Political Fragments of Archytas, Charondas, Zaleucus + Hierocles

Hierocles may be learned from the perusal of his Commentaries on the Golden Verses of the Pythagoreans, and from his treatise On Providence.* In these works, it appears that he was sublimely wise in his life, but not accurate in his knowledge. Damascius also says that Hierocles was not at all deficient in anything pertaining to merely human science, but that he was by no means replete with blessed conceptions—that is, with conceptions that are the offspring of an entheastic (divinely inspired) energy—which are to be found in abundance in the writings of Plato, Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus, and Damascius himself. This, indeed, will be immediately evident† to the man who has penetrated

• Fragments of this work are to be found in Photius, but they are fragments of a treatise or treatises On Providence, Fate, and Free Will.

† An adept in the philosophy of Plato will at once be convinced of the truth of this assertion by comparing what Hierocles has said about prayer in his Commentary on the Golden Verses of the Pythagoreans with what is said regarding this subject by the later Platonists.