Chapter 1 - The Setting: Plato’s Timaeus

The Timaeus recounts the coming to be of our cosmos in an exhaustive explanatory account. Given the sheer magnitude of this topic, I am unable to provide here a full summary of the many details contained in the Timaean creation story.¹ I will instead introduce its key elements, draw attention to a number of interpretative matters that have provoked complex responses from the ensuing tradition, and thereby set out the backdrop to the dialogue’s treatment at the hands of our Latin interpreters. I will begin with a basic synopsis of the dialogue, followed by an overview of those parts of the text that particularly engaged our authors’ minds.

Dialogue Content

At the outset of the Timaeus Socrates reminds his interlocutors, Timaeus, Critias, and Hermocrates, of a discussion they had on the previous day (17c). The topic of this discussion was a city’s best possible political design, and the city’s inhabitants. The type of society discussed included the presence of guardians, men and women who, having undergone training and education that had rendered them ‘both spirited and philosophical’ (18a),² lived separately from the other societal groups and were charged with defending the city in times of war. While these and other references in Socrates’ description of the earlier discussion resemble topics that are discussed in the Republic, his description is rather too incomplete to allow for the assumption that we ought to consider the Timaeus a straightforward sequel to this dialogue. We may fare best if we assume that the discussion which had preceded the Timaeus explored a number of themes that are developed at greater length in the Republic, without insisting on a more direct relationship between the two dialogues.³

Socrates’ starting point for the discussion recorded in the Timaeus is the nature of the inhabitants of an ideally structured society. The previous conversation, it appears, had merely described them in theoretical terms. Socrates now expresses the wish to observe these inhabitants in action. Prompted by this request, Critias proposes to relate an account, passed on to him by his famous ancestor Solon, about the inhabitants of primaeval Athens. Victors over mighty Atlantis, these Athenians of old, Critias believes, may be the type of society Socrates has in mind. Short of launching directly into his portrayal of ancestral Athens, however, Critias suggests they start at the very beginning:⁴ first, the politician, philosopher, and astronomer Timaeus will describe the coming to be of the universe, leading up to the creation of humans and other living creatures.

At the centre of Timaeus’ speaking part is a creation account in which a divine craftsman creates our cosmos by imposing order on chaotic materials. Timaeus initially frames his account with the dualistic metaphysical structure familiar from other dialogues. An intelligible realm of being, to on τὸ ὄν⁵ (‘that which is’), that contains everlasting and immutable forms is distinguished from the sphere of coming to be, to gignomenon τὸ γιγνόμενον (‘that which comes to be’), in which our universe, an object of sense perception, is located (27d5ff.). Our physical world is formed by the demiurge from the materials at his disposal in the likeness of an intelligible paradigm, the ‘eternal living being’, perhaps best understood to represent the totality of intelligible forms whose physical counterparts are to form our universe. These counterparts, the components of our natural world, arise and perish within a substrate or medium that Timaeus terms χώρα, ‘space’, and ὑποδοχή, the ‘receptacle’ of physical objects.

Mirroring the intelligible model as far as its physical nature allows, the universe is itself constructed as a divine living creature that possesses soul and intellect. Despite his initial focus on the construction of the cosmic body, Timaeus stresses that the order of his narrative does not reflect the actual order of creative acts. Prior to the formation of the physical universe, the demiurge constructed the cosmic soul, superior to the former in seniority and nobility. The cosmic soul is generated by the demiurge out of the ingredients ‘being’, ‘sameness’, and ‘difference’, which are blended together. These rather obscure ingredients reflect the soul’s intellective faculties that allow it to recognize the objects of its thought. In other words, Timaeus establishes an ontological affinity between soul, as the subject engaged in thought, and the objects of its thought.

The cosmic soul is woven into the physical universe and, penetrating the latter from within, steers and regulates the movements of the celestial bodies through its own motions. Simultaneously with the creation of these heavenly bodies the god creates time. The regular orbits of the fixed stars and planets serve as instruments that, from the very start of their existence, determine and safeguard the temporal extensions pertaining to the created universe. Despite the world’s own perishability owing to its physical nature, its sempiternity is vouchsafed by the will of its divine creator.

Human soul claims kinship with the cosmic soul. It is constructed by the demiurge out of the same ingredients, albeit of less purity, and thus exhibits the same intellective faculties as its cosmic counterpart. Upon the soul’s conjunction with a mortal body that is, in turn, equipped with sense organs adapted to its physical environment, it initially experiences disturbances caused by its exposure to these surroundings. Its potential success in controlling these disturbances would result in its return to the celestial sphere, where it is no longer exposed to the deteriorating influences of an incarnate existence.

The creation of the corporeal parts of the various living creatures that inhabit the universe is delegated to subordinate divine agents, who are themselves created by the demiurge. With regard to the popular divinities familiar from the Olympian stage, Timaeus stresses that any account of their origin is beyond human understanding, a view that resigns us to accepting the accounts propagated by ‘the children of the gods’, ‘even though they speak without plausible or compelling proofs’ (40d8–e2). In what follows, Timaeus supplies a divine ancestry that begins with Heaven and Earth, noting that the poets’ authority on the subject is based on their professed kinship with the gods.⁶ Whether or not we choose to take seriously Timaeus’ appeal to their authority, it is clear that the Olympian deities are sidelined in his creation narrative, which, of course, deviates from the traditional theogonies familiar from poetic accounts. Following a detailed description of human physiology, Timaeus concludes his account with remarks concerning the creation of women and of the living creatures inhabiting the remaining parts of our natural world.

The Timaean narrative portrays the universe as a teleologically structured whole. Chaos is transformed into orderly beauty, an aesthetic feature that reflects the purposeful cooperation of the world’s harmoniously arranged components. The universe is as beautiful and as good as it can be, exhibiting a kinship of aesthetic and ethical value that coincides in the Greek word καλός (e.g. 29e5). What is more, this twofold value is the design of intellect, represented by the demiurge whose own goodness, which he wishes to bestow upon his creation, is the driving force behind the creation process. In order to make the cosmos good, he imposes rationality upon it. He incorporates intellect into the cosmic soul, whose rational activity, through its interconnectedness with the cosmic body, results in the orderly, spherical rotations of the planets. Human soul, through its material kinship with cosmic soul, is the cognitive link that allows us to participate in this cosmic rationality. By aligning our soul’s revolutions, our rational activity, with heaven’s spherical motions, the manifestation of cosmic soul’s engagement in rational thought, we become orderly and good.

Methodology

Our understanding of Timaeus’ narrative method hinges on the apparently ambivalent characterization of his account as both μῦθος and λόγος. Are we dealing with a μῦθος of our world’s first origins, a mythical tale without any serious claim to coherence or scientific accuracy? Perhaps Timaeus is offering a metaphorical attempt to illustrate the underlying nature of, and relationships among, the various physical components and mechanisms in our world? Or maybe we are dealing with a scientific λόγος after all, with an exposition, albeit in polished prose, of natural philosophy? Alternatively again, our desire to distinguish between both genres may be ill-advised: the dialogue’s synthesis of μῦθος and λόγος, far from indicating a deliberate methodological strategy, may carry no great significance, with both terms being used interchangeably. Let us turn to the narrator in search for clarity.

In a notorious passage, Tim. 29b2–d3, Timaeus reflects upon the nature and scope of his creation account. We are advised, in the first of many instances, that those λόγοι which offer an interpretation of subject matter pertaining to the physical realm, itself an εἰκών or ‘image’ formed in likeness of the intelligible model, achieve likelihood with regard to their truth status: ‘One ought to determine … that the accounts concerning that which has been fashioned in the likeness of [the intelligible model], and which is itself a likeness, ought to be [fashioned] in a like manner, in the likeness of those [accounts that treat of the intelligible model itself].’⁷ Timaeus’ observation rests on the preceding premise that accounts which serve as the ‘exegetes’ (ἐξηγηταί) of a particular subject matter are akin to the very material they treat: ‘In the case of the likeness and its model, [we ought to determine that] the accounts bear a kinship (συγγενεῖς ὄντας) to the subject matter of which they serve as exegetes’ (29b3–5). (In the Greek text, we note how the effect of the alike-sounding syllables ἐκεῖνο, ἀπεικασθέντος, εἰκόνος, εἰκότας, and ἐκείνων underlines the statement’s very own assertion by heeding its advice.) The kinship Timaeus has in mind is of the following type: accounts that treat of the intelligible realm, in which the everlasting and unchanging forms are located, are themselves ‘unshakeable’ in their consistency and irrefutable. In turn, accounts that deal with our physical cosmos, itself the ‘likeness’ (εἰκών) of an intelligible paradigm, are aptly characterized by Timaeus as ‘likely’ (εἰκότες). Timaeus underlines his train of thought by drawing an analogy between the ontological status, or class, of an account’s subject matter and the degree of its epistemological reliability. As the ontological class ‘being’ (οὐσία) stands to the ontological class ‘coming to be’ (γένεσις), so the maximum degree of epistemological reliability, ‘truth’ (ἀλήθεια), stands to the lower degree of epistemological reliability ‘convincingness’ (πίστις).

