2. BACKGROUND: TWO SETS OF OPPOSITES

Proclus reads Hesiod and other poets through Platonic glasses. Let me therefore start my exploration of Proclus' Hesiod by briefly summarizing some relevant points about Plato's reception of Hesiod as they emerge in recent scholarship. I shall be interested especially in two sets of opposites: that of the Works and Days versus the Theogony and that of inspired poetry versus didactic poetry. As we shall find later on, we may view Proclus' interpretation of Hesiod as a sort of dialectical movement in which he seeks to unite these Platonic pairs of opposites in a harmonious Neoplatonic synthesis.

3. PROCLUS' DEFENCE OF THE THEOGONY

Let us now turn to Proclus. Proclus, like all Neoplatonists, understands himself as a true follower of Plato. To a modern student of Plato, however, his way of reading Plato often appears to go against the grain owing to his particular assumptions about the nature of (Platonic) philosophy. According to Proclus Plato's philosophy is best characterized as a form of theology, as can be glimpsed from the title of his opus magnum, The Platonic Theology. In this work Proclus offers a top-down, systematic presentation of his Neoplatonic metaphysics, starting from the One and the Henads and next going all the way down to our material sublunary realm. Proclus calls his exposition ‘Platonic’ because he believes that he is merely making explicit what is already present in Plato; he calls it a ‘theology’ because he identifies the various metaphysical principles (for example the One, various types of Intellect and Soul) with the divine entities which he finds in religious texts such as the Chaldaean Oracles, the theogonies of Orpheus and Hesiod as well as the divinely inspired poetry of Homer. Proclus believes, not entirely correctly, that all these so-called theologoi predate Plato. Part of Proclus' aim is to show that various venerable ancient authorities teach the same things as Plato would later do, albeit in different ways. This harmony between Plato and the ancients should demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt the truth of Plato's philosophy.Footnote ¹³

It is against this background that we should understand Proclus' attempts to rescue Hesiod from Plato's attack in the Republic in the fifth and sixth of his Essays on the Republic. I shall concentrate here on the sixth essay, which is generally supposed to present Proclus' more mature thoughts on the issue. Proclus begins by laying out the accusations that Socrates makes against

Proclus subsequently opposes the sort of myths that the poets use to teach about the divine to those composed by Plato, which are free of offensive elements. Since in the present passage he addresses Plato's criticism concerning Hesiod's Theogony, we may assume that Proclus here has especially that poem in mind and not so much the Works and Days.

From the fact that the poets ascribe all kinds of horrible deeds to the gods, one might be inclined to think that they had simply failed to grasp the truth about divine nature. In a first step to save Homer and the other poets in the face of Socrates' criticism, Proclus denies this. He argues that we should not take these myths at face value, but interpret them allegorically. He next takes it that from Socrates' criticism of poetry in Republic 2 it follows that there is nothing wrong with allegorical mythology as long as it does not figure in the education of the young (cf. T.1 above).Footnote ¹⁵ In fact, allegorical mythology is a superior form of mythology: these allegorical myths are not just the work of divinely inspired poets, they also exercise a special, inspiring influence on their public. Their (allegorical) content constitutes ‘a mystagogy and an upward-leading initiation of their listeners’.Footnote ¹⁶ This special effect, though, will only occur in the case of someone who

This is not the case for the young, though, who still need to master their unruly appetites and desires. For this reason, allegorical mythology is unsuitable for them. What they need instead is the sort of myths that Socrates prescribes in the Republic. These myths, referred to by Proclus as ‘educational’ (παιδευτικός), help the young to develop a virtuous character. In Proclus' own words:

Proclus' point is thus that Socrates does not reject Hesiod's Theogony and other poetical myths as such, but only bans them from the early stages of the educational curriculum since the young are not yet ready to study and experience these divinely inspired texts. It is not just the case that they are intellectually insufficiently prepared, they should also first make moral progress before they will be capable of receiving the divine illumination that results from the study of these myths. The educational myths contribute towards this moral perfection (‘virtue of character’); listening to them prepares the way for studying the mystical ones.

