2 The Timaeus

Diogenes Laertius says that Timaeus is one of four characters who expounds Plato’s own views (Life of Plato 52).^[1] I shall argue, however, that the venerable dialogue is a parody.^[2] There are several elements at the beginning of the Timaeus that raise doubts about its seriousness. First, the dialogue opens with a sense that something is not quite right, for one of those who had been present on the day before, when presumably the discussion of the Republic took place, is absent, probably because of sickness.^[3] Next, Timaeus promises to entertain Socrates worthily in return for the entertainment he received; nevertheless, he asks to be reminded of what Socrates had said. In a summary, Socrates reviews his remarks about women (Republic 451Cff.), remarks fundamentally at variance with what Timaeus will say about them (Timaeus 41D, 91A). Finally (20B-C) we find Socrates wishing to be repaid with long speeches. Certainly we find a peculiar Socrates here. Either we must assume that Socrates is a mere shadow­ figure, or we must ignore his famous predilection for short speeches (e.g., Protagoras 334D).

But strangest of all, I think, is the dialogue’s cast of characters.^[4] Timaeus comes from Locri, a city in Italy where there may have been Pythagorean interests. During the Peloponnesian War, Locri was quite hostile to the Athenian cause: she stirred Messene to revolt from Athens (Thucydides 4.1.1), opposed the Athenian expedition to Sicily (6.64.2), and later sent ships to the Spartans (8.91.2). It is not certain who Hermocrates is. Either he is the Syracusan general crucial to the destruction of the Athenian Sicilian Expedition or he is someone with the same name. In either case, it is unlikely that any of Plato’s readers would be unaware of these two Italians’ hostility to Athens (or that of the Locrian and the eponymous Hermocrates), especially given Socrates’ presence, which dates the conversation dramatically at the end of the fifth century. The presence of Critias in the dialogue is by itself enough to make one uneasy. He was the notorious leader of the Thirty Tyrants! Yet it is he who is chosen to record the glorious triumph of Athens over Atlantis.^[5] It would be like having Benedict Arnold praise the Battle of Yorktown or Guy Fawkes Parliament! The presence of Critias is not in itself conclusive, but it ought to raise eyebrows.^[6] Is there not something incongruous about having this tyrant eulogize Athens? If Taylor and Cornford are right that the conversation of the Timaeus takes place on the Panathenaea, a day when one would expect Athens to be uplifted, does not the presence of these characters raise our suspicions?^[7]

When Critias begins his speech (ZOE), he relates the history of the story’s transmission. First Egyptian priests passed it down to Solon (23D).^[8] Solon told the tale to his friend Dropides, Critias’s great­ grandfather; Dropides told it to his son Critias (the grandfather of the dialogue’s Critias). The Critias of the dialogue heard the tale when ten years old from his grandfather on the day of the Apaturia, called “Curiotis” (21B). So the story about Athens is cast into the fog merely by long passage of time.^[9] The fact that the Apaturia is a festival to Dionysus is also suspicious, as Dionysus is the god of wine and comedy and tragedy (imaginative poetry). Are we to consider the account poetic fancy?

After giving a somewhat abbreviated account of the Atlantis story, Critias interrupts himself to describe how he has been able to remem­ber it from his youth, and how, even though he is not sure (26B) whether he could recollect everything he heard the day before, he is able to reconstruct all of his grandfather’s tale. Now Critias is the second to remark on the difficulty of remembering Socrates’ discourse of the day before (Timaeus had done so at the outset of the dialogue [17B]). And yet how much more difficult to remember will be Timaeus’s discourse, with all its numbers and mathematical formulations! Perhaps the inability of Critias and Timaeus to remember Socrates’ discourse comes from the uncongenial nature (to them) of those views.

At this point, a most peculiar incident occurs, so strange that it is marvelous the commentators do not dwell on it. Critias asks Socrates (26D-E) whether he now wants to hear the rest of the story of Atlantis. Socrates says that he definitely does, first because it is appropriate to the festival being held (the Panathenaea) and secondly because it is no fable but fact. Then, out of the blue, Critias says that Timaeus, an astronomer who has made it his special task to study the nature of the universe, will speak first. He will speak about the origins of the cosmos and generation of mankind. Only then will Critias finish his tale.^[10] What, we may ask, is the reason for the interruption of Critias’s speech after it is already underway and for the substitution of the speech by Timaeus, for which we have received no preparation and which has no special pedigree like that given to Critias’s speech? It would be as if someone were to offer you chicken for dinner, having told you he had spent the day preparing it and having ascertained that you were eager to eat it, and then at the last minute were to say, “Well, then, we’ll have roast beef tonight and the chicken tomorrow.” Socrates is given no further choice, and Timaeus launches into his speech. I wonder whether Plato is simply satirizing Critias’s tyrannical style. I am not sure what the whole solution to this problem is, but it seems clear that some strange maneuver is taking place.^[11]

Timaeus almost begins his speech by invoking a god. First, however, he pauses to discuss the propriety of such an invocation: “In attempt­ing an enterprise, big or little, everyone, even those little prudent, invoke some god” (27C). Isn’t there an implied criticism here, either of Socrates or of Critias or of both—for no god has yet been invoked by either. He then says that “if we are not mad, we should invoke the gods and goddesses.” But the careful reader will note that after these pious remarks, no god is actually invoked. “We ought to invoke the gods. The gods having been thus invoked …” Is this a joke? Are we to conclude that since there has been no actual invocation, Timaeus is mad? Is this the deadest of deadpan humor?

It would, perhaps, belabor the point to dwell on it longer. But there are other hints that Plato is not serious. We have one such hint in Timaeus’s distinction (28A) between “that which can be grasped by thinking accompanied by reason” and “that which must be opined with unreasoning sensation.” If Timaeus is about to describe the physical order, how can he do it except with “unreasoning sensation”?^[12] If his account will be “unreasoning,” surely we cannot take it seriously. Timaeus continues with some remarks on beauty: when something is made using the unchanging eternal idea as a model, it is necessarily beautiful; if the model be something created, it is not beautiful. This premise, which would deny beauty to all that is an imitation of nature, is prefatory to the question of whether the universe was created or whether it has always existed.^[13] But even before arriving at this question, Timaeus adds, gratuitously, “about the heaven or cosmos or whatever other name it would prefer to be called by, by that name let us call it.” These words are very much like the comic invocation to Zeus in Lucian’s Timon (1).^[14] There is a deliberately comic element in a disquisition on the secrets of the universe, including what preceded its origin, by someone who is not even sure of its name. Plato is surely casting comic doubt on the authority of Timaeus by attributing these remarks to him.

To the question of whether the universe was created, Timaeus responds that since it is visible and is apprehended by opinion with the aid of sensation (28C), it was created. But this fact makes it subject to apprehension only by “unreasoning sensation” (28A). The very words that Timaeus ingeminates, “all such sensible things, and things sensi­ ble” τὰ τοιαῦτα αἴσθητα, τὰ αἴσθητα], and what immediately follows, “are apprehensible by opinion with sensation” [δόξῃ περιληπτὰ μετὰ αίσθήσεως] (28C), appear to be a deliberate echo of the key phrase used just one page earlier. Indeed, Timaeus himself is raising doubts about his speech.

Timaeus’s next question concerns the model the maker used, whether it was self-identical and always the same or whether it was something that had come into existence.^[15] His answer, I think, is quite suggestive, “If the cosmos is beautiful [there is a pun on cosmos, whose meaning is “ornament”] and its demiurge good, he looked at the eternal.” Now granted there is a difficulty in choosing a vocabulary to describe that for which no vocabulary exists, but the use of “looked” is particularly provocative here—for it suggests an oxymoron, something in the realm of the visible and hence “unreasoning” [alogos]. Timaeus answers (29A):

But it is clear to everyone that his gaze was on the eternal; for the cosmos is the fairest of all that has come into existence [we might ask what else has come into existence. If the gods have been created, as is stated later, are they part of the cosmos or separate from it? If separate, is it not impiety to deny them the prize for being the fairest?] and the best of causes.

How very similar is this encomium to Agathon’s directed to love in the Symposium (195A):

I say that of all the gods, who are happy, love (if it is permitted to say it without stirring up jealousy) is the happiest, because of them he is the most beautiful and best.

Certainly we cannot accept the Italian’s assertion with more credulity than we did Agathon’s. Both are made in the same assertive and emphatic but unsubstantiated way.^[16]

Just before ending his introductory remarks, Timaeus (29B-D) gives his final warning. Accounts, he says, are akin to what they describe: those which deal with the eternal will be unshakable; those which deal with a copy of the model will at most be likely. Since presumably we have the eternal model, of which the cosmos is a copy, and since Timaeus’s account is a copy of the cosmos, Timaeus’s account will be at least twice removed from the eternal and the true. Moreover, concludes Timaeus, we’re only human.

At this point Socrates makes his last appearance in the dialogue and pointedly says that Timaeus’s speech must be accepted in the very tentative way that Timaeus has suggested. “We have received your opening remarks wondrously (thaumasios)”—a word used ironically in Plato (cf. Gorgias 471A; Phaedrus 242A; Republic 435C). It would certainly not be impossible that a similar irony is intended here and that Plato is warning his readers to be on their guard.

Matter in a state of disorderly motion seems to have existed before the creation of the universe (30A).^[17] The purpose of making the universe was to put this matter into an order as much like that of its maker as possible, for the maker is good, order is better than disorder, and the rational better than the irrational. Since, presumably by definition, reason cannot exist apart from soul, the maker made the universe a living creature with a reasoning soul. The definition of the cosmos is, then: a living thing endowed with soul and reason τὸν κόσμον ζῶον ἔμψυχον ἔννουν]. Substitute for cosmos the word “man” and we have a perfect definition of man.^[18] Why do man and the universe have the same definition? What a madcap joke! Socrates in the Republic had compared the human soul to a state. Timaeus is trying to do Socrates one better by comparing a human being to the cosmos! There is, stemming from the Timaeus a long tradition of considering man a microcosmic version of the universe.^[19] Perhaps this tradition is based on Timaeus’ s attempt to cap Socrates! Xenophanes had long before pointed out the philosophic absurdity of making gods in the image of men. Can Plato be joking about the equally great absurdity of thinking of the universe in human terms?

I should like now to look broadly at entire sections of the dialogue rather than go through it in exacting detail. To look at all the details would involve us in a maze of technical discussions that are handled very well in the commentaries. Let it suffice to say here that if we recall the dramatic situation of this dialogue, the technical details on which Timaeus dwells have a surreal ridiculousness about them. He is talking, first, to Socrates, who is a stone cutter and spends his time discussing ethics in simple language conspicuous for its absence of jargon.^[20] Timaeus’s other interlocutors are Critias, a man of affairs, a politician and sometime elegist, and Hermocrates, probably the Syra­cusan general. How can they be expected to understand all the techni­cal mathematical discourse of Timaeus?^[21] If Plato had wanted to write a serious scientific discourse, he surely would not have chosen the genre of dialogue and one with these particular interlocutors and a dramatic situation that has us sandwiched between the political dis­ courses of the Republic and Critias. It seems likely, rather, that the technical details are a clever embellishment “to lend artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.” Taking the details therefore in this spirit, let us look at some general sections of the dialogue.

The analogy between man and the universe continues. First, Ti­maeus affirms that the cosmos is made in the semblance of all the other living creatures. What that semblance is not clearly stated, but if like Pico we may assume man to be that creature of indeterminate status because he has the potentiality of becoming all other creatures (a view that is given credence later, in the discussion of how all the other animals represent degenerative versions of man), it is likely that the “man-universe” is intended (30C-D). This view is given additional support, I think, in the statement that the god wanted to make it “resemble most closely that intelligible creature which is fairest of all and in all ways most perfect.”

The question of the atomists-whether there is one or an infinite number of worlds, is resolved by Timaeus very easily. If the universe is framed after a pattern that includes everything, there must be one cosmos-otherwise it would not contain everything. ^[22] This wholeness of the universe, its inclusion of everything, is the basis of some very silly comments Timaeus will make shortly.

Timaeus’ s reason for the presence of four elements seems to be mathematical mumble-jumble. Fire is asserted as necessary for sight, solidity for touching. The need for these two elements is thus taken as axiomatic. But there must be a bond between these, and “the fairest of bonds is the proportion.”^[23] Thus there need to be two middle terms, or middle elements (since ‘a proportion consists of four parts). It turns out, then, that the necessity for four elements rests on the fact that there are four terms of a proportion. But there is a high degree of playfulness here. Disregarding for the moment the assertion that the “fairest of bonds is the proportion”—thus making the whole system of the elements depend on an aesthetic quality—let us consider the word desmos. The word literally means “band, bond, fastener.” In what way is a proportion a bond? Clearly the use must be metaphorical. The use of cubic numbers for solids and the like is similarly metaphorical. Mathematicians apply numbers to physical things to help explain them. But the numbers so applied are not the physical things.^[24] Timaeus here is taking the solidity of the earth (32A) as a given. Since solidity is represented by cubic numbers, and since cubic numbers have two mean terms, there must be two elements corresponding to the two mean terms. Thus the whole structure of the physical universe is bas-ed on analogical fancy. Here possibly is an example of Plato’s parody: Plato’s real intention here is to display some of the methodological errors of the Pythagoreans whom Timaeus represents. This would be the very same criticism Aristotle makes when he says that the Pythagoreans tried to make numbers represent everything (Metaphysics 985Bff.). Even were the two means to exist, there are no possible grounds that one mean should be water, the other air. That these elements correspond to the means is asserted (32B), but the assertion merely illustrates the folly of considering numbers to be physical objects. To conclude, I think it entirely possible, indeed likely, that the criticism Aristotle lays out in the Metaphysics is made here dramatically by Plato.

