Abstract

This is the third of the five volumes projected by Cambridge University Press in its new English translation of Proclus's important commentary on Plato's Timaeus. It contains a translation of about one third of the second volume of Ernst Diehl's critical edition of the Greek text covering Proclus's commentary on Plato's discussion of the world's body at Timaeus 31b–34a. The volume of translation also includes an introduction, notes, glossaries , and a general index. Baltzly's translation is the first English version for approximately two hundred years—and the first based on Diehl's text—and should be compared with A.-J. Festugière's French translation on which it sometimes improves. This translation combines the virtues of being both close to the original Greek and readable in its own right, its value for the more committed scholar being enhanced by the incorporation of transliterated Greek terms into the text at strategic points.Without detracting from the overall value of this translation, a few comments or criticisms should be made. A first principle of translation to be followed in such a case is consistency of terminology. Since Proclus's Greek is rigorously technical in a way that Plato's is