Timaeus takes pains to remind his listeners repeatedly⁸ that he is offering an εἰκὼς λόγος, or εἰκὼς μῦθος, which suggests that these expressions carry a programmatic function for his investigation and are crucial for our understanding of the dialogue. But what exactly does Timaeus mean by this characterization? Unsurprisingly, the scholarship on the topic is extensive⁹ and I shall merely outline some of the most important aspects pertaining to Timaeus’ methodology.¹⁰ Εἰκώς as it appears in our dialogue, conveys the sense of ‘portraying an image’, inasmuch as an εἰκὼς λόγος is identified by Timaeus as the type of account that deals with an image, an εἰκών, such as our universe. This relation is reinforced by the similarity of both terms, εἰκών, ‘likeness’, and εἰκώς ‘likely’.¹¹ The epistemological status of Timaeus’ account is εἰκώς, ‘likely’, due to the ontological status of its subject matter, the universe, a likeness or a copy belonging to the sphere of change.¹²

The notion of probability conveyed by the term εἰκώς has sometimes been interpreted as that of scientific hypothesis. On this view, the Timaean εἰκὼς λόγος is understood to be a provisional or approximate estimation, as opposed to accurate scientific knowledge.¹³ Others, as indicated above, emphasize Timaeus’ occasional use of the expression εἰκὼς μῦθος,¹⁴ instead of εἰκὼς λόγος, to describe his own narrative as indicative of the fact that the dialogue should be read as a myth, a fictional story or tale that stands in contrast to a rational, scientific inquiry. This viewpoint complements the assumption that μῦθος and λόγος should not be understood as synonyms,¹⁵ but that Plato wished to stress the mythical character of the Timaean account. Further, μῦθος has been taken to describe a type of account that relates to the human sphere and that stands in contrast to a type of knowledge, or reality, humans cannot attain.¹⁶ Finally, Plato’s dialogue has been interpreted as a combination of both λόγος and μῦθος, a rationally argued myth centring on the creation of the universe.¹⁷

It is precisely the ambiguity of Timaeus’ language that presents an opportunity for our Latin interpreters to put on display the originality of their own approach to Timaeus’ εἰκὼς λόγος. The choice between the various possible approaches to the text, a choice faced by the reader of Plato’s dialogue and the Platonic interpreter alike, will to a considerable extent be influenced by his or her interpretation of several key elements contained in the Timaean cosmology, to which I will now turn.

An Interpretative Controversy

Any student of Plato’s Timaeus will have to address an interpretative question of decisive significance for the understanding of the dialogue.¹⁸ Did Plato have Timaeus offer to his interlocutors an actual creation account that identifies the cosmos as generated?

Timaeus appears to suggest as much. He draws attention to the createdness of the universe at Tim. 27c4–5 where he describes his appointed task as ‘producing speeches concerning the All, in what manner it has been created or else is uncreated’ (τοὺς περὶ τοῦ παντὸς λόγους ποιεῖσθαί πῃ μέλλοντας, ᾗ γέγονεν ἢ καὶ ἀγενές ἐστιν).¹⁹ He begins this inquiry by drawing a preliminary distinction between the two ontological spheres of being and coming to be: ‘what is that which always is and has no coming to be, and what is that which is always coming to be but never is?’ (τί τὸ ὂν ἀεί, γένεσιν δὲ οὐκ ἔχον, καὶ τί τὸ γιγνόμενον μὲν ἀεί, ὂν δὲ οὐδέποτε, 27d6). Turning next to the ontological classification of the universe, he asks the all-important question ‘whether [the All] has always been, having no origin of coming to be, or whether it has come to be, starting out from some origin’ (πότερον ἦν ἀεί, γενέσεως ἀρχὴν ἔχων οὐδεμίαν, ἢ γέγονεν, ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς τινος ἀρξάμενος, 28b6–7). The answer comes swiftly: ‘it has come to be’ (γέγονεν). He reaffirms his statement by declaring that the universe is subject to sense perception, and all things perceptible ‘come to be and have been generated’ (γιγνόμενα καὶ γεννητὰ, 28c1–2). As we saw in the previous section, he reminds his listeners, on several occasions, of the fact that his creation account is a likely story, a concession taken by some interpreters to undermine the overall credibility of his account, instead of merely indicating Timaeus’ doubt about the specific details that prompt his recurring reminders. But Timaeus nowhere indicates that the ‘convincingness’ of his words applies to his entire creation account.²⁰