Timaeus adds that the body of the cosmos with these proportions was thus harmonized. From this harmony came amity (philia), so that the cosmos was indissoluble except by its maker. Here again we find a word strangely out of place in a technical discussion. In what way can elements feel philia for one another? Of course, the word had been used in physics earlier, by Empedocles, in describing how the elements were brought together by philia, only to be separated later by strife (eris).^[25] Here, however, Timaeus suggests that only the maker can dissolve the way in which the cosmos is bound together. Timaeus perhaps is implying a correction of Empedocles-that it is the Demi­ urge, not Strife, that can undo creation. (One might ask, however, how even the Demiurge could unbind the proportions of the elements-are not the relations between numbers exempt from divine intervention?)

The next part of Timaeus’s speech is a wonderfully wry discussion of how the universe used up all the available material. Here the anthropomorphizing of the universe reaches a peak. First there is the repetition of the idea that the universe would not be perfect if it did not use up the whole of matter. Then come explanations in human terms (33): what causes a common cold is the chill that surrounds a body; what causes ailments and aging is the colliding of external material with the body. But if the universe uses up all matter, then there is none left to surround it, and the universe is therefore exempt from the common cold and other diseases and age. The description of the universe in terms of human frailty is surely not serious.

The universe is spherical because a sphere is the perfect shape. As presented, this position appears a subjective aesthetic judgment.^[26] Indeed, Balbus in Cicero’s De Natura Deorum (2.47) seems to have this passage in mind when he jokes, “You say, Velleius, that you think a cone, a cylinder, and a pyramid more beautiful than a sphere.” Undoubtedly the sphere seems so attractive because it is also the shape of the human head-as is asserted later. The sphere of the universe has no eyes-since it is complete there would be nothing for eyes to see (33C); it has no ears because there is nothing outside it to hear; it has no nose because there is nothing outside it to breathe;^[27] it has no mouth or anus because it needs no food from outside for it to eat and no system to dispose waste. It has no hands or feet either, for its only motion is rotation-the motion of reason. In short, the universe rather reminds one of the “round-men” of Aristophanes’ speech in the Symposium. There is a comic extravagance in this detailed description of all the human bodily parts that the universe lacks. And yet it is poetically right that this account of cosmology, which is so bathed in human terms, should explain why the universe is not human also in respect of eyes and hands and feet.^[28]

We come now to the famous passage on the world-soul. Perhaps it would not be out of place, like Timaeus, to invoke the aid of the gods before attempting to deal with this passage. It is controversial and has been so since ancient times. The difficulties in sense have prompted many to alter it.^[29] The text is taken very seriously by such as Aristotle, Xenocrates,^[30] Crantor, Atticus, Poseidonius, Plutarch (who has an entire commentary on it), Proclus, and a great many others.^[31] Timaeus begins (34B-C) by stating that the maker stretched the soul throughout the body of heaven. Then, aware that he is discussing the world-soul after he has discussed the world-body, he is at pains to affirm that the maker made the soul older than body and prior to it in birth and excellence.^[32] For the god would not have permitted the elder to be ruled by the younger. Plato is continuing here the extravagant anthro­pomorphizing, for to apply to the universe such anxious human concerns as the priority of the older is to anthropomorphize with the pettier features of mankind.^[33]

Let us summarize the substance of the soul as it is revealed by Timaeus (35f.). The maker mixed the substance, which is indivisible and equal to itself, with that which is divisible in bodies, obtaining a third that is between the two. He then added to this substance the same and the other, mixing them together either (according to which reading one chooses) with the aid of being or with being. This composite is then divided according to harmonic and arithmetic ratios to form the circuits of the sky and the orbits of the planets.

Zeller observes that Aristotle “strangely misunderstood” the mythic nature of these remarks, remarks, says Zeller, that don’t make much sense if they are not understood as being myth.^[34] Zeller is right that the remarks don’t make much sense if they are interpreted literally. Indeed, that is why Aristotle rejects them and also why Sextus Empir­icus wrote:

For how can any of the grave grammarians follow the meaning of Plato when he says “Between the Being which is indivisible and remains always the same and the Being which is divisible into bodies, He blended a third form of Being compounded of the twain, that is to say, out of the Same and the Other” and the rest of the context, about which all the interpreters of Plato keep silence? (Against the Professors 1.301 [Tr. Bury])

The passage is certainly difficult.^[35] How can same and difference, the divisible and the indivisible be mixed up together? After all, we do not have here physical elements like sodium and chloride, poisonous in themselves, which are capable of compounding into life-giving salt. The treatment here is rather mad, like a crazy witch’s brew, mixing together unmixables. Must we interpret the passage as allegorical myth, or is it possible that we have a parody of scientific gobbledy­gook?^[36] Unless Plato is mad, he must be as wrong as Aristotle observes, or he must be interpreted allegorically. Or, I would propose, there is a third possibility—that he is here being parodic. The mythic­allegorical interpretation of this passage is very problematic—for a myth must have internal coherence. But such coherence is just what is lacking in the oxymoronic nature of the mix.^[37]

There follows a rather difficult passage on the mathematical ratios according to which the various rotations of the soul move. One might wonder—if we are not to ignore completely the dramatic context­ how Socrates, Critias, and Hermocrates can possibly follow the discourse, especially without the aid of notes, which tell us what astro­nomical bodies are meant by which rotations. The passage concludes with a reminder (36E-37A) that the soul is indivisible and incorporeal and introduces a discussion of how this world-soul communicates within itself (37A-C). Terms of corporeality are used throughout, as all communication depends on touching. Yet there are other problems associated with this communication. Whenever the soul touches some­ thing, she is moved and announces the object, how it is same or different (37A). Yet, if the soul is coextensive with corporeality, one might wonder how it ever comes into contact with a corporeality that it can touch. Perhaps we are meant to recall the passage about hands and legs—how the universe has no need of them (34A). And finally, if to make the world-soul, the maker mixed Same, Other, and Being together to form a compound blended of these three, it makes no sense to say that each sphere of the soul is different, for the principles of the soul’s composition and the continued existence of different spheres are incompatible.^[38] When soul announces something concerning the sensible, the circle of the other tells it to the whole soul, and opinions and beliefs arise that are true; when the circle is concerned with the rational, the circle of the Same declares it, and reason and knowledge result. Now if we were here referring to knowledge or opinions in men, perhaps these remarks would make some sense. But—objectively speaking—it is meaningless to speak of the universe as a whole as having either knowledge or opinion. Clearly the anthropomorphizing continues, and we are to think of the universe as some kind of man. The passage concludes with a wordplay on agalma (joy) and egasthe (rejoiced).^[39]