4. PROCLUS' ONE HESIOD

It is this very distinction between educational and inspired texts that allows Proclus to bring together Hesiod the moralist and Hesiod the theologian in his first scholion on Works and Days. Because the first part of it is pivotal to my argument, I shall quote it here in full:

The first thing to note is that Proclus describes the aim (σκοπός) of the Works and Days as ‘educational’ (παιδευτικός). Ever since Iamblichus Neoplatonic commentators assume that a serious text has one single goal towards the realization of which all its parts contribute. It determines the perspective from which the entire text should be read. Since it is of crucial importance to settle this issue before the actual study of the text is undertaken, a discussion of the skopos is one of the standard elements of the prolegomena of Neoplatonic commentaries.Footnote ²⁰ The brief remark about the goal of the Works and Days thus offers a crucial indication of Proclus' interpretation of the whole poem. The educational character of the Works and Days implies that for Proclus it was not an inspired text. As we have seen (§2.2), the notion that Hesiod, especially the poet of the Works and Days, is a technical poet as opposed to the inspired Homer is an old one. Already Plato himself had apparently denied Hesiod the status of an inspired poet, given that he refers to him as ‘wise’, ‘worthy’ (γενναῖος) and so forth, but never as θεῖος (‘divine’). In general, Hesiod's style was supposed to suit the rational nature of his poetry: a simple style without pathetic metaphors, known as the measured style. In keeping with this, Proclus here introduces Hesiod as a γενναῖος (‘worthy’) poet (cf. Pl. Resp. 363a8) and goes on to characterize Hesiod's style in the Works and Days as free from ‘embellishments, adjectival ornaments and metaphors’: ‘for simplicity and spontaneity fit ethical discourses’.

The aim of educational texts is to prepare the student for inspired texts. Plato's educational myths, we found, were supposed to prepare the student for inspired myths like those by Homer. Proclus now suggests that in a similar fashion the study of the Works and Days, perceived first and foremost as an ethical poem, paves the way for the inspired Theogony, the poem about the gods.Footnote ²¹ This suggestion must have struck an ancient reader as something remarkable. The issue of which poem came first, the Theogony or the Works and Days, is hardly ever explicitly raised in antiquity. The tacit assumption, to judge from how the poems are listed, seems to have been that the Theogony came first followed by the Works and Days, perhaps because it is in the Theogony that Hesiod meets the Muses, who inspire him to become a poet.Footnote ²² A remarkable poem, preserved on a papyrus that dates to the third century a.d., provides an exception to this rule: it suggests that Hesiod first composed the Works and Days and next, after a bout of inspiration, the Theogony. According to Glenn Most, the poem would thus imply a devaluation of the Works and Days.Footnote ²³ One way or another, however, we are dealing with the order of composition. Proclus, on the other hand, is concerned with the order in which the poems should be read. Moreover, if by implication the Works and Days turns out to be uninspired poetry, this is not seen as a flaw of that poem, as is the case in the anonymous papyrus. Quite the opposite: it needs to be uninspired if it is to perform its preparatory function well. Proclus thus presents the two poems as being united in a single educational programme, whereas Plato apparently saw them as unrelated. The distinction between educational and inspired texts may have provided Proclus with the concepts that enabled him to construct such a holistic approach to Hesiod; it does not, however, explain why he would try to bring together the two poems in the first place. Plato and many others had, after all, not felt the need to do so. Why, then, did Proclus?

5. THE CONTEXT OF PROCLUS' INTERPRETATION: THE NEOPLATONIC ACADEMY

As we have seen, Plato's two Hesiods probably reflect the two different settings in which Hesiod's poems functioned in Classical Athens, that of primary education in the case of the Works and Days and that of rhapsodic performances in the case of the Theogony. Proclus, by contrast, discusses both the Works and Days and the Theogony in the same (educational) setting, that of the Neoplatonic Academy of Athens. In this context the question of the relation between the two works arises almost spontaneously. Let me now elaborate on this, since it will throw additional light on Proclus' interpretation of the relation between the two poems of Hesiod.

Whereas for Plato philosophy had been essentially the logos of two people engaged in dialectical discussion, for the Neoplatonists philosophy existed in the reading of and commenting on authoritative texts – in particular, of course, those by Plato. Within this scholarly context the question arose in which order Plato's dialogues had to be read. Iamblichus introduced what was to become the standard curriculum of twelve dialogues that together constitute a sort of gradual initiation into the mysteries of Platonic philosophy and an ascent towards God.Footnote ²⁴ Of these twelve dialogues, the Timaeus and Parmenides were believed to be the most important ones. The Timaeus was considered to be the ultimate physical dialogue, the Parmenides the supreme theological exposition. The other dialogues of the curriculum were supposed to prepare the reader for the revelations contained in them. These preparations included moral perfection: Iamblichus had placed the Gorgias at the beginning of the curriculum as the second dialogue to be read – the first one being the Alcibiades – since according to his interpretation the Gorgias was about the so-called political virtues (πολιτικαὶ ἀρεταί). They are so named because the Neoplatonists derived the conception of these from Plato's Republic. They allow us to master the unruly irrational part of the soul that harbours the passions and that distract us from turning our attention towards the divine.Footnote ²⁵ Porphyry describes the goal of the political virtues as metriopatheia, the moderation of the passions.Footnote ²⁶

With this information about the Platonic curriculum in mind, let us take another look at Proclus' interpretation of the relation between the Works and Days and the Theogony. According to Proclus, the Theogony is about the cosmic order in the universe as the result of divine providence. This recalls Plato's Timaeus in which the cosmic order is presented as the result of the thoughtfulness of the divine Demiurge. In fact, modern scholars assume that the Timaeus is meant to recall the Theogony, if only to establish the superiority of the Platonic account in comparison to the traditional one.Footnote ²⁷ Proclus too is well aware of the connection between the Theogony and the Timaeus; to his mind, however, the latter was not intended to replace the former, but to supplement it. So, if the Theogony is a poetic sort of Timaeus, and if in the Platonic curriculum one has first to study a work like the Gorgias in order to acquire the so-called political virtues before turning to such works as the Timaeus, it makes sense for Proclus to assume that the Works and Days, with its moralizing overtones, was intended by Hesiod to perform a similar function. Proclus does not explicitly refer to the political virtues in relation to the Works and Days. Note, however, that the Works and Days, like the political virtues, is supposed to promote moral order within us and to steer our actions in the outside world by stimulating us to care for our household and to lead a private life.Footnote ²⁸

6. PROCLUS' EDUCATIONAL READING OF THE WORKS AND DAYS

Proclus' ideas about the skopos of the Works and Days that he develops in the first scholion inform much of the subsequent discussion. When, for example, Hesiod refers to the deceased golden generation as judges and ‘givers of wealth’ (πλουτοδόται, v. 126), Proclus comments that Hesiod says this to kings with educational intentions (τοῦτο παιδευτικῶς εἶπεν) in order to urge them to control their vices in general and their greed in particular, and to give wealth to their subjects rather than taking it away from them.Footnote ²⁹ Hesiod's claim that those who judge strangers fairly will flourish (lines 225–9) is interpreted as a similar educational appeal to judges to be just (ταῦτα παιδευτικῶς σωφρονίζει τοὺς δικαστὰς εἰς τὸ δίκαιον ὁρᾶν).Footnote ³⁰

Interestingly, Proclus brings up the educational skopos of the Works and Days not only when commenting on individual verses, but also when discussing the larger structure of the poem. Lines 381–2, for example, mark a turning point in the poem: Hesiod arrives at the end of a series of gnômai that are intended to foster prudential behaviour and next turns to practical advice about agriculture. Proclus comments:

This comment about the improvement of character and the political virtues clearly echoes the first scholion. Lines 760–4 mark another turning point. Hesiod, before proceeding to discuss the days of the month, admonishes his public to act in accordance with the (religious) precepts that he has just given them in order to avoid a bad reputation. Proclus comments:

Finally, Proclus explicitly appeals to the educational skopos of the Works and Days when dealing with issues of textual criticism. As part of the first scholion, Proclus discusses the question whether one should delete the first ten verses, as Aristarchus and others had suggested. One of their reasons for doing so was the fact that Hesiod here invokes the Muses of Pieria and not those of the Helicon, as he does in the Theogony and as one would expect from an inhabitant of Boeotia. Proclus rejects this argument, for ‘this too may perhaps be some educational element’ (τάχα δ' ἂν εἴη καὶ τοῦτο παιδευτικόν), since it reminds us that we should always prefer what is best, regardless of whether it is something familiar or something foreign.Footnote ³³ The precept not to relieve oneself in rivers and springs (lines 757–9) was another contested passage. Proclus explains that Plutarch wanted to delete these verses presumably because he considered these unworthy of ‘the educational Muse’ (παιδευτικὴ Μοῦσα).Footnote ³⁴ According to Proclus, however, these verses are instructive – they supposedly teach us that hoi polloi have little sense since they do not observe even this rule – and should therefore be maintained.

In short, the educational theme runs like a red thread through Proclus' scholia on the Works and Days. For this reason, I do not believe that Patrizia Marzillo is right when, in the introduction to her edition, she argues that for Proclus the Works and Days is a specimen of inspired, symbolical poetry, as opposed to educational poetry.Footnote ³⁵ Marzillo's main argument is that Proclus associates symbolism with inspired poetry in the sixth essay on the Republic. Since Proclus interprets some passages from the Works and Days symbolically, it would follow that for him the Works and Days is a symbolical and therefore an inspired poem. Admittedly the scholia on the Works and Days contain a limited number of symbolical interpretations. These symbolic interpretations serve, however, an educational function, as T.8 illustrates. In her commentary, Marzillo rightly remarks that the ‘causes of evil’ probably refer to the story of Prometheus and Pandora (47–105), whereas ‘variety of lives’ refers to the Myth of Ages (106–201), two passages for which Proclus offers an allegorizing interpretation.Footnote ³⁶ Note, however, that in T.8 Proclus presents these stories as part of Hesiod's attempts to promote the virtues of character, the aim of educational poetry. It need not worry us that educational poetry contains some measure of symbolic poetry. Given the fact that Proclus regards Homer as primarily an inspired, symbolical poet, yet explicitly allows for the presence of other types of poetry – including educational poetry – in Homer's epics,Footnote ³⁷ it seems to me quite reasonable to suppose that in a similar way a text that is primarily educational may contain bits of other forms of poetry as well.Footnote ³⁸

7. PROCLUS' CONCEPT OF DIDACTIC POETRY REVISITED

So far we have occupied ourselves with Proclus' interpretation of one particular instance of (so-called) didactic poetry, the Works and Days. We shall now proceed to Proclus' ideas about didactic poetry and its relation to other types of poetry in more general terms. In the sixth essay of his Commentary on the Republic, Proclus arrives at the following division of poetry:

1. (1) superior, divinely inspired poetry;

2. (2) a middle class of so-called ‘didactic’ poetry;

3. (3) inferior, mimetic poetry.Footnote ³⁹

The inferior uninspired, mimetic poetry obviously goes back on Plato's criticism of poetry in Republic 10, whereas Proclus associates divinely inspired poetry with the μανία of the Phaedrus.Footnote ⁴⁰ The latter is the type of poetry that by means of inspired myths unites us to the gods. Since the gods transcend discursive rationality, this implies that the poet and his audience transcend human rationality as well and enter into a state of inspired frenzy.

