h lacunae the first portion of the dialogue,
is preserved in several MSS. These generally agree, and therefore may
be supposed to be derived from a single original. The version is very
faithful, and is a remarkable monument of Cicero's skill in managing the
difficult and intractable Greek. In his treatise De Natura Deorum, he
also refers to the Timaeus, which, speaking in the person of Velleius
the Epicurean, he severely criticises.

The commentary of Proclus on the Timaeus is a wonderful monument of
the silliness and prolixity of the Alexandrian Age. It extends to
about thirty pages of the book, and is thirty times the length of the
original. It is surprising that this voluminous work should have found
a translator (Thomas Taylor, a kindred spirit, who was himself a
Neo-Platonist, after the fashion, not of the fifth or sixteenth, but of
the nineteenth century A.D.). The commentary is of little or no value,
either in a philosophical or philological point of view. The writer is
unable to explain particular passages in any precise manner, and he is
equally incapable of grasping the whole. He does not take words in their
simple meaning or sentences in their natural connexion. He is thinking,
not of the context in Plato, but of the contemporary Pythagorean
philosophers and their wordy strife. He finds nothing in the text
which he does not bring to it. He is full of Porphyry, Iamblichus and
Plotinus, of misapplied logic, of misunderstood grammar, and of the
Orphic theology.

Although such a work can contribute little or nothing to the
understanding of Plato, it throws an interesting light on the
Alexandrian times; it realizes how a philosophy made up of words only
may create a deep and widespread enthusiasm, how the forms of logic and
rhetoric may usurp the place of reason and truth, how all philosophies
grow faded and discoloured, and are patched and made up again like
worn-out garments, and retain only a second-hand existence. He who
would study this degeneracy of philosophy and of the Greek mind in the
original cannot do better than devote a few of his days and nights to
the commentary of Proclus on the Timaeus.

A very different account must be given of the short work entitled
'Timaeus Locrus,' which is a brief but clear analysis of the Timaeus
of Plato, omitting the introduction or dialogue and making a few small
additions. It does not allude to the original from which it is taken;
it is quite free from mysticism and