NOTE ON THE PRESENT TRANSLATION

GLENN M O R R O W reached as far as page 880, line 39, almost halfway through Book IV, before he died, so that, although I have ventured to alter his terminology to a certain extent, I naturally sought to adapt my translation to his. The main difficulty has been in trying to maintain consistency in rendering Proclus' technical terminology, and it is inevitable that over such a vast extent of text, inconsistencies have gone unmarked. One device I have adopted which I hope will clarify rather than obscure, and that involves the use of capital letters. When referring to the hypostases of Intellect and Soul, as well as to the Forms in their transcendent aspect, I have used capital initials, while referring to individual intellects and souls, and forms at any lower level, such as forms-inmatter, with lower-case initials. In general, I have tried to translate each technical term of Proclus' metaphysics by the same English word, but in a number of cases this has meant rather a limited set of equivalent terms. Since all these terms are in regular use among modern students of Neoplatonism, no confusion should result. To assist in clarification, however, I append a list of common technical terms, with my accustomed translations: