Timaeus
in vain. Enough on this head; and now let what we have said about
the nature of the created and visible gods have an end.
To know or tell the origin of the other divinities is beyond us,
and we must accept the traditions of the men of old time who
affirm themselves to be the offspring of the gods—that is what
they say—and they must surely have known their own ancestors. How
can we doubt the word of the children of the gods? Although they
give no probable or certain proofs, still, as they declare that
they are speaking of what took place in their own family, we must
conform to custom and believe them. In this manner, then,
according to them, the genealogy of these gods is to be received
and set forth.
Oceanus and Tethys were the children of Earth and Heaven, and
from these sprang Phorcys and Cronos and Rhea, and all that
generation; and from Cronos and Rhea sprang Zeus and Here, and
all those who are said to be their brethren, and others who were
the children of these.
Now, when all of them, both those who visibly appear in their
revolutions as well as those other gods who are of a more
retiring nature, had come into being, the creator of the universe
addressed them in these words: ‘Gods, children of gods, who are
my works, and of whom I am the artificer and father, my creations
are indissoluble, if so I will. All that is bound may be undone,
but only an evil being would wish to undo that which is
harmonious and happy. Wherefore, since ye are but creatures, ye
are not altogether immortal and indissoluble, but ye shall
certainly not be dissolved, nor be liable to the fate of death,
having in my will a greater and mightier bond than those with
which ye were bound at the time of your birth. And now listen to
my instructions:—Three tribes of mortal beings remain to be
created—without them the universe will be incomplete, for it will
not contain every kind of animal which it ought to contain, if it
is to be perfect. On the other hand, if they were created by me
and received life at my hands, they would be on an equality with
the gods. In order then that they may be mortal, and that this
universe may be truly universal, do ye, according to your
natures, betake yourselves to the formation of animals, imitating
the power which was shown by me in creating you. The part of them
worthy of the name immortal, which is called divine and is the
guiding principle of those who are willing to follow justice and
you—of that divine part I will myself sow the seed, and having
made a beginning, I will hand the work over to you. And do ye
then interweave the mortal with the immortal, and make and beget
living creatures, and give them food, and make them to grow, and
receive them again in death.’
Thus he spake, and once more into the cup in which he had
previously mingled the soul of the universe he poured the remains
of the elements, and mingled them in much the same manner; they
were not, however, pure as before, but diluted to the second and
third degree. And having made it he divided the whole mixture
into souls equal in number to the stars, and assigned each soul
to a star; and having there placed them as in a chariot, he
showed them the nature of the universe, and declared to them the
laws of destiny, according to which their first birth would be
one and the same for all,—no one should suffer a disadvantage at
his hands; they were to be sown in the instruments of time
severally adapted to them, and to come forth the most religious
of animals; and as human nature was of two kinds, the superior
race would hereafter be called man. Now, when they should be
implanted in bodies by necessity, and be always gaining or losing
some part of their bodily substance, then in the first place it
would be necessary that they should all have in them one and the
same faculty of sensation, arising out of irresistible
impressions; in the second place, they must have love, in which
pleasure and pain mingle; also fear and anger, and the feelings
which are akin or opposite to them; if they conquered these they
would live righteously, and if they were conquered by them,
unrighteously. He who lived well during his appointed time was to
return and dwell in his native star, and there he would have a
blessed and congenial existence. But if he failed in attaining
this, at the second birth he would pass into a woman, and if,
when in that state of being, he did not desist from evil, he
would continually be changed into some brute who resembled him in
the evil nature which he had acquired, and would not cease from
his toils and transformations until he followed the revolution of
the same and the like within him, and overcame by the help of
reason the turbulent and irrational mob of later accretions, made
up of fire and air and water and earth, and returned to the form
of his first and better state. Having given all these laws to his
creatures, that he might be guiltless of future evil in any of
them, the creator sowed some of them in the earth, and some in
the moon, and some in the other instruments of time; and when he
had sown them he committed to the younger gods the fashioning of
their mortal bodies, and desired them to furnish what was still
lacking to the human soul, and having made all the suitable
additions, to rule over them, and to pilot the mortal animal in
the best and wisest manner which they could, and avert from him
all but self-inflicted evils.