Simultaneously the maker makes time. It is to be a movable likeness of eternity. The phrase seems to mean that the motions of the heavenly bodies will be orderly, taking their rhythm from eternal numbers. One might wonder of course how any ordered series would differ from the order inherent in heavenly bodies—for indeed all regular motion could be called “a movable likeness of eternal numerical ratios.” Timaeus, always concerned with language, then addresses the difficulty of dis­ cussing eternity without resorting to the use of temporal terms.^[40] The climax of this discourse occurs in the purpose attributed to the making of the moon and the sun and the planets (38C): the god made them so that it would be possible to tell time! The heavenly bodies move at different velocities so that it would be possible to measure relative speeds (38-39) and so that (39B-C) “all the living creatures entitled thereto might participate in number, learning it from the revolution of the Same and Similar” (Tr. Bury)—to as many as are entitled thereto. The extravagance of this conclusion is surely comic! The heavens are created so that creatures may learn number. And of course what creatures are entitled to it? Only men.^[41] The heavens therefore are made so that men may learn number and presumably become Pythagoreans like Timaeus. Some of the motions are wondrously embroidered (pepoikilmenas de thaumasios), admits Timaeus, and one may be left to wonder how this complexity squares with the divine simplicity.^[42]

The Demiurge did not stop here. He went on to create all the various kinds of living creatures. There remain gods, air, sea, and land crea­tures to make—for the world did not yet imitate the eternal living creatures inasmuch as these various kinds of sea, land, and earth creatures (as well as the gods) did not yet exist (39E).^[43] In view of the fact, however, that Timaeus later calls all animals other than man degenerate reincarnations of evil or stupid men, one might wonder how there could possibly be such ideas in the perfect living creature.

Now the gods are made mostly of fire (40A), to be a true adornment embroidered in the whole. These gods have two motions—on their own axes (40B) so that they have always identical thoughts about the same things (Is this divinity?) and forward motion. But, says Timaeus, it would be a vain effort to describe all the “choric motions” of the stars. There immediately follows a passage that Bury and Taylor call “ironical.” The genesis of the other gods is “too big for us,” so, even though their accounts lack probable or necessary demonstration, we shall believe those who claim descent from them-from Zeus, Ge, and so on. We might first wonder whether Timaeus is not implying his own piety in view of Socrates’ banishment of these poets from the Republic. We might then ask how well Timaeus lives by his own standards of the probable (eikos) or necessary (anagkaios [40E]). It is true that his language has the authoritative sonority of scientific jargon, but we nowhere find other than mere assertion. Plato’s purpose here, I think, is to show that the accounts of natural philosophers, despite their technological veneer, are really no more intelligibly grounded than the mythical accounts of the poets.

The joke here seems to me particularly emphasized because Timaeus now (40Aff.) violates his expository narrative method and puts into the mouth of the Demiurge a speech to the created gods. Nowhere else does Timaeus have his Demiurge speak, and, in fact, the speech here is not unlike the speeches we find in the poets. What can be the dramatic purpose of a speech at this point except to enter into the tradition he has just rejected? This Demiurge, says Timaeus, addressed both kinds of gods-those “scientific” gods who revolve as Timaeus has just described, and those mythic gods “who show themselves as they wish.” This is a strange way to divide the gods: those who revolve (the stars) and those who show themselves as they wish. Those who are granted some measure of freedom will surely seem more truly gods.^[44]

In his speech, the Demiurge tells the gods that they can be destroyed only by his will but that he has no intention of destroying them because they were well made. His will, he adds, is even stronger than the physical bonds with which they were made. These statements seem intended to awe the gods into doing what he now declares: “now, therefore, what I say and point out to you, learn.” He then tells the gods about the three kinds of creature still to be made. If he, the Demiurge, were to make them, they would be perfect. Therefore the created gods are to make them. He, however, will make the immortal part of the creatures and bring it to the gods to weave to the mortal part, which they have to make.

It is impossible to stress the historical importance of this passage. Philo understood it as an explication of Genesis 1:26 in which God says, “Let us make man in image, after our likeness.” God first made the likeness, the logos, and then patterned men after it. For Christians—for whom Philo was a Father—the passage appeared a confirmation of Christian views on angels and the Christ’s participation in the manufacture of man.^[45]

If, then, there is truth in the suggestion made here-that the passage is deliberately satirical, the implications are profound. And yet the passage cries out for such interpretation. Moreover, Timaeus has just made a rather big point of how the stars can move in only two ways (and the existence of other gods was lent quite a bit of dubiety); we are entitled to wonder how either motion—motion on an axis or motion in the sphere of the same and the other—can construct the bodies of men and other creatures.

Despite reserving for himself the manufacture of soul, the Demiurge makes it less pure (41D-E) than the soul he has made earlier. He then distributes a bit to each star. Next he tells the stars how each soul is to be put into a body that will experience sensation, pain, pleasure, and emotions—all of which have to be mastered. Those who live well will return to their native stars, but those who live poorly will be born again as women and with each subsequent bad life be changed into something even worse. Now in view of Socrates’ summary at the beginning of the Timaeus of the preceding day’s conversation and especially in view of Socrates’ calling particular attention (18C) to the remarks made about women, we have here in Timaeus’s remarks a deliberate jibe at the notion of female equality.^[46]

Let us now examine the making of men (41Eff.). The gods (the Demiurge’s children) follow their father’s orders and borrow “as if meaning to pay back” portions of the elements. The curious expres­sion “as if meaning to pay back” seems to hint for some reason at inadequate probity on the part of these lesser gods.

The souls (43B) were not the masters of the body and rolled with it randomly, creating the various sensations. The motions of the same and the other were badly shaken up, and these wild twistings of the motions of the soul were responsible for terrible disorientations. Thus the soul became irrational (44B) when first bound to a mortal body. This explanation for the origin of irrationality, extremely difficult to follow, makes the soul a kind of gyroscope, which behaves crazily at the slightest motion against it. Timaeus is confusedly taking the metaphor inherent in the discussion of the soul’s revolutions and considering it no longer a metaphor but something literal.

The divine revolutions of the soul are bound within a sphere-shaped body (44D), “which we now call the head.” The passage, with its mock-serious translation of “sphere-shaped body” as “head” abounds in Aristophanic allusions:^[47] so it wouldn’t go rolling on the earth, bumping into heights and falling into potholes, the gods gave it a body that it might climb over heights and out of potholes (44E). And to the front of the body the gods gave a greater dignity since it is superior in honor. To mix the cosmic with the mundane (the disturbance of the ratios of same and other discussed in 43D-E and the potholes and hills the head would not be able to roll out of without hands and legs [44E]) is one sure sign of the comic. There are no grounds for accepting one part as serious and for rejecting another as ironic or humorous when both are delivered by Timaeus with the same reverential tone. It is likely rather that Plato intends the whole as deadpan parody.

Of the organs of the head the first to be made were the eyes. After a wordplay on the mildness of the fire that flows from the eyes,^[48] there is an explanation of how sight occurs and a rather elaborate discussion of why we do not see when our eyes are closed but instead feel like sleeping: the eyelids are shut, and the inner fire is curbed. When the motions are quieted, we enjoy a dreamless sleep, but when motions of what we have seen are left behind, the images continue to exist­ causing us to dream. After a digression on mirrors, Timaeus distinguishes between auxiliary physical causes and primary intelligent causes (46D-E). Timaeus launches into a quite lovely praise of the primary cause of vision. Vision, enabling men to see the stars and the other heavenly bodies, has thereby given us the art of number and the notion of time as well as the means to study the nature of the universe. From these we have gotten philosophy (47A-B), the greatest gift of the gods to men. We might behold the revolutions of Reason in the heavens and by imitating them stabilize the variable revolutions in us. Now the language Timaeus uses—”by learning and sharing in calculations that are correct by nature”—suggests that vision and philosophy were made so that one could do what Timaeus himself does. Vision was given for the same reason that the stars were created: so that we could learn mathematics and astronomy. There is a real grandeur and splen­dour in Timaeus’s praise of vision and its function. But to the reader familiar with Plato, Timaeus’s remarks will be reminiscent of those of many familiar Platonic characters who praise their own occupation as the navel of the universe. Thus Ion finds the rhapsodist’s the all­ embracing art; Gorgias sees the rhetorician as all-wise; Callicles, the politician; Protagoras, the sophist. In short, there is very frequently this sort of self-eulogy in Plato. Indeed, in the Symposium every speaker similarly makes love in the image of himself! So it should not surprise us here if after this eloquent paean to vision it turns out that vision was created for the sake of Pythagorean philosophy!^[49]

We come now to a discussion of the operations of necessity, for the cosmos, says Timaeus, is a compound of necessity and reason. The language is quite anthropomorphic: mind ruled necessity by means of persuasion and necessity yielded to sensible persuasion. There is an oxymoronical quality to the language here and in what follows. Neces­sity, after all, loses its nature if it is ruled and yields. A necessity that can be persuaded or coaxed is no necessity at all. If we interpret these remarks allegorically, the allegory dissolves into meaninglessness.^[50]

Because the elements can be changed one into another (48E-50A), Timaeus continues, it is best not to call them “fire” or “water” or “air.” Indeed, nobody who is even a little wise (48C) would use the word “element” and thereby compare the basic forms of matter to syllables.^[51] Instead of using the names of the elements, Timaeus would substitute the term “suchlike” (τὸ τοιοῦτον [49Dff.]). Since matter is always in a state of transition, there are three kinds: that which is in a state of becoming, that into which it is becoming, and that from which it is becoming. At length we come to the definition of matter: a kind invisible and unshaped, all receptive, and in some way partaking of the intelligible (51A-B):

… if we describe her as a Kind invisible and unshaped, all-receptive, and in some most perplexing and most baffling way partaking of the intelligible, we shall describe her truly. (Tr. Bury)

Is not matter defined out of existence? Here the definition applied to matter is very nearly like the doctrine of negative attributes used to express the ineffability of God! Perhaps we have here a parody of the scientific schools and their taste for unintelligible jargon. Timaeus’s terms ”suchlike,” ”wherein,” ”wherefrom,” ”becoming” or their “likenesses” (50D), “Mother,” “Father,” “Offspring,” are, after all, hardly precise and revealing.^[52]

In 51C, Timaeus asks whether only what we see with our senses exists or whether there are intelligible forms that also exist. Timaeus’s language again raises eyebrows. He says, “I cast my vote thus” and explains why if reason and true opinion differ, then there are ungener­ ated, indestructible, self-identical forms, matter, and place. Now those familiar with the Gorgias or those reading carefully will wonder why Timaeus has chosen the image of voting. After all, if truth is truth, it should make no difference how Timaeus votes.^[53] There are, I think, other problems as well. Mind comes into being, says Timaeus, by true reasoning, but true opinion is irrational. And the one arises in us through teaching, the other by persuasion. We may ask here how truth, even if it be the truth of an opinion, can be unreasoning (alogon). Moreover, we might ask how a speech like Timaeus’s differs from mere persuasion. Yet there is a wondrous quality to the way Timaeus argues for the existence of the three entities from this distinction: if there is a true knowledge, then there must be unchangeable forms existing in eternity; if there is true opinion, there must be matter; and if there is matter, there must be a place for it.^[54]

Before the universe had been organized out of the four kinds, these kinds occupied different places (53A). What a splendid and bold speculation! There was not chaos or tohu bohu, but neat piles of air, earth, fire, and water. God took the elements and marked them into forms by means of numbers.

At this point Timaeus warns his listeners that he will be speaking rather technically, but at the Jame time he assures them that they’ll be able to follow his remarks. Thus he begins the rather lengthy (53C- 55C) discussion of the various kinds of triangles from which all matter is formulated.^[55] In some way the solids are bounded by these exact geometric shapes. Principles more fundamental than the kinds of triangles are known only to God and the man dear to God. Of course, who could be dearer to God than the philosopher?

Now despite the rather complicated discourse on triangles, Ti­maeus’s decisions about the structure of the universe are based on aesthetic considerations. The fairest scalene, he asserts, is that which when conjoined with another makes an equilateral. Yet, he adds, he will not begrudge a prize to someone who refutes him. There is a hint here, to be repeated in the preface to the Critias (the next dialogue in dramatic sequence), that there is an oratorical contest going on (which, if so, also casts in doubt the seriousness with which we ought to take the dialogue, for the goal of such a contest would be victory, not truth).

After discussing the various kinds of triangles that compose the elements, Timaeus mentions a sixth kind, a cubic body having six plane equilateral quadrangular bases.^[56] Without a commentary, who would know, not least Socrates, Critias, and Hermocrates, that Ti­maeus is speaking of the dodecahedron? The word existed: Aristotle used it (De Cielo 307a16), yet Timaeus prefers to speak in this most obscure manner. Well, this fifth kind, the dodecahedron, God used for decorating the universe. The passage is made quite casually and is brushed off in a sentence. Timaeus must be embarrassed by the exis­tence of this superfluous shape. How seriously can we take this statement that God decorated the universe with this element, in view of the fact that not a word of argument is presented? The statement is hardly in accord with Timaeus’s promise to give us “a most probable account.”^[57]

A very playful part of the Timaeus now commences, mingling jokes on words, anthropomorphizing, and plain buffoonery. The question concerns whether there is a limited or unlimited number of universes. There is an untranslatable play on ἀποροῖ, άπείρους/ἀπείρου, ἔπειρον/διαπορήσαι. Timaeus believes that there is one universe, but, he adds matter-of-factly, someone else looking at other things might hold another view (55D). Perhaps he is suggesting that his is a universe of speech, as some have called the Republic a city of speech. Consider his following sentence: “now considering the things which have come into being by my speech.”

In his subsequent discussion of the shapes possessed by the various kinds of matter, he begins with fire, the solid that takes the form of a pyramid. It is possible that this shape is suggested because the word “pyramid” contains “pyr,” the Greek word for fire. Ammianus Marcellinus (History 22.15.29) suggests the etymology of pyramid from fire because both are pointed. But the mere orthographical coincidence would have been enough for punster Plato. An intentional pun is suggested by the proximate appearance of both words in the sentence (56B).^[58] And again, as earlier (48A), we are told that the god arranged things in exact proportion “in so far as the nature of necessity yielded voluntarily or under persuasion.” We might ask again what kind of necessity is flexible, so little like the “sharp pinch” of Shakespeare’s necessity.

After a rather difficult discussion of the transformation of the differ­ent kinds of matter into one another (except for earth, which is formed from incommensurable triangles) and of the “war of the elements” (57A-C) in which all sorts of actions involving volition are attributed to the small corpuscles, Timaeus explains why all the elements do not separate into these various kinds (the centripetal force of the revolution of the all compresses all). And he mentions also that there are various kinds of fire, air, or water, depending on the size and kind of triangle that compose them.

He pauses for a moment of introspection concerning the activity he is engaged in. First he claims that it is not difficult to explain the rest of the phenomena. He denies this peculiar attribute poikilos (“many­ colored, cunningly wrought, complicated”), and yet the discussion is certainly not plain and simple.^[59] He adds that when one stops thinking about the eternal logoi (59C-D) and considers the likely accounts of becoming, he provides for himself a pleasure and a moderate and sensible paidia (“amusement, childish play”). “Let us continue with this amusement,” he proclaims, a very clear suggestion that we are to take his remarks as play. Perhaps Plato is suggesting that when we engage in physical speculation rather than ratiocination about the eternal ideas we are merely playing. The playfulness is immediately reinforced by the word-play with which the next sentence begins.^[60] Ygron (“fluid”) is derived from hyper gen reon (“flowing earth”). Indeed, the very idea of water mixed with fire and the seriousness with which Plato’s readers generally take it are signs of how successfully Timaeus has strung us along.

After a discussion of the combinations of the elements into the various things that we see (59D-61C)—ice, sap, honey, glass—we arrive at a wonderful account of the affective qualities of the various elements. Timaeus will for the moment assume the nature of the body and of the soul (61D). Fire is hot (thermon) because it minces: “mince” comes from kermon—almost the same word as thermon.^[61] The cutting property of fire is explained, perhaps with some logic, by the nature of the sharp edges of its constituent triangles (61E-62A), but its property of heat is based on a fanciful rhyme! The account of cold is, I think, more obviously farcical: liquids with larger particles drive out smaller particles; to enter us, they must squeeze in, producing immobility and density; that which is contracted fights and pushes in the opposite way; so to this shaking we give the names “trembling” and “shivering” and cold. Thus shivering, a kind of vibration, is what causes cold. By the same reasoning, a leaf shaking in the breeze would be “cold.” In a similar light-hearted way, Timaeus gives scientific definitions of “hard” and “soft,” “heavy” and “light,” explaining in ponderous circumlocutions the meaning of these rather noncontroversial terms (62B-64C).^[62]

Let us look briefly, however, at what may be a comic periphrasis for eating, at 65A. Timaeus is discussing the nature of pleasure and pain: pain is violent action against nature, pleasure an intense return to the natural condition. There is then a rather lengthy example of how when “emptyings” are gradual and “replenishings” rapid there is no pain but only pleasure. And although it seems obvious that eating is meant, these ponderous terms (“emptyings” and “replenishings”) are used instead. Indeed, instead of mentioning eating, Timaeus concludes that what he has been saying is clear in the case of smells. Yet it is in no way obvious how smelling perfumes partakes in evacuations and replenishings. There was a Pythagorean doctrine that some animals live on odors (it is discussed, as far as I can tell, only by Aristotle, De Sensu 445A), but the workings of the theory are certainly not obvious. The theory is not treated with any respect by Aristotle, who calls it irrational. It seems likely that Plato is here joking, using either a rather dubious theory or obscure example—instead of the natural example of eating—to support a simple doctrine.

Taste, smell, hearing, and colors now occupy Timaeus’s attention as he continues his game. Flavors are results of various contractions and dilations, but the judgment of which flavors are bitter and which sweet seems to be determined by Timaeus’s own taste. Smells receive a brilliantly simple scientific distinction (67A): they come in two kinds, pleasant and unpleasant! Hearing occurs when sound enters the ears, by the action of the air on the brain and blood, and enters the soul. Details are omitted. The colors result from various actions of particles on the visual stream. Timaeus then engages in a lengthy discussion of the formulae for making different colors. Plato seems to be parodying the kind of scientist who is carried away by details-for surely these details do not belong in a discussion of the origin of the universe. So peculiar indeed is the finale here—Timaeus says that red and black produce green—that even the usually dour Taylor raises the possibility that this whole passage may be burlesque.^[63] Otherwise, “if it is wholly serious, [the statement about the color green] seems inexplicable.” At the end of this discussion, Timaeus strangely says that only the God can blend colors into one or dissolve one into many; no man will ever be able to do so (68D). In view of Timaeus’s tendency to generalize about teleology from his own nature (i.e., the universe’s creation for the sake of studying number), it is not surprising, in view of his just demonstrated inability to blend colors, that he declares only a god capable of doing so. Nor would it be inconsistent with his general scientific arrogance.

In an arrangement that seems to be based on mental association, the mere mention of God leads Timaeus to remind us that the most perfect god is one of the created things (68E). This created god used the inherent properties of matter as subservient causes, but the Demiurge himself designed the Good in all things generated. We must distinguish here two kinds of causes: the necessary and the divine (those that are causes inherent in matter and those that exist presumably in the mind of the god, if “divine” may be used also of the Demiurge).

At 69A Timaeus commences his long conclusion. He begins with a glorious sentence:

Seeing, then, that we have now lying before us and thoroughly sifted—like wood ready for the joiner—the various kinds of causes, out of which the rest of our account must be woven together, let us once more revert to our starting point, and thence proceed rapidly to the point from which we arrived hither. In this way we shall endeavor now to supplement our story with a conclusion and a crown in harmony with what has gone before. (Tr. Bury)

Consider all the metaphors in the passage. Metaphors of sifting (i.e., filter­ing), woodwork, weaving, crown, harmony, appear all mixed up to­gether: one does not, after all, sift wood in order to weave.^[64] Why has Timaeus used such a confusion of metaphors? The answer, I think, is that he is employing a mimesis, an “imitative fallacy,” for his very next sentence is “all these things were in a state of disorder.”

The Demiurge urged his sons the gods to make mortal things and he gave them immortal soul around which to construct bodies. The gods also housed in the bodies a mortal kind of soul, which contains all the passion. From these premises are based the anatomical conclusions that follow. Here, too, I shall not discuss all the details, but only enough to suggest that perhaps this anatomical section of the dialogue is its parodic climax.

