The laws of fate and the souls. The male and female regarding the souls. The new gods. Creation of the body by the new gods. Entry of the soul into the body. Construction of the human body.

Proclus, one of the last great thinkers of Neoplatonic philosophy and of ancient Greek philosophical thought in general, was born in Constantinople on February 8, 412 AD. He was born to a wealthy family from Lycia and studied at the best educational centers of his time, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Athens. There he came into contact with the Athenian Neoplatonic Academy, which captivated him completely 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 Lycabettus.

Living in a time of syncretistic chaos, he would compose a unified and complex system encompassing the entire preceding Neoplatonic philosophical tradition, influenced by Pythagorean, Aristotelian, and Stoic elements; in his system, he would consolidate the one god, the intelligible and the intellectual substances, magic, and various entities of a demonic nature, and in this form, he would hand it down to the scholastic Middle Ages.

His work is a key source for any scholar of Neoplatonic philosophy, as well as for Plato himself, for whom he often proposes original and extremely interesting interpretations.