When the creator had made all these ordinances he remained in his
own accustomed nature, and his children heard and were obedient
to their father’s word, and receiving from him the immortal
principle of a mortal creature, in imitation of their own creator
they borrowed portions of fire, and earth, and water, and air
from the world, which were hereafter to be restored—these they
took and welded them together, not with the indissoluble chains
by which they were themselves bound, but with little pegs too
small to be visible, making up out of all the four elements each
separate body, and fastening the courses of the immortal soul in
a body which was in a state of perpetual influx and efflux. Now
these courses, detained as in a vast river, neither overcame nor
were overcome; but were hurrying and hurried to and fro, so that
the whole animal was moved and progressed, irregularly however
and irrationally and anyhow, in all the six directions of motion,
wandering backwards and forwards, and right and left, and up and
down, and in all the six directions. For great as was the
advancing and retiring flood which provided nourishment, the
affections produced by external contact caused still greater
tumult—when the body of any one met and came into collision with
some external fire, or with the solid earth or the gliding
waters, or was caught in the tempest borne on the air, and the
motions produced by any of these impulses were carried through
the body to the soul. All such motions have consequently received
the general name of ‘sensations,’ which they still retain. And
they did in fact at that time create a very great and mighty
movement; uniting with the ever-flowing stream in stirring up and
violently shaking the courses of the soul, they completely
stopped the revolution of the same by their opposing current, and
hindered it from predominating and advancing; and they so
disturbed the nature of the other or diverse, that the three
double intervals (i.e. between 1, 2, 4, 8), and the three triple
intervals (i.e. between 1, 3, 9, 27), together with the mean
terms and connecting links which are expressed by the ratios of
3:2, and 4:3, and of 9:8—these, although they cannot be wholly
undone except by him who united them, were twisted by them in all
sorts of ways, and the circles were broken and disordered in
every possible manner, so that when they moved they were tumbling
to pieces, and moved irrationally, at one time in a reverse
direction, and then again obliquely, and then upside down, as you
might imagine a person who is upside down and has his head
leaning upon the ground and his feet up against something in the
air; and when he is in such a position, both he and the spectator
fancy that the right of either is his left, and the left right.
If, when powerfully experiencing these and similar effects, the
revolutions of the soul come in contact with some external thing,
either of the class of the same or of the other, they speak of
the same or of the other in a manner the very opposite of the
truth; and they become false and foolish, and there is no course
or revolution in them which has a guiding or directing power; and
if again any sensations enter in violently from without and drag
after them the whole vessel of the soul, then the courses of the
soul, though they seem to conquer, are really conquered.
And by reason of all these affections, the soul, when encased in
a mortal body, now, as in the beginning, is at first without
intelligence; but when the flood of growth and nutriment abates,
and the courses of the soul, calming down, go their own way and
become steadier as time goes on, then the several circles return
to their natural form, and their revolutions are corrected, and
they call the same and the other by their right names, and make
the possessor of them to become a rational being. And if these
combine in him with any true nurture or education, he attains the
fulness and health of the perfect man, and escapes the worst
disease of all; but if he neglects education he walks lame to the
end of his life, and returns imperfect and good for nothing to
the world below. This, however, is a later stage; at present we
must treat more exactly the subject before us, which involves a
preliminary enquiry into the generation of the body and its
members, and as to how the soul was created—for what reason and
by what providence of the gods; and holding fast to probability,
we must pursue our way.
First, then, the gods, imitating the spherical shape of the
universe, enclosed the two divine courses in a spherical body,
that, namely, which we now term the head, being the most divine
part of us and the lord of all that is in us: to this the gods,
when they put together the body, gave all the other members to be
servants, considering that it partook of every sort of motion. In
order then that it might not tumble about among the high and deep
places of the earth, but might be able to get over the one and
out of the other, they provided the body to be its vehicle and
means of locomotion; which consequently had length and was
furnished with four limbs extended and flexible; these God
contrived to be instruments of locomotion with which it might
take hold and find support, and so be able to pass through all
places, carrying on high the dwelling-place of the most sacred