In order to avoid polluting the divine soul, the gods put the mortal soul in the chest and separated it by an isthmus. The metaphor itself is ambiguous: does an isthmus, after all, separate or connect? The part of the soul that partakes of reason they put between the midriff and the neck (to be closer to the part that has reason). But, of course, if the soul is non-physical, does proximity of this kind matter? Are the passions of people with long necks really under less control than those of people with short stubby necks? The gods made the heart a bodyguard to tell all the organs (by circulating the blood) when an unjust deed has been done (70B). One might wonder what the organs are to do with this information. To relieve the leaping of the heart, the gods made the lungs, the coolness of which (70D) would enable the heart to be more subservient to reason in times of passion. It is clear that all these anatomical features are created for the sake of mind, for the sake of philosophy. ^[65]

The appetitive part of the soul the gods put in the area of the stomach (70E) so that it would be as far away as possible from the reasoning part of the soul. Again, a profound corporeality is attributed to the soul. And why, we may wonder, could the stomach have not been put even farther away—in the legs or in the feet? So that the stomach could receive instructions from reason, the gods placed the liver nearby. The liver is bright and shiny so that it can serve as a mirror for the thoughts of the mind, and it was made with some bitterness too, so that it could frighten the stomach. Now even if these details are taken as fable, it is the kind of fable that Menenius Agrippa tells in Livy (Ab Urbe Condita 2.32) about the quarrel between the hands and mouth. The rather simple point that the body and sensations ought to be subject to reason is made here with medical buffoonery. After all, how can images on the liver frighten the stomach? The stomach would need eyes to see and light to see by. Yet in all this Timaeus never violates his persona of the sombre scientist.

In discussing the area around the stomach, Timaeus is seized by an enthusiastic fit (71E). To compensate for the vile nature of the appeti­tive soul, the gods placed in the same region the organ of divination. Divination comes to a man only when he is distraught or asleep, in some way not under the influence of reason. We err, says Timaeus, in calling those who interpret divinations “diviners.” In another of his corrections of erroneous language, Timaeus insists that such interpre­ters be accurately called “prophets of things divined.” Only live livers offer good signs, for the signs in the livers of the deceased are too obscure to be useful. And thus the art of haruspices is dispensed with. The whole conception of compensation for hunger by the existence of the prophetic liver is probably to be taken as a comic touch.

The long intestines were given men by the gods so that men would not digest food too quickly and be always too hungry to engage in philosophy (surely there is the suggestion that philosophy is best engaged in when well fed). Again, we see the autobiographical nature of this sketch: anatomy is constructed so that men might be like Timaeus.

A long discussion concerning the preparation of bone marrow fol­lows. It is full of remarks the seriousness of which is doubtful. For example, brain, the marrow that was to receive the divine seed (reason: theion sperma) “the God made into the shape of a perfect globe.” Yet is the head or brain perfectly round? Another curious discussion of language occurs here: the God called the brain enkephalon so that its surrounding vessel might be called the kephalon. It is backwards to call a thing that is fabricated first by a name that depends on what is fabricated second. And in any case, these names would suppose of course that the gods had the Greek words in mind at the time of manufacture. The way in which the God made bones sounds rather like a recipe: “Having sifted the earth till it was pure and smooth, he kneaded it and moistened it with marrow; he then placed it in fire and after that dipped it in water….” The process rather resembles the recipe for veal Milanese!

In 74E we have a marvelously clever passage on why we have little flesh to protect our skulls, yet an abundance of flesh on our hips. Because the bones that contain the most marrow are those where the greatest degree of intellection takes place, and because an abundance of flesh in these places would make these parts more forgetful and obtuse (Bury’s translation for dusmnemoneutotera kai kophotera), the God put little flesh on these. A greater amount of flesh on the head, however, would have given man a life twice or many times as long as our present life (75B), and one free from pain. But the gods decided that man ought to have a shorter but superior life rather than a longer but inferior life. We have here, really, the choice of Achilles—the long but dull life against the short but glorious life—applied to human anatomy! When we observe this heroic choice applied to the question of the flesh on skulls and backsides, the effect is not other than comic. The discussion of nails is similarly curious.^[66] It seems to violate a principle of teleology: that what is done is done for the sake of the perfect telos. When it comes to nails, Timaeus claims they were made for the greatest of causes, for the sake of what was to come later. Since women and the other animals would one day “evolve” from degenerate forms of men, and since these animals will have need of claws, men have in nails a primitive and rudimentary form of claws. Here we find a kind of inverse evolution: a primitive form of organ exists for the sake of the degenerative creatures that will follow. In a sense, then, nails become an “ante-vestigial” organ: as our appendix may be a “vestige” of an organ once needed to aid digestion, so in Timaeus’s account nails are the presage of claws to come.

Since men were the only living creatures existent (77A), they were wasting away, for plants had not yet been made. So the gods created plants. What a strange picture of the original world, in which men and gods were the only inhabitants!^[67]

Timaeus then engages in an account of respiration, which turns out to be responsible for digestion (78), and then of health and disease.^[68] Health occurs when the body is new and its triangles strong (81C). Diseases occur when the elements suffer excess or deficiency, or improper arrangement. Death results finally when (85E) a bile ”pene­trates to the substance of the marrow and loosens from thence, by burning, the mooring-ropes of the soul, as if it were a ship, and sets it free.” Thus continues the sense of the soul’s corporeality.

From diseases of the body, Timaeus turns to diseases of the soul. Now as this dialogue dramatically follows the Republic, which was, to be sure, a discussion of the soul, we would expect Timaeus’s audience to pay special attention here. If they do, they will find much to chuckle over.

Timaeus begins with a quite sensible division: mindlessness is the disease of the soul, and it comes in two kinds, madness and ignorance. To see the jest, we need to follow Timaeus’s argument closely. Plea­ sures and pains are the diseases of the soul, for the desire to seize one and to avoid the other makes one incapable of exercising reason. But what is the cause of this madness? The cause is not wickedness, but disease, and disease arises either from a bodily defect or from a bad nature (86D-E).^[69] Too much seed in a man’s marrow or bad humors arising from acidic or saline phlegm will disturb the movement of the soul and give rise to all sorts of disorders, bad temper, cowardice, and stupidity. We should observe here that although Timaeus has attributed diseases of the soul to madness and ignorance, he discusses only madness, which turns out to be wholly physical, and thus involun­tary.^[70] Indeed, he even refers to the familiar Socratic maxim that no one is bad voluntarily (86D). What a subtle but critical difference we find here! For Socrates in his proposition means that no one will voluntarily make himself worse by doing evil, and therefore the evil doer must be ignorant of the fact that he is making himself worse! This, really, is the essential argument of the Republic and in order to prove it, Socrates entered into his great analogy of the soul and the state. Timaeus here is quite consciously taking the points Socrates had made and attempting to refute them by attributing wrongdoing to bodily disease.^[71] There is a further allusion to the Republic in Timaeus’s political comments at just this point:

Furthermore, when, with men in such an evil condition [with disorders of the soul arising from the phlegmatic humors], the political administration also is evil, and the speech in the cities, both public and private, is evil. …

The discussion of remedial treatment of the soul is perhaps odder still. For the argument is based on aesthetic judgments. It follows an Agathonic sequence of thought similar to Timaeus’s earlier remarks concerning the Demiurge’s excellence:^[72] the good is fair, and fair is symmetrical, and the best symmetry is that between body and soul.^[73] If the soul is stronger than the body, Timaeus says, the body will be shaken violently and catarrhs will be induced, so that, as a result, physicians will be deceived and attribute the disease to the wrong cause. If the body is large and is attached to a weak intellect, the desires of the stronger, the body, will prevail, and the greatest of diseases will result: ignorance (88B). Thus, it turns out—not surprisingly—that ignorance too is an involuntary result of one’s physical makeup! All the world’s woes, then, physical disease, madness, and ignorance, are attributable to matter.^[74] (One is left to ponder for oneself whether Timaeus would grant beauty to that symmetry that would be found in a weak intellect united to a weak body. For surely this would contain the greatest and most beautiful symmetry—that between body and soul. This question, however, is never addressed.)