Nevertheless, doubts with regard to the validity of a literal interpretation of his account arise from apparent inconsistencies in the narrative that threaten its internal coherence.²¹ At 38b6–c3, Timaeus describes the creation of the cosmos as coinciding with the creation also of time (χρόνος δ’ οὖν μετ’ οὐρανοῦ γέγονεν). Time is created ‘in accordance with the paradigm that is of an eternal nature’ (κατὰ τὸ παράδειγμα τῆς διαιωνίας φύσεως). In his wish to replicate, as far as possible, the everlastingness of the intelligible model, the demiurge creates fixed celestial bodies whose orbiting movements mark the various extension of time (38c4–6), a perpetual image of eternity. This portrayal of events stands in apparent contradiction to other items in the narrative. Having identified the ‘receptacle’ as a third cosmological principle alongside being and coming to be, Timaeus describes how there occurred a reciprocal motion between this receptacle and the precursors of the physical elements that were contained in it and were moving in an erratic, disorderly fashion (52d2–53b5). According to Timaeus, these movements preceded the orderly structuring of the physical materials at the hands of the demiurge. If the sequence of events in his narrative were to unfold in chronological succession,²² we would arrive at a scenario in which the disorderly motions in the receptacle occurred prior to the creation of time, in a time before time. It thus appears that Timaeus’ narrative fails to provide a chronological frame in which the events portrayed can be coherently located. A possible retort, pursued already by the dialogue’s readers in antiquity, is to distinguish between pre-cosmic time and measured time that coincided with the creation of the cosmos. Taking the mention of time at 38b6–c3 to refer strictly to measured time avoids the pitfall of chronological inconsistency.²³

Further criticism of Timaeus’ narrative has been prompted by the createdness of soul. Before the demiurge set to creating the universe, Timaeus informs us, he created the world soul. In minute mathematical detail, the narrator reconstructs the creation process of this soul which, upon the creation of the world’s physical body (36d8–e1), was to permeate the latter in perpetual self-rotating motion. Emphasis is put upon its priority over body in terms of age and excellence: ‘[the demiurge] constructred soul as prior and more senior to body, both in terms of coming to be and in terms of virtue’ (ὁ δὲ [δημιουργὸς] καὶ γενέσει καὶ ἀρετῇ προτέραν καὶ πρεσβυτέραν ψυχὴν σώματος … συνεστήσατο, 34c4–35a1), and on its having been created: it has ‘come to be as the most excellent of things that have come to be at the hands of the most excellent of intelligible and eternal things’ (τῶν νοητῶν ἀεί τε ὄντων ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀρίστου ἀρίστη γενομένη τῶν γεννηθέντων, 37a1–2). The assumption of a created soul clashes with Plato’s description of the soul in the Phaedrus, where Socrates convinces Phaedrus that the soul’s origin is uncreated (Phaedr. 245c9–d1). Such concerns appear less pressing if we desist from a unitarian perspective on Plato’s philosophical positions, and allow for a developmental perspective, along with the assumption that the Phaedrus predated the composition of the Timaeus.

