On “Young” Gods (In Tim. 3, 310f)

[endymions_bower]

Regarding the reference at Timaeus 42d to the “young Gods” (neoi theoi) with whom the Demiurge cooperates in the production of mortal lives, Proclus comments on the symbolic meaning of attributing “youth” to deities. (Note that the translation here is a little freer in parts than I usually do; I’m trying to render the jargon more vividly, sometimes to highlight philosophical significance, sometimes to evoke the images behind the words.)

First, inasmuch as such deities tend to be concerned with what he calls the “manifest working” (phanê dêmiourgia), they are characterized as young by comparison with the "latent" working, "for that which is more intellective in the Gods is 'older': 'Zeus was the first-born and knew more,' says Homer (Iliad 13.355).

 

"Or because they always make generation new, and when it becomes old and feeble on account of its nature as the substrate of change [dia tên hupokeimenên phusin], they recall it again to its natural way by their action [kinêsei], sending flowing into it all kinds of formative principles [logoi] and powers, and thus render it perpetually new.

 

"Or because, having intellective substances suspended from them, they are eternally flourishing in intelligence, for as the poets say, Hebe pours them nectar, and they drink and survey the whole world of sensation (Iliad 4.2-4). Applying thus their immutable and unswerving thought, they fill all things with their providential workings.

 

"Or because Kouretic divinity is present with them, illuminating their intelligence with purity, their action with inexorability, and supplying the whole of them with power unmitigated, through which, being themselves, they guide the whole of things.

 

"Or, and this is the truest reason of all, because the monad of them is called 'the New God' [neos theos]. For theologians refer to Dionysos in this way, who is the monad of all the second workings [deuteras dêmiourgias]. For Zeus made him king of all the encosmic Gods and accorded him the first honors [prôtistas timas], ‘though young and an infant guest’ [lit. ‘a reveler [eilapinastês] not yet capable of speech [nêpios, i.e. nê epos]’, Orph. frag. 191], just as theologians call the sun a Young God and Heraclitus says the sun is 'new every day' as participating the Dionysiac power.

 

"Or, appropriate to Platonic principles, because bodies in process [genesis echonta] are suspended from them [the Young Gods], and the existence of these is not apportioned in eternity, but according to a temporal whole. They [the Young Gods] are young, therefore, not as having at some point begun to be, but as being eternally coming-to-be [aeigenêtoi] and, as we have explained above, subsisting in that very state. For what comes-to-be does not possess all of what it is at once, but is always being supplied. Thus therefore they are called young/new, as being allotted a foundation coextensive with a temporality [tôi chronôi sumparateinomenên lachontes tên hupostasin] and eternally coming-to-be and possessing a renewed immortality," (ref. to Statesman 270a).