Four translations by Thomas Taylor including

Ocellus Lucanus on the Nature of the Universe,

Taurus The Platonic Philosopher on the Eternity of the World,

Julius Firmicus Maternus of the Thema Mundi in which the position of the stars at the commencement of the several mundane periods given,

Select Theorems of the perpetuity of Time by Proclus

Thomas Taylor (1758-1835) was an 18th century translator whose writings influenced the likes of William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Wordsworth, G. R. S. Mead, & Mme. Helena Blavatsky. The present edition was issued by Manly P. Halls Philosophical Research Society in 1976. Hall provides the introductory preface. It is well known that Hall deeply admired Taylor for the Herculean and often thankless task of translating previously untranslated Greek philosophy.

The work contains a group of brief translations and extracts which Thomas Taylor combined in the present volume may be considered as dealing with astro-theology. The work was issued in a very small edition and has eluded reprinting until now. Ocellus Lucanus and Taurus have survived principally in the writings of later authors. What little is known of them is summarized in Mr. Taylor’s preface. Julius Fir-micus Maternus was one of the most famous early astrologers and is second in authority only to Ptolemy of Alex-andria. He wrote in the fourth century A.D., but it was not until 1975 that his principal text, Libri Matheseos, appeared in English. The horoscope of the world which is included herewith is from the 1533 edition of the Libri Matheseos. The writings of Proclus are available in the translations of Thomas Taylor, and he has long been regarded as indispensable to the interpretations of the writings of Plato and Socrates.