Olympiodorus and Taylor on Suicide

I've been sick—on top of the last few weeks of bad summer allergies, I caught a pretty bad cold a few days ago—and since Proclus is pretty tough going at the best of times, I've been turning to Plato for light reading. (Yes. Yes, I know. I know. Shut up.) People have been reading Plato for a long time and for all that time they've had opinions on the best order to read his books in. (On the one side we have Thrasyllus, from ~100 BC, and Albinus, from ~AD 100; on the other side, the list I selected to work from was from a few years ago.) I started by reading them in such an order, but man oh man was it boring. The point of this is to be fun, right? So why waste time on pesky politics or ethics (or even Alcibiades, sweet treat though he was), when what I really care about is metaphysics?

So I gave up on the reading order (I'll get back to early dialogues eventually—maybe) and jumped right into the books that Plotinus references. So right now I'm reading the Phædo (a better title would be On the Immortality of the Soul) and I'm enjoying myself. It's good.

But that's not why I'm writing right now. While I'm reading a modern translation (Jowett's, as it happens), I of course have Thomas Taylor's copious notes to hand, and it is of little surprise to find gems in there. Since I just went back over Plotinus on Suicide, it was convenient (to use no stronger or more mystical term) to find a four-page long footnote containing Olympiodorus' and Taylor's thoughts on the same. Since it's interesting, I figured I'd transcribe it for you all:

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