: in the Phaedo he is a "divine poet" (

,
Phaed . 95a), and in the Republic he is "third in line from the truth" (

, Rep . 10.759e), and the two observations seemed to make diametrically opposed statements on the credibility of Homer as a source of wisdom concerning divine things. If the Republic's claim that Homer is unreliable is false, Proclus asks, how can we say that Plato has acted "wisely and in accordance with irrefutable wisdom" (

, InRep . 1.70)? Clearly, this is what Proclus expects of Plato, that the wisdom he imparts be of the highest order, and that his demonstrations be irrefutable. Furthermore, the problem is not confined to Homer, for Plato's teachings on poetics in general contain the same fundamental contradiction, claiming at one moment that poetry is "possession by the Muses and divine madness and that poets are divine, whereas at another time he calls them fabricators of images and fantasies, and far removed from the truth."^[71]

Neither possibility—the loss of Homer or the loss of Plato—is one Proclus could easily accept. His characteristic solution will be to search beyond the apparent contradictions in Plato's text and to try to resolve them, demonstrating that his praise and his blame of Homer are both part of a larger "irrefutable" plan, and at the same time showing that both Plato and Homer contemplated the same transcendent truths and that their writings, properly interpreted, can be shown to have handed down the same teachings about those truths. Broadly speaking, Proclus approaches the problem as if it were one of apparent conflict between two philosophers, and his concern with this question is in some ways similar to the concern of Neoplatonists as early as Porphyry with the resolution of apparent conflicts between Plato and Aristotle.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 686