Translation and commentary on the only surviving sustained work on Plato's Phaedrus from antiquity.

The file downloadable from here is, as usual, just a taster. It includes the Introduction to the concluding portion of Hermias and the Introduction of the Praefatio to Hermogenes On Styles attributed to Syrianus. If you want the translation, you have to buy the book. Abstract This third and final volume concludes Hermias' commentary on Plato's _Phaedrus_. Here, Plato delivers a celebrated critique of writing, and its relationship to orality. Hermias follows him, and adds a general account of good writing. (...) In addition, this volume offers the first English translation of the brief Introduction to Hermogenes' _On Styles_, which manuscripts attribute – probably mistakenly – to Hermias' teacher Syrianus. -/- Baltzly and Share discuss the Introduction’s authorship and its relation to the genuine commentaries of Syrianus on the rhetorical treatises of Hermogenes. They illuminate the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric in the Neoplatonic schools, and provide a novel explanation of Neoplatonic commentaries as performances of Platonic literacy in ancient elite education. -/- This translation offers novel evidence of interest for students of ancient philosophy, rhetorical education, and literature more broadly. It is accompanied by explanatory notes, an introduction, and scholarly apparatus, including indices, glossaries, and a bibliography. (shrink)

This commentary records, through notes taken by Hermias, Syrianus' seminar on Plato's Phaedrus, one of the world's most influential celebrations of erotic beauty and love. It is the only Neoplatonic commentary on Plato's Phaedrus to have survived in its entirety. Further interest comes from the recorded interventions by Syrianus' pupils - including those by Proclus, his eventual successor as head of the Athenian school, who went on to teach Hermias' father, Ammonius. The second of two volumes of Hermias' commentary, the (...) chapters translated here begin with a discussion of how the discarnate soul is visualised as a winged chariot team whose charioteer may gain some glimpse of beauty itself, which can explain subsequent erotic longing. This volume provides a translation is accompanied by explanatory notes, an introduction detailing the significance and context of the treatise and a scholarly apparatus including multiple indexes, glossaries and a bibliography. (shrink)

This volume of Proclus' commentary on Plato's Timaeus records Proclus' exegesis of Timaeus 27a–31b, in which Plato first discusses preliminary matters that precede his account of the creation of the universe, and then moves to the account of the creation of the universe as a totality. For Proclus this text is a grand opportunity to reflect on the nature of causation as it relates to the physical reality of our cosmos. The commentary deals with many subjects that have been of (...) central interest to philosophers from Plato's time onwards, such as the question whether the cosmos was created in time, and the nature of evil as it relates to physical reality and its ontological imperfection. (shrink)