Rationality is the hallmark of the middle class of poetry. It is the sort of poetry that the soul produces when she is her rational self. Its subject matter is knowledge ‘of the essence of things, and good and beautiful deeds and words’.Footnote ⁴¹ We should think especially of poetry that ‘is full of admonitions and the best advice, brimming with intelligent good measure, and which allows those with the right natural disposition to participate in practical intelligence and the rest of virtue’.Footnote ⁴² In other words, it is the sort of poetry that makes us virtuous. As an example of this sort of poetry, Proclus refers, among others, to Theognis, who is mentioned in Plato's Laws 630a3–6 as a poet who teaches complete virtue. Proclus does not give an example of a poem that teaches us about the ‘essence of things’. It has been suggested that we should perhaps think of the poems of some Presocratic philosophers such as Parmenides and Empedocles. It is not very difficult to see where Hesiod's poems fit in. His inspired Theogony obviously belongs to the first class of poetry, whereas his moralizing Works and Days seems a good example of the second class of poetry.

Anne Sheppard in her seminal study on Proclus' theory of poetry refers, as do other scholars, to this middle class of poetry as ‘didactic’, even though, as Sheppard is aware, Proclus himself does not use the term ‘didactic’ as such.Footnote ⁴³ This may seem inconsequential, but it is, I believe, important. Sheppard complains that Proclus' didactic poetry is ‘something of an oddity’.Footnote ⁴⁴ While in ancient discussions about poetry didactic is commonly regarded as a subgenre of epic poetry, Proclus here mentions Theognis, a composer of elegies, as an example of poet of this type of poetry. She furthermore suggests that part of the oddity of this category of didactic poetry may be explained from the fact that this category is Proclus' own invention.Footnote ⁴⁵

My suggestion is that much of the oddity concerning this middle category of poetry disappears once we drop the predicate ‘didactic’ and replace it with a term that Proclus actually does use, paideutikos. As we have seen, Proclus uses the term παιδευτικός to characterize the Works and Days, a poem that he would probably consider as an example of the middle category of poetry. In corroboration of the identification of so-called didactic poetry with paideutikos poetry, it may furthermore be pointed out, as Anne Sheppard has done, that elsewhere in the sixth essay, Proclus says about paideutikos mythology that

In other words, the subject matter of paideutikos mythology is that of the middle type of poetry.

What, then, would follow if we consider Proclus' so-called didactic poetry as paideutikos poetry? In that case it becomes much clearer how Proclus arrives at his tripartite division of poetry. In Republic 2, Socrates distinguishes between (possibly) allegorical poetry that (perhaps) the mature may read to their profit and poetry that contributes to the paideia of the young by teaching them virtue and improving their character. Proclus derives his distinction between inspired mythology/poetry and paideutikos mythology/poetry from this Platonic passage (cf. T.6 above). The beneficial paideutikos poetry of Republic 2 is not the same as the mimetic poetry that Socrates severely criticizes in Republic 10, for whereas the poetry of Republic 2 promotes virtues of character in the case of the young (T.1), the poetry of Republic 10 ‘corrupts even the best characters’, because it stimulates the irrational part of the soul and thus triggers immoral behaviour.Footnote ⁴⁷ In this way, then, the Republic provided Proclus with three types of poetry. We need not worry, finally, that paideutikos poetry does not always take the form of epic verse. For as Socrates remarks explicitly, it does not matter whether paideutikos poetry is epic, lyric or tragic; the only thing that really matters is whether is it is truthful.Footnote ⁴⁸

