Proclus on Ambrosia and Nectar

Proclus, Thomas Taylor · Hellenic and Hellenistic Papers Series · 8 pages

Proclus in Thomas Taylor's translation, under the running head “The Aliments of Gods,” with an abstract and train of thoughts at the front and closing lists of further reading and of Taylor's other works. It is the shortest document in the section at eight pages.

The starting position is that ambrosia and nectar are the twin perfections of gods so far as they are gods, other things being the perfections of intellect, nature and bodies — so the pair are not simply mythological food but a way of naming two modes of divine completeness. The distinction is then made by consistency: ambrosia is solid aliment and nectar is liquid. The compiler's abstract carries each into a reading of its own — ambrosia as the one uncreated principle and law in the universe, eternal and immutable, pulsing silently in the heart of animal man and reminding him of his divine inheritance; nectar as the ever-flowing Spirit of Truth, irrigating self-conscious minds with love and affection for all that lives and feels and needs help. Plato is cited for the order of the two, the charioteer stopping his horses at the manger placing ambrosia before them and afterwards giving nectar to drink, and it is noted that the mere sight of ambrosia nourishes the gods and stands to them in place of eating. The closing argument turns on the property each substance has: ambrosia, being solid, is bounded, and so supplies firm and undeviating intellection, of a kind unlike anything conceivable here; nectar, being humid, is boundless, prolific and perfective of the secondary presence of gods, providing an infinite and steadfast supply.

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