[2] According to Marinus,[3] Proclus was born in 412 AD in Constantinople to a family of high social status from Lycia, and raised in Xanthus.

As a gifted student, he eventually became dissatisfied with the level of philosophical instruction available in Alexandria, and went to Athens, philosophical center of the day, in 431 to study at the Neoplatonic successor of the New Academy, where he was taught by Plutarch of Athens (not to be confused with Plutarch of Chaeronea), Syrianus, and Asclepigenia; he succeeded Syrianus as head of the Academy in 437, and would in turn be succeeded on his death by Marinus of Neapolis.

He lived in Athens as a vegetarian bachelor, prosperous and generous to his friends, until the end of his life, except for a one-year exile, to avoid pressure from Christian authorities.

One challenge with determining Proclus' specific doctrines is that the Neoplatonists of his time did not consider themselves innovators; they believed themselves to be the transmitters of the correct interpretations of Plato himself.

[5] Proclus, like Plotinus and many of the other Neoplatonists, agreed on the three hypostases of Neoplatonism: The One (hen), The Intellect (nous) and The Soul (psyche), and wrote a commentary on the Enneads, of which unfortunately only fragments survive.

[citation needed] The majority of Proclus's works are commentaries on dialogues of Plato (Alcibiades, Cratylus, Parmenides, Republic, Timaeus).

In his commentary on Plato's Timaeus Proclus explains the role the Soul as a principle has in mediating the Forms in Intellect to the body of the material world as a whole.

The Soul is constructed through certain proportions, described mathematically in the Timaeus, which allow it to make Body as a divided image of its own arithmetical and geometrical ideas.

[7] The Elements of Theology (Στοιχείωσις θεολογική) consists of 211 propositions, each followed by a proof, beginning from the existence of the One (divine Unity) and ending with the descent of individual souls into the material world.

[10] Proclus exerted a great deal of influence on Medieval philosophy, though largely indirectly, through the works of the commentator Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.

[11] This late-5th- or early-6th-century Christian Greek author wrote under the pseudonym Dionysius the Areopagite, the figure converted by St. Paul in Athens.

[11] A summary of Proclus's Elements of Theology circulated under the name Liber de Causis (Book of Causes).

The most significant early scholar of Proclus in the English-speaking world was Thomas Taylor, who produced English translations of most of his works.