The gods of the world (the transcendental, the twelve transcendental-cosmic, the cosmic, the universal souls, the higher kinds). Proclus, one of the last great thinkers of Neoplatonic philosophy and ancient Greek philosophical thought in general, was born in Constantinople on February 8, 412 AD. Born into a wealthy family from Lycia, he studied in the best educational centers of his time, Alexandria, Constantinople, Athens.

There he came into contact with the Athenian Neoplatonic Academy, which captured him definitively and of which he became the director after the death of his teacher, Syrianus. He died in Athens on April 17, 485 AD and was buried near Lykabettus.

Living in an era of syncretic chaos, he would synthesize into a single and complex system the entire preceding Neoplatonic philosophical tradition, influenced by Pythagorean, Aristotelian, and Stoic elements; in his system he would gather the one god, the intelligible and the intellectual substances, magic, and various demonic beings, and in this form he would hand it over to the scholastic Middle Ages.

His work is a fundamental source for every student of Neoplatonic philosophy, as well as for Plato himself, whose original and extremely interesting interpretations he often proposes.

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