Aphrodite in Iliad V: The Anagogy of Aeneas and the Hymns of Proclus [Part 3]

Having discussed the symbolic exegesis of the characters of Aeneas, Aphrodite and Diomedes in Iliad V, this post will now turn to exploring through Proclus’ Hymns the theurgic significance of this passage in Homer from the perspective of the later Platonists. 

It is worth establishing from the outset that while Proclus disagrees with Plotinus on certain philosophical issues (such as Plotinus’ teaching of the undescended soul, criticized by Proclus in the Commentary on Plato’s Alcibiades 227.2-9; cf. Martijn 2022 , 83-84), he fundamentally sees him as a legitimate interpreter of Plato. Proclus includes him among “the interpreters of the epopteia” (Taylor 1816) of Plato in Platonic Theology I.1 and appears to allude to his exegesis of Symposium (En. III.5.2-4) in his “Hymn to Aphrodite”. Furthermore, Proclus wrote a commentary on the Enneads which is, unfortunately, only preserved in fragments in Michael Psellus (Martijn 2022, 74-75). For this reason, I think putting the two authors’ works in dialogue through Iliad V will be productive. 

From the Plotinian perspective on Iliad V, an immediate question would be ‘where is Eros’? The relationship of Aphrodite and Eros (already established by Diotima in Symposium) is crucial for Plotinian psychology, aesthetics and soteriology. Plotinus ties these three together succinctly when he writes that 

Plotinus thus understands there to be a ‘universal Aphrodite’, elsewhere identified as Aphrodite Pandemos, the daughter of Zeus and Dione, who is the Soul of the Cosmos, and that there are ‘many Aphrodites within the cosmos, becoming daimons’, referring to individual souls ‘flowing from’ the universal soul. Each theological register of Aphrodite has its own Eros, so exploring Iliad V and identifying what kind of Eros is present in the text needs a kind of taxonomy of these Erotes. 

This is where Proclus’ Hymn to Aphrodite becomes immensely helpful, because he gives exactly this taxonomy:

This last verse, casting the Erotes as assistants in the cosmic activities of Aphrodite, echoes Plotinus’ own discussion of Erotes and other daimons in III.5.6.24-35. Further connections between Proclus’ Hymn and Plotinus’ theology of Aphrodite can be seen in that both agree on their omnipresence (cf. Van den Berg 2001, 204 on Proclus In Rep. I.141.21 and En. III.5.4.13). 

Proclus’ threefold distinction between Erotes taxonomizes them into (a) anagogic; (b) generative and (c) marital classes. The first category (a) of Erotes best describes the current activity of Aeneas in Iliad V:297-442. These Erotes which “shoot with noeric arrows at souls, in order that, having taken the upward-leading [anagōgia] goads of desires, these long after seeing the fiery courts of their mother” best correspond to the Eros of En. III.5.1.12-13, which are “in [the] manner for the wise having been made at home with Beauty itself.” Having been wounded, Aeneas has been taken up the “upward-leading” path, being carried by his mother from the battlefield. His unconsciousness symbolizes disconnection from the body corresponding to the “noeric arrow” of this anagogic Eros. 

This Eros “long[s] after seeing the fiery courts of [his] mother”. In Iliad V, we can say this longing which is fulfilled, sans the Chaldean ‘fiery courts’ (Van den Berg 2001, 177, 199) – if we recall the non-separation of the individual soul from the Soul of the Cosmos and recall Plotinus’ advice in interpreting myth that myths separate into distinct characters and figures what in essence are unified (cf. En. III.5.9.23-30). “The goddess Aphrodite flung herself into her mother’s lap. Dione hugged her, and held her arms around her darling daughter, and stroked her with her hand and said her name…” (Wilson 2023, 111; Iliad V:370-372). This is to say the individual soul (Aeneas) ascends beyond his material body, being united with the World-Soul (Aphrodite; Proclus addresses Aphrodite as “you [who] envelop the great heaven all around, where, as they say, you are the divine soul of the everlasting cosmos” in v.15-16), who then reaches her mother, which is a cause and source [πηγὴν, in Proclus’ Hymn] beyond even the World-Soul. 

Proclus and Plotinus disagree on philosophical theological points about what and who this cause and source is (for Plotinus, it is Aphrodite Ourania and the hypostasis Soul, which Proclus rejects). Nevertheless, the anagogic motion of the soul is the same, and the symbolic linkages with Iliad V remain for both authors. 

Proclus’ hymn enacts and engages these symbolic linkages in theurgy, when it turns to the petition:

Addressing the Goddess directly, Proclus asks that she may “steer” [ithunois] – a word which can both refer to straightening the path of arrows (cf. Odyssey 22:8), and the rule of the leader of the cosmos (cf. Zeus in Iliad 17:632), but also refer to the steering of shifts (cf. Herodotus, Histories I.194). In other hymns, (αἳ ψυχὰς κατὰ βένθος ἀλωομένας βιότοιο,“To the Muses” v.3) the word for “life” [biotoio] is likened to the depths of the sea and souls crossing it are “wandering” [alōomenas] (a Homeric epithet of Odysseus, cf. Van den Berg 2001, 211; Odyssey 2:333; 5:336; 5:448; 7:239). The suggested image in this petition, of the Goddess Aphrodite intervening to “steer the toilsome course of [the] life” of a wandering soul immediately calls to mind the journey of Aeneas after the defeat at Troy:

There are clear parallels in vocabulary between Virgil’s prologue and Proclus’ petition and other parts of his hymn: πολύμοχθον (“toilsome”) and tot adire labores (“to undertake such labors”); ἰθύνοις (“steer”) and impluerit (“drove”); μεγάλην βασιλήιον (“great royal”, referring to Aphrodite as source of the Erotes) and regina deum (“Queen of the Gods”; referring to Juno). There’s even a similar subject matter to the petition and the prologue, given there is a man (virum; ἐμὴν referring to Proclus) and weapons (arma; βελέμνοις). Through this analogizing, Proclus is stepping into the role of Aeneas, a “man marked by piety” and yet “thrown around on land and at sea” having traveled around the Mediterranean in his studies and forced “to undertake such labors, to roll through such misfortune” living through the latter days of Platonic education in Athens when traditional religion was being more rapidly repressed.

Proclus’ Hymn to Lycian Aphrodite gives a few more qualifications to both our understanding of the theurgic employment of symbola from Iliad V and the role of Aphrodite therein. 

Firstly, he says that “[the Lycians] called this goddess Olympian, because of whose power / they often escaped the mortal-destroying poison of death, they kept their eye fixed on excellence [καὶ ἑ Θεὴν ὀνόμηναν Ὀλύμπιον ἦς διὰ κάρτος / πολλάκι μὲν θανάτοιοι βροτοφθόρον ἔκφυγον ἰόν, / ἐς δ’ ἀρετὴν ἔχον ὄμμα] (Van den Berg 2001, 238-239). The description of Aphrodite as associated with Olympus because of her power to escape “the mortal-destroying poison of death” certainly recalls Iliad V, where the Goddess helps the wounded Aeneas to escape and ascends to Olympus. Furthermore, connecting this to keeping “their eye fixed on excellence [aretē]” certainly resonates with Aeneas’ actions, as discussed in the previous post, which begin the anagogic episode. 

Through, perhaps most importantly, the petition to Aphrodite to “lift up my soul from ugliness back again to great beauty” [ψυχὴν δ’ἂψ ἀνάειρον ἀπ’ αἰσχεος ἐς πολὺ κάλλος] (Van den Berg 2001, 238-239) most clearly and beautifully activates the poetic, mythic symbol of the Goddess who dives “down among the gruesome corpses” (Wilson 2023, 130; Iliad V:885-887) to lift up and save her child in the soteriological context of theurgic recitation of hymns. This lifting up also aligns well with Proclus’ own positioning in Platonic Theology VI.22 of Aphrodite as “the first-effective cause of the amatory inspiration which pervades through wholes, and familiarizes to the beautiful the lives that are elevated by her” (Taylor 1816, 364) within the ‘anagogic triad’ alongside Hermes and Apollo (who also appears in Iliad V to defend Aeneas).

If, at this point, one may doubt that Proclus was reading Iliad V and thinking about the verses of Homer as applicable in his own practice of writing and reciting hymns (which Marinus confirms; see Vita Procli 17, 19), one would only need to look to the direct quote of Iliad V in his “Common Hymn to the Gods” (cf. Van den Berg 2001, 182-183). Compare the following verses:

These are the words of Athena to Diomedes; Proclus’ reference to them seems to identify himself with the Greek hero, which may pose an interpretative challenge for the present exegesis of the ascent of Aeneas and wounding of Aphrodite. Two data points mitigate against this, however. 