To avoid the evils of asymmetry one must exercise the body or mind. The mind’s exercise consists in music and philosophy. Timaeus does not discuss these. But he devotes considerable attention to the exercise of the body, and his treatment of the subject is most extrava­ gantly put. Instead of saying “calisthenics are good for the body,” Timaeus says that the body must imitate the self-generated motion of the universe and by means of moderate vibration keep the bodily particles in good order according to their affinities. In short, he gives us a highly elaborate periphrasis for exercise. Other forms of bodily motion are possible (i.e., sailing and swaying on a boat or drugs), but exercise and diet are best.

Timaeus has yet to discuss the healthy relationship of the parts of the soul. We recall that Socrates in the Republic and Timaeus here have divided the soul into three parts. Timaeus’s division has generally been in physical terms (see esp. 73D): the brain holds the divine seed, the vertebral column holds the mortal soul that partakes of courage and spirit (70A-E), and the midriff and navel hold the third kind of soul (70D and 77B). Among these three, exercise must be in due proportion. To exercise reason will make one virtually immortal (90C), and the exercise of this divine part within us is to learn the harmonies and revolutions of the universe-in short, to study astronomy-to become like Timaeus! As we saw the universe based on a human model, we now see that the correct human model turns out to be our very own speaker, Timaeus. To be healthy is to be like him.

We come at last to the conclusion, or comic finale of the dialogue. Having discussed the origin of the universe through the creation of mankind (a term that for Timaeus does not include women), Timaeus now discusses how the rest of the creatures came into being. In introducing the subject, he assures us that there is no need for length. We are to suppose perhaps that all the other creatures present no difficulties, or, more likely, that they are unworthy of fuller discussion. “According to the probable account,” cowardly and unjust men in their second existence returned as women. The use of the phrase “according to the probable account” here casts doubt on the rest of the “likely” account. Timaeus again pokes fun at Socrates’ remarks on the equality of women in the Republic, remarks pointedly reiterated at the beginning of the Timaeus. Only after this corrupt generation of men were reborn as women did the gods contrive sexual intercourse (and now we know why reproduction has not been discussed earlier: since there were no women in the original mankind, it didn’t occur). We are left to imagine that the first two generations were made directly by the gods. And this is a “likely account”!

The account of sexual intercourse is filled with the same ponderous superscientific terms that Timaeus has used throughout his speech. The membrum virile, called ἡ τοῦ ποτοῦ διέξοδος, and well translated by Bury as “the passage of egress for drink,” is also the outlet for marrow from the brain, marrow previously called “seed.” The marrow gives the organ a lively desire (ζωτικὴν έπιθυμίαν—a pun on ζωτικὴν?) for emission. Thus, says Timaeus in a passage to reverberate through the centuries,^[75] in men the genital organ is disobedient and self-willed, like a creature deaf to reason. And yet, if the seed comes from the brain, where the divine reason is housed, why should it fill the genital organ with lust? This is a strange lust, for it results from the soul’s desire to leave the body, and the only way it can is through this organ.^[76] Of course, too, we should observe that the original generation of created men did not engage in sexual intercourse. Sexual intercourse results from the presence of women, who are the corrupt reincarnation of bad men. In women also, says Timaeus, there is bodily pain and illness without sex and reproduction. So to women’s sexual desire he also attributes purely physical motives.

The generation of the rest of the animals is explained by Timaeus with the same sang-froid as he has explained everything else. Birds have derived from lightminded men, who studying meteorology (Timaeus’ s own profession!) put their trust in sight (whereas Timaeus used his “reason”—but here again we must not forget Timaeus’s paean to vision). Is this anything except an attack by Timaeus on his intellectual and methodological opponents? The wild animals who go on foot are derived from those who have never studied philosophy—therefore they look always down at the ground, and the more foolish ones creep lower and lower, ending in those quintessentially foolish ones who wriggle on the earth. Utterly stupid men return as fish—an extreme punishment for stupidity. Timaeus adds that the creatures continue to pass one into another according to their gain or loss of reason. And yet we may wonder how a shellfish or worm might increase its share of reason in order to work its way up to a chipmunk or woman! Timaeus’s last statement announces the end of his speech: mortal and immortal creatures have filled up the cosmos.

It would not be remiss, perhaps, to say a word or two concerning the dramatic situation with which the Critias opens, for it quite clearly begins after Timaeus has finished his remarks.^[77] The Critias opens with Timaeus’s sigh of relief to have finished and with a prayer for knowl­edge, the best medicine if he has erred. At this point, of course, it is Critias’s turn to speak. Before speaking, he requests the indulgence of the listeners, because, he says, his speech will be more difficult than Timaeus’s. He says that since we know very little about the gods and the creation of the universe—Timaeus’s subject—we did not have high expectations about the degree of similitude (107A); indeed, he adds, when listeners are in a state of inexperience and complete ignorance, the opportunities are greater for the speaker (107B)—so Timaeus had it easy. These words are a clear indication of how well Critias must have understood Timaeus’s speech, especially the technical sections.

It would appear possible, then, that Plato has composed in the Timaeus a parody of scientific speakers in much the same way that in the other dialogues he has parodied various groups. Already in antiq­uity there were some who took the doctrines of the Locrian for imaginative fancy. In addition to the passages already cited in Aristotle and Sextus Empiricus, we might mention Cicero, who, in De Natura Deorum, has his speaker Velleius refer to Timaeus’s remarks as baseless opinions (futtiles commenticiaeque sententiae [1.8.18]).^[78] But largely because of the veneration in which Plato was held, his dialogues were taken seriously. “According to Proclus (In Platonis Timaeum i, pp.; 276, 31-277; l[Diehl]), Plutarch, Atticus, and many other Platonists took the cosmogony of the Timaeus literally.”^[79]

The first mistake of these authors was to forget that Plato was a man. Proclus wrote (Platonic Theology 1.1) that Platonic philosophy was a gift from the gods, an illumination, a kind of revelation. With such an opinion, is it any wonder that the same mental exercise applied to the Bible—to make sense out of every phrase—was applied to Plato as well? Plutarch’s Platonic Questions is just such a book. The long history of reverence and influence that the dialogue has had also contributed to the sacrosanctity of the dialogue’s doctrines. For the dialogue was of great importance to Philo, through whom many of its doctrines entered the fundamental dogmata of Christianity. On the basis of this reading of the Timaeus, however, I should like to suggest that the purpose of the dialogue may be to awaken in the reader a skepticism for stodgy science, which makes pronouncements under the guise of probability and technicality—pronouncements that may very well be absurd. If Plato in the Timaeus has taught us this, he will have taught us a very useful lesson, one as relevant to our age as it was to his.