Proclus: Five Hymns

Proclus's Five Hymns, in Thomas Taylor's 1792 English translation read here from a public-domain digital edition, presents the fifth century Neoplatonist philosopher Proclus's own devotional poetry addressed to various deities within his Neoplatonic theological framework. Taylor was an eighteenth century English Platonist whose translations, though dated in style, remain in wide circulation as the most accessible English versions of several minor Neoplatonic texts. Its strength is that it makes Proclus's own composed hymns, primary evidence for how a late Neoplatonist philosopher practiced devotion within his own system, available in English at all. Its limit is that Taylor's translation reflects eighteenth century English and his own idiosyncratic Platonist commitments, so a claim resting on precise wording should be checked against a modern scholarly translation where one exists rather than taken from Taylor's phrasing alone.