A further discrepancy between the Timaeus and the Phaedrus is the view, propagated by Socrates in the latter work at 245c9, that self-moving soul is ‘the source and origin of motion to all things that move’ (τοῖς ἄλλοις ὅσα κινεῖται … πηγὴ καὶ ἀρχὴ κινήσεως), a claim that appears incompatible with the Timaean pre-cosmic motion in the receptacle. Similarly, the Athenian of Plato’s Laws describes the soul as ‘identical with the first generation and motion of what is, has been, and will be’ and ‘the cause of all change and all motion in all things’ (896a5–8;²⁴ cf. 892a2–c7, 899c6–7), a view once again incompatible with the assumption of chaotic, pre-cosmic motion as it is described by Timaeus whose account at no point identifies soul as a further principle alongside being, coming to be, and the receptacle.²⁵ This problem, however, does not disappear even if we understand the cosmic soul’s creation along non-temporal lines. Soul’s specific activity of rational thought, which manifests itself as regular, spherical motion, can no more easily be reconciled with the erratic motions in the receptacle. If inclined to press for doctrinal consistency between the Timaeus and other dialogues, we may take the references to soul as the origin and cause of all motion in the Phaedrus and the Laws to describe merely orderly, goal-directed motion, and thereby solve the problem of pre-cosmic erratic motion such as it appears in the Timaeus.

These and other arguments pro and contra a temporal interpretation are still reiterated today, while recent scholarship has seen a reinforcement of the literalist side.²⁶ Let us review more closely the most influential opinions on either side of the debate, beginning with Plato’s own contemporaries. Aristotle addresses the problematic scenario of a ‘time before time’ at Met. 11.6,²⁷ where he also mentions the difficulties inherent in the assumption of a created time in the context of the creation of the world soul. Given the fact that soul is posterior to (pre-cosmic) motion – a reference to Tim. 34c4–35a1 – it must be disqualified as a principle of movement (1072a1–3).²⁸Moreover, Aristotle took issue with the idea of a divine agent that is immediately involved with the creation of the cosmos.²⁹ Perhaps prompted by Aristotle’s criticism, the non-temporal reading of Plato’s dialogue found favour with many ancient interpreters, for instance Plato’s successor Xenocrates and his Academy.³⁰ It is again through Aristotle that we learn about their specific position. At Cael. 1.10 279b32–280a2 he mocks their claim that Plato had intended his creation account to be read didaskalias charin, ‘for the sake of instruction’, in the same manner as geometers would draw up and construct geometrical figures in order to facilitate their students’ understanding of completed structures.³¹ In neither case had an actual process of construction taken place. In a classic defence of the creationist interpretation Gregory Vlastos has pointed out, however, that a reading didaskalias charin cannot be directly connected with Plato,³² and argued that the ascription of this position also to his pupil Speusippus and to Theophrastus is doubtful (the latter is reported to have believed that Plato ‘perhaps’, intended a reading saphêneias charin, ‘for the sake of clarity’, Phys. op. 11).³³ Nevertheless, the appeal to didactic or hypothetical method as a way of atoning for the incongruities in Timaeus’ creation story gained support from numerous interpreters of Plato. Aetius, Plotinus, and Proclus are all credited with the belief in a creation account that had been set out epinoiai (in thought)³⁴ or hupothesei (by hypothesis).³⁵ Beyond these methodological aspects Platonists such as Taurus,³⁶ Crantor, and Xenocrates³⁷ are reported to have regarded the overall aim of the dialogue as illuminating in non-temporal fashion a causal correlation between the intelligent divinity and the mechanical processes at work in the living cosmos. The efforts undertaken to bolster a non-temporal reading are famously summarized by the second-century Middle Platonist Calvenus Taurus. Philoponus at Aet. mund. 145.13–147.25 reports that Taurus distinguished four³⁸ senses in which the cosmos may be characterized as γενητός, ‘having come to be’:³⁹ γενητός describes (1) an object that, itself not having come to be, is of the same genus as objects that have come to be (i.e. some object may, for whatever reason, forever be ‘unseen’ but still remain ‘visible’ in genus); (2) an object that is composite ‘in thought’ even though it has never undergone an actual process of ‘being put together’; (3) an object eternally subjected to the process of coming to be and change; and (4) an object whose existence is dependent on something external, in the case of the cosmos, a dependency on god as its causative agent on a higher metaphysical plane. For a non-temporal reading of Plato’s terms γέγονεν, ‘it has come to be’, and ἀρχή, ‘origin’, supporting evidence from the dialogue itself was thought to be at hand. At Tim. 28b6, Timaeus asks whether the cosmos has existed always, having no origin of coming to be, γενέσεως ἀρχὴν ἔχων οὐδεμίαν, or whether it has come to be, γέγονεν, having begun from some origin, ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς τινος ἀρξάμενος, where the addition of τινος may be taken to sideline a temporal origin of the cosmos.⁴⁰

Plutarch and Atticus are known as a proponents of temporal creation⁴¹ against many Platonist voices up until that time.⁴² According to the testimony of Proclus, Plutarch assumed that there had been a pre-cosmic ‘trace’ of time present in the receptacle, the precursor of ordered and created time. Rejecting an uncreated universe Atticus firmly maintained a creation ‘according to time’, by distinguishing pre-cosmic and disorderly time from orderly time created in conjunction with the cosmos. The distinction between a pre-cosmic and disorderly concept of time as opposed to a post-creation measured type has been reiterated most notably by Vlastos.⁴³ What is more, Plutarch accounted for pre-cosmic motion by postulating the existence of a prior, irrational state of the world soul that was responsible for the chaotic movement in the receptacle before the creation of cosmos, an event that effected the coming to be of the already existing world soul as a rational and benign cosmic element.⁴⁴ Similarly, Plutarch distinguished chaotic matter, which existed prior to its ordering at the hands of the demiurge, from an orderly type of matter that came into being simultaneously with the cosmos. While Plutarch and Atticus are the most widely known adherents to a literal reading, it has been pointed out by Sedley⁴⁵ that more ancient authors than has generally been assumed, among them Polemo and Cicero’s tutor Antiochus, may have endorsed a creationist reading of the dialogue.

The reader’s decision whether or not to interpret the Timaeus in a temporal manner has a far-reaching impact upon the manner in which the account’s key components are to be understood. I shall now turn to these key themes of the dialogue that will prove significant for our authors.

Demiurge, Cosmic Soul, and Lesser Divinities

Who or what is the demiurge, and what precisely is this divinity’s role in the Timaean creation account? According to the narrator’s portrayal, the divine craftsman is characterized from the beginning as working with pre-cosmic materials. The actual process of creation that is described by Timaeus is thus not a creation ex nihilo, but the harmonic structuring and blending by the demiurge of the materials at his disposal. Does our narrator provide more specific information regarding the divinity’s identity? On two occasions, the demiurge is characterized by Timaeus as ‘responsible’ (Tim. 28a4–5 and 28c2–3) for the coming to be of our world. Any hope for a full revelation of his identity is, however, immediately thwarted: ‘to discover the maker and father of this All is a difficult task; having discovered him, it is impossible to explain him to the many’ (τὸν μὲν οὖν ποιητὴν καὶ πατέρα τοῦδε τοῦ παντὸς εὑρεῖν τε ἔργον καὶ εὑρόντα εἰς πάντας ἀδύνατον λέγειν.)⁴⁶ Instead, Timaeus focuses on the god’s specific role as the initiator of the cosmogonic process. Why did the demiurge create the orderly universe? His reason for doing so, according to Timaeus at 29d7–e3, was his inherent goodness. ‘He was good, and in the good no envy with regard to anything ever arises.’ Free from envy, moreover, the demiurge wanted everything to be like himself, i.e. to be good, as far as this was possible. To this purpose, he concluded that the chaotic pre-cursors of our elemental physical materials, initially, had to be arranged in an orderly structure and then equipped with soul and intellect. Timaeus reconstructs the creator’s train of thought as resting on the following premises: 1) Whatever possesses intellect is more excellent than anything lacking intellect; 2) Intellect cannot arise anywhere except in conjunction with soul.⁴⁷

The argument contained in this passage has led some to propose that the divine craftsman, seen as the personification of νοῦς, intellect, must necessarily possess soul. As a consequence, the demiurge has been perceived as identical with the cosmic soul. On this account, the creation of the world soul at the demiurge’s own hands is reduced to a narrative strategy, presumably intended to facilitate an understanding of the central role of the cosmic soul in the universe, and to reinforce its divine, immortal nature.⁴⁸ The fact that the cosmic soul is made up from the ingredients ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’ that enable it to operate as a link between the intelligible and physical spheres may be taken to signify that the demiurge, when considered identical with the cosmic soul, is a mediating agent that connects the intelligible realm with our sensible world.

