The Achilles of Proclus

In Essay Six of his Commentary on Plato's Republic , the Platonist Proclus offers a defence of the poetry of Homer and attempts to harmonize the Homeric epics, as inspired texts, with the philosophy of Plato as he interprets it. The tendency of late antique Platonists to turn to allegorical reading is well known, but in this instance, Proclus interprets Achilles by other means. In particular, he is careful to place Achilles’ actions relative to what he sees as the correct position in the scale of virtues (at the level of the political virtues). In some further remarkable passages Proclus sees Achilles’ ritual activities as a kind of prefiguration of the theurgic practices embraced by the Platonic school of Proclus’ era.