8. PAIDEUTIKOS POETRY: KNOWLEDGE AND CORRECT OPINION

In this paragraph we shall take a closer look at the way in which paideutikos poetry, the Works and Days included, supposedly functions. How does it promote virtue? As we have seen, the distinguishing quality of paideutikos poetry is that it is the product of knowledge (ἐπιστήμη). In his discussion of an example of paideutikos poetry from Plato, Alcibiades 2 (142e1–3), Proclus drives home this point. The poem is a prayer to Zeus in which the poet, called φρονίμος (sensible) by Socrates, asks Zeus that the latter may give him what is good and keep him away from bad things, even if he prays for them. Proclus explains that Socrates calls the poet φρονίμος, because the latter distinguishes between the various natures of the things one may pray for (it is truly good things as opposed to seemingly good things), ‘neither on the basis of divine inspiration nor on the basis of correct opinion, but on the basis of knowledge’.Footnote ⁴⁹ In other words, the middle type of poetry is different both from the superior type of inspired poetry, and from the lowest type of mimetic poetry, associated by Proclus with opinion (δόξα), which may either be correct or incorrect.Footnote ⁵⁰ The distinction that Proclus makes between paideutikos poetry and mimetic poetry seems clear enough: it is the traditional Platonic opposition of knowledge and opinion. It is, therefore, somewhat puzzling to find that A.J. Festugière remarks in a note to his superb translation that one should not insist too much on this opposition ὀρθὴ δόξα–ἐπιστήμη.Footnote ⁵¹ His comment is prompted by the fact that some lines later Proclus summarizes the upshot of the foregoing discussion of the passage from Alcibiades 2 as follows:

I do not think that in this passage Proclus conflates knowledge and correct opinion. Proclus' point is that the poet of paideutikos poetry has real knowledge about the (ethical) subjects that he treats in his poetry. If not, he would after all be nothing more than a composer of mimetic poetry. As we have seen, however, paideutikos poetry is not so much about transferring knowledge, but rather about promoting the so-called political virtues and metriopatheia. This moral improvement is a necessary preparation for the actual acquisition of knowledge, hence Proclus' students had first to study the Works and Days before they were allowed to embark upon the Theogony. Therefore, when a public of youngsters listens to a sensible poet what they derive from his performance – which itself is based on ethical knowledge – is not ethical knowledge, but correct ethical opinions that enable them to improve their morals.

The point that moral improvement on the basis of correct opinion precedes the acquisition of knowledge proper is explicitly made by various Neoplatonic authors, for example by Simplicius:

The ‘ethical works’ to which Simplicius refers are not Aristotle's Ethics, for in these Aristotle proceeds ‘by means of the most scientific of divisions and demonstrations’, but the ‘hortatory and undemonstrated catechisms, of the kind that used often to be uttered by the Pythagoreans’. Simplicius is thinking here of, for example, the Pythagorean poem The Golden Verses, on which Hierocles of Alexandria produced a commentary. Hierocles too insists that before we can turn to the study of philosophy proper, we have to banish the immoderation of the passions from our soul (i.e. acquire metriopatheia). For this ‘we need certain briefly defined rules, technical aphorisms’. ‘The aim and arrangement of the verses is precisely this, to impress upon the students a philosophic character before other readings.’Footnote ⁵⁴ For the same reason, Simplicius himself wrote a commentary on Epicitetus' Encheiridion, another example of a set of aphorism-like exhortations to pursue virtue without too much technical demonstration.Footnote ⁵⁵ Ilsetraut Hadot comments:

This observation takes us back to Hesiod's Works and Days. For, as we have seen already, Plato considered the Works and Days first and foremost as a collection of morally edifying verses from which he frequently quotes, and some 800 years later this is still how Proclus approaches the Works and Days. To him the poem is comparable to Epictetus' Encheiridion and the Pythagorean Golden Verses. Thus, when Hesiod warns against ‘putting the jug upon the mixing bowl’ (Works and Days 744), Proclus comments that the Pythagoreans have similar maxims such as ‘do not step over the balance’, ‘do not receive a swallow’ and ‘do not stir the fire with a dagger’.Footnote ⁵⁷ Just as these Pythagorean maxims admonish us in a symbolic manner not to transgress justice, nor to invite foolish chatterboxes to the house, nor to kindle the emotions of angry people with bitter words, in the same way Hesiod here presents us with a symbolic lesson (παίδευμα) not to let private interests prevail over public ones.Footnote ⁵⁸