This interpretation is, however, difficult to square with Timaeus’ emphasis on the contrast between the cosmic soul, the ‘best of things that have come to be’, and the demiurge, the ‘best of things eternal and intelligible’ (τῶν νοητῶν ἀεί τε ὄντων ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀρίστου ἀρίστη γενομένη τῶν γεννηθέντων [ἡ ψυχή], 37a1–2). Others set the divine craftsman on a par with a further element in the Timaean metaphysical framework, the intelligible forms. However, identifying the demiurge with any one intelligible form, or with the intelligible paradigm, leaves unclear what caused the shift from the pre-cosmic state of affairs, a scenario of intelligible forms and erratic elemental ‘traces’ in the receptacle, to a cosmos to which orderly and regulated relations between the forms and the elements had given rise.⁴⁹ It was to become a most challenging focal point, beginning in particular with the Middle Platonic writers, to explain the divinity’s responsibility for creating the sensible universe while maintaining its status as a transcendent being far removed from our human sphere. We shall find that interpreters from the early centuries of our era onwards preferred to associate the creator with the intelligible forms, often conceived of as being located in the creator’s mind, instead of identifying him with the cosmic soul that permeated the universe, a development that reflects the increased focus on a divinity whose transcendence must be safeguarded at all costs.

While the demiurge is thus placed into an ontological class that differs from that of his own product, his creative effort is mirrored and continued in the material sphere by lesser divinities that have also been created by him. The dualistic set-up of the creation account thus remains intact, while the beneficial impact of the intelligible god is carried into the material realm by various agents. The cosmic soul is merely the first and eldest of numerous other gods, i.e. the stars and the planets, that ‘have come to be in the heaven’ (Tim. 40c). As noted above, Timaeus sidesteps the traditional portrayal of the descendants of Cronos and Rhea, but soon assigns to all the divinities that ‘rotate visibly’, and to ‘all that reveal themselves to the extent that they choose’ (Tim. 41a3–4) and that ‘have come to be’ (Tim. 41a5), the task of constructing the human body (Tim. 41a7–d3). Before he retires and his divine assistants set out to imitate his creative work, the god himself fashions the human souls which he then places upon the various heavenly bodies, assigning one to each, and to whom he explains ‘the nature of the All’ and announces the ‘laws of fate’ (Tim. 41e2–3). According to these laws, irrational behaviour on the part of the human soul has as its consequence rebirth in a body which ranks lower on the hierarchy of mortal living beings. Human soul’s knowledge of fate, acquired immediately after its coming to be, places the responsibility for future evil and misfortune firmly into its own hands − or rather, into the hands of the living creature to whom the soul is first assigned once it begins its earthly existence.

Dualism

We have seen above that, starting from Tim. 27d5, Timaeus frames his creation story with the dualistic metaphysical and epistemological structure we encounter in Plato’s Republic and other so-called ‘middle’ dialogues. A noetic realm, ‘that which always is’ (τὸ ὂν ἀεί), is distinguished from ‘what always comes to be’ (τὸ γιγνόμενον ἀεί),⁵⁰ our sensible universe. The ontological planes are associated at Tim. 28a1–4 with a corresponding pair of cognitive modes that provide access to them: being is accessible by intelligence, νόησις, with the help of reason (μετὰ λόγου), ‘what comes to be’, in turn, is ‘opined by opinion aided by non-rational sense perception’ (δόξῃ μετ’ αἰσθήσεως ἀλόγου δοξαστόν). These ontological–epistemological correlations are often associated with the Divided Line in Plato’s Rep. 6.509d–511 and Rep. 7.533d–534a, where the epistemological planes πίστις and εἰκασία are sub-divisions of δόξα.⁵¹

In the Timaeus, specifically, τὸ ὄν is described as the model or paradigm, παράδειγμα, which is ‘in accordance with itself and selfsame’, eternal (Tim. 28c–29a), and in whose likeness the divine craftsman fashions the materials at his disposal into an orderly All. As indicated above, the paradigm may be taken to represent the totality of intelligible forms that serve as the blueprints for the many sensible components of the universe.⁵² The distinction between the two ontological realms at the beginning of Timaeus’ creation account provides the necessary set-up for his ensuing portrayal of our universe. It is to be located in the sensible realm that, in turn, bears all the characteristic marks of ‘what has come to be’. It is perceptible by our senses and perishable in nature.

A closely connected correlative pair that is integral to the dualism of the Timaeus is the doublet eternity−time. We saw above that the creation of time coincides with the creation of the celestial bodies whose regular orbiting movements determine the extensions of time familiar to us (38b–39d). Time is a ‘moving image of [unchanging] eternity’ (Tim. 37d5), an image that, in contrast to eternity, which abides in one, moves and changes according to number (Tim. 37d6–7). For later Platonic interpreters ‘eternity that abides in unity’ becomes a characteristic property of the noetic realm that is integrated into its conception to such a degree as to count as a synonym of οὐσία, ‘being’ itself, perhaps a consequence of the close association of the creator god with intelligible form.

