Constantinople

The city Constantine refounded on the Bosporus as a new Rome, capital of the Eastern Empire for eleven centuries. Proclus was born here in 412 CE before finding his way to the Academy at Athens, whose last great systematic mind he became. The city is now Istanbul; the philosophy Proclus built traveled back into it through Arabic, Latin, and Greek alike.

Constantinople was founded to be a capital and defended by walls that held for a thousand years. Proclus was born there in 412 into a family of lawyers from Lycia and was sent to Alexandria to train for the courts. He gave that up for philosophy at Athens, took over the Academy, and wrote commentaries so systematic that later readers used them as the map of Platonism itself. He was among the last heads of the school before Justinian closed it.