Firstly, in his hymn to Lycian Aphrodite  – the local cultus of Aphrodite in the homeland of his parents (Van den Berg 2001, 239; “To Lycian Aphrodite” v.13) – Proclus emphasizes his Lycian heritage. When Aeneas jumps from his chariot, it is to protect the body of Pandarus, son of Lycaon, a famed archer from the city of Zelea in Lycia (cf. the speech of Athena to Pandarus at Iliad 4:93-103; Aeneas addressing Pandarus, who “no man in Troy or Lycia rivals” in archery; Wilson 2023, 103, Iliad V:171-178). While the significance of arrows and archery in Proclus’ Hymns to Aphrodite are no doubt primarily influenced by the figure of the Erotes, he could not have been unaware of the famous Homeric archer from his own region. Secondly, in his Commentary on Plato’s Republic, Proclus describes the judgement of Paris, distinguishing the pursuit of sensible beauty from “an authentic eroticism, which has taken understanding and wisdom to be its guides, and can distinguish with aid of these between real and apparent beauty, does not belong less to Athena than Aphrodite” (In Rep. 1.108.23-109, translated in Lankila 2009, 26).

To summarize, given the symbolic exegesis of Iliad V from a Plotinian perspective, it is clear to see resonances with various symbolic identifications in the two hymns which Proclus composed for Aphrodite. The former hymn taxonomizes Eros in a manner which makes clear the type of “activity of soul striving for the Good” which Aeneas undertakes in the scene. This anagogic eros conditions the petitions of Proclus’ hymns, which ask the Goddess to “steer” his life and “lift” him up from “ugliness”; both petitions echo both the circumstances in which Aphrodite dives into battle to save Aeneas and the labores of Aeneas as extolled by Virgil. 

All of this, then, contextualizes the lines which Celsus and Origin quibble over and which van Kooten cites, Iliad V:334-340: 

Proclus’ Hymns to Aphrodite heavily allude to Iliad V, relating the theurgist to Aeneas and the soteriological ascent of theurgic practice to the anagogy of Aeneas. In Proclus’s Commentary on Plato’s Republic, a theoretical account of obscene mythical symbolism is given which aptly explains the role of the wounding of Aphrodite in the perspective of a theurgic exegesis of the above-quoted lines:

Radek Chlup gives a helpful summary of the consequences of this interpretation, saying that “[t]he frequent monstrosity of mythology follows naturally from the fact that what the myths try to express is fundamentally different from how things function in this world. To draw our attention to the essential otherness of the divine, myths have recourse to various drastic or shameful images which often go well beyond anything humans would ever be capable of. In this way we are reminded that the story is not to be read literally, that the monstrous incidents serve to express the incomparable power of the gods, their transcendence.” (Chlup 2012, 191).

References

Chlup, Radek. (2012). Proclus: An Introduction. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Gerson, Lloyd P. (Ed.) (2018), The Enneads. Boys-Stones, George; Dillon, John M.; Gerson, Lloyd P.; King, R.A.H.; Smith, Andrew; Wilberding, James (Trs.). (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Greenough, J.B. (Tr.; Ed.) (1900), Bucolics, Aeneid, and Georgics Of Vergil. (Boston. Ginn & Co.)

Henry, Paul and Schwyzer, Hans-Rudolf (Eds.) (1964), Plotini Opera. (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Vol. I

Homer (1920), Homeri Opera in five volumes. (Oxford, Oxford University Press).

Lankila, Tuomo (2009), “Aphrodite in Proclus’ Theology”. Journal for Late Antique Religion and Culture. 3:21-43

Martijn, Marije (2022), “From Plotinus to Proclus” in Gerson, Lloyd P. and Wilberding, James. (Eds.), The New Cambridge Companion to Plotinus. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Reeve, C.D.C. (Tr.; Ed.) (2012), A Plato Reader: Eight Essential Dialogues. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company).

Taylor, Thomas (Tr.) (1816), Proclus on the Theology of Plato. (Kshetra Books). Reprinted 2017.

Van den Berg, R.M. (2001). Proclus’ Hymns: Essays, Translation, Commentary. Philosophia Antiqua 90. (Leiden: Brill).

Wilson, Emily (Tr.) (2023), The Iliad. (New York: W.W. Norton).