The Receptacle

At Tim. 47e3 Timaeus proceeds from the creative activities of intellect, represented by the divine craftsman, to those carried out by intellect in cooperation with ‘necessity’. It may be helpful to associate the agent ‘necessity’ simply with physics, more specifically, with the physical mechanisms to which the material elements in the Timaean cosmos are subjected. The creative acts carried out by intellect in cooperation with necessity are thus steered by intelligent design, while the designer heeds the physical nature of the ordered elements, taking into account the potential effects of the various properties characteristic of them.

As indicated above, the four elements water, fire, earth, and air are identified by Timaeus as three-dimensional compounds formed by the demiurge out of elementary geometric shapes. The elements arise in what is introduced by Timaeus as the third principle in his cosmos, alongside the noetic and sensible realms. It is problematic to grasp precisely what this third principle is. Neither intelligible nor physical in its own nature, its function is compared by Timaeus to that of a ‘receptacle’ or ‘wet nurse’ in which ‘the sensible objects always come to be … and from which, in turn, they perish’ (Tim. 49a, e). Further comparisons liken the receptacle to a kind of underlying, malleable, or impressionable stuff (50c, e–51a), and to a neutral ointment base able to take on multiple fragrances (50e). In contrast to sensible objects it is the deserving recipient of the label ‘this’ and ‘that’ since it never changes in its essence (Tim. 50a). Timaeus likens it to underlying material, such as gold from which a statue is formed (Tim. 50a), but the comparison is weak since we are not to conceive of the third kind as a physical material, yet as a base upon which something is imprinted (ἐκμαγεῖον, Tim. 50c2). What are imprinted upon it are the ‘copies of the everlasting [forms]’ (τῶν ὄντων ἀεὶ μιμήματα).⁵³ The manner in which these copies are imprinted from the forms is ‘indescribable and wonderful’ (Tim. 50c6). Yet it is a ‘kind’, ‘invisible and shapeless, all-receiving, partaking of the intelligible in a baffling and incomprehensible manner’ (Tim. 51a–b). It is grasped with the help of ‘non-sensation, with some type of counterfeit reasoning’ (λογισμῷ τινι νόθῳ, Tim. 52b). It does not even possess that for which it has come to be (Tim. 52c), yet it is listed alongside being and coming to be, wherefore we arrive at ‘three different things’ (τρία τριχῇ, Tim. 52d4).

The image that emerges from these comparisons is that of a basic substrate whose inherent properties are its plasticity or malleability, and its three-dimensional extension. Its lack of any further characteristics serves a specific purpose. In its function as an underlying substrate the receptacle has to remain without essential properties in order to be able to temporarily exhibit the varying elemental natures of the physical objects that come to be and perish in it (Tim. 51b4–6). It appears that we ought to adopt a synthetic approach to the different functions of the receptacle. It is the space in which three-dimensional physical objects come to be and perish and, at the same time, the base that underlies the individual characteristics and properties of perishable physical objects.⁵⁴ As such, it falls short of explaining precisely how the intelligible forms come to interact with the sensible materials in such as manner as to effect the coming to be of sensible particulars. It merely provides the conditions, or a platform, for this process to come about.

The topics outlined above, along with the possible interpretations given, may be seen as previews or snapshots of the mesmerizingly complex reception of Plato’s Timaeus at the hands of its interpreters. Weighing up the various interpretative difficulties that emerge in the dialogue, it appears that we ought to take Timaeus at his word in accepting that too close a scrutiny of some of the incongruities in the narrative is ill-advised. Had Plato intended for Timaeus’ narrative to serve as a viable explanation of reality, why did he write the dialogue in a manner that is, quite obviously, less than coherent? Would he not have allowed his protagonist to argue his case with rather more convincingness, even if the final truth must escape the mortal reader? Be that as it may, my primary interest in the present study is to examine the responses to the interpretative difficulties given by our Latin interpreters, and their strategies for solving them. With our focus thus shifted, we are about to open windows that look out upon divergent stages not only of the dialogue’s history of transmission, but of the Platonic tradition in its entirety.