Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 15, 2025
Here is Timaeus, of Locris in Italy, a city which has admirable laws, and who is himself in wealth and rank the equal of any of his fellow-citizens; he has held the most important and honourable offices in his own state, and, as I believe, has scaled the heights of all philosophy; and here is Critias, whom every Athenian knows to be no novice in the matters of which we are speaking; and as to Hermocrates, I am assured by many witnesses that his genius and education qualify him to take part in any speculation of the kind.
In such passages we have to interpret his meaning by the general spirit of his writings. To reconcile his inconsistencies would be contrary to the first principles of criticism and fatal to any true understanding of him. There is a further difficulty in explaining this part of the Timaeus the natural order of thought is inverted.
And according to what he has said in his Timaeus, it is a law ensuing on the nature of the universe, according to which all things that are done are transacted. For this does Lachesis effect, who is indeed the daughter of Necessity, as we have both already related, and shall yet better understand by that which will be said in the progress of our discourse.
The slight touch, perhaps ironical, contained in the words, 'as we shall do well in believing on the testimony of wise men, is very characteristic of Plato. SOCRATES: One, two, three; but where, my dear Timaeus, is the fourth of those who were yesterday my guests and are to be my entertainers to-day?
Timaeus had heard of the primitive temple of the household gods in Lavinium; but the statement, that these were regarded by the Lavinates as the Penates brought by the followers of Aeneas from Ilion, is as certainly an addition of his own, as the ingenious parallel between the Roman October horse and the Trojan horse, and the exact inventory taken of the sacred objects of Lavinium there were, our worthy author affirms, heralds' staves of iron and copper, and an earthen vase of Trojan manufacture!
Whereas those of Timoleon, if we except the terrible affair of his brother, have nothing in them to which we cannot apply, like Timaeus, that verse of Sophocles "Ye gods, what Venus or what grace divine Took part in this."
HERMOCRATES: 'We will do our best, and have been already preparing; for on our way home, Critias told us of an ancient tradition, which I wish, Critias, that you would repeat to Socrates. 'I will, if Timaeus approves. 'I approve. Listen then, Socrates, to a tale of Solon's, who, being the friend of Dropidas my great-grandfather, told it to my grandfather Critias, and he told me.
According to Plato in the Timaeus, God took of the same and the other, of the divided and undivided, of the finite and infinite, and made essence, and out of the three combined created the soul of the world. To the soul he added a body formed out of the four elements.
Those who believed that there was a chaos before God laid his hand upon it sought therein the source of disorder. It was an opinion which Plato introduced into his Timaeus. This Anaxagoras avoided by making matter remain at rest until it was stirred by God; and Aristotle in the same passage commends him for it.
The ideas also remain, but they have become types in nature, forms of men, animals, birds, fishes. And the attribution of evil to physical causes accords with the doctrine which he maintains in the Laws respecting the involuntariness of vice. The style and plan of the Timaeus differ greatly from that of any other of the Platonic dialogues.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking