ATTICUS

fragments

draft translation

by

George Boys-Stones
Durham University

© 2014

Based on the ‘Budé’ edition by E. des Places, E. des Places (ed.), Atticus. Fragments (Paris 1977), with
extra material (as identified by Baltes: see Addenda). Grey text either distinguishes context from quotation,
or gives context not in des Places. Fragments not separated by a line-space are continuous in the source-
text.
 CONTENTS

Against those who undertake to reconstruct Plato’s ? Commentary on the Categories ?

doctrines through Aristotle
40 forms = universal principles in substance of soul
1 Plato perfected philosophy as a complete system. 41 problem with homonyms
Against Aristotle on: 42 metaphor and analogy both homonymy
2 - happiness
3 - providence (Aristotle worse than Epicurus)
4 - the world as generated & unperishing 43 justice is useless
5 - quintessence / impassible matter 44 the ‘genuine philosophers’ of the Phaedo
6 - heavenly bodies: their light & heat, and circular
movement; meaning of up and down
7 - soul & intellect: inseparable, in motion, immortal
7bis (The scandal of materiaist & other views of soul)
8 - the soul as organising the universe ADDENDA
9 - forms
A1 cause of creation
? On the Soul ? A2 disorderly vs orderly time
A3 demiurge = the Good
10 harmony from disorder in the soul A4 plurality of principles; matter brought to order
11 soul = irrational soul brought to order A5 good soul rules all; bad soul sublunary sphere

? Commentary on the Timaeus ? dubium

12 demiurge = the good A6 WS responsible for forming embryos

13 qua good, the demiurge makes all things like him
14 the ‘double krater’
15 only the intellect immortal
16 an unnamed friend of Timaeus is missing
17 Theopompus’ lies about Sais’ relations with Athens
18 demiurge always looks at everything
19 ‘creation’ taken in temporal sense
20 cosmos came to be in time
21 (against Atticus)
22 pre-cosmic irregularity ungenerated
23 pre-existence of evil soul
24 matter uncreated
25 the cosmos imperishable only through god’s will
26 disorder precedes order chronologically
27 god can exist without creating
28 forms outside the intellect; demiurge first god
29 temporal creation
30 temporal creation
31 ‘disorderly time’ before creation
32 things indissoluble by will of god
33 atomic vs common forms
34 demiurge above the ideal animal
35 irrational soul divisible, divine indivisible
36 logos as soul’s faculty of attention
37 cosmos generated as sensible
38 temporal creation
39 god comes to be present where he had been absent
 Against those who undertake to reconstruct
Plato’s doctrines through Aristotle

1 I shall set out Plato’s opinions from those who hold him in high regard.
Among them is Atticus, a distinguished Platonist, who goes through his doctrines
in his work Against those who undertake to reconstruct Plato’s doctrines through
Aristotle as follows:
‘Philosophy as a whole, then, is divided in three: that is, into the topics
known as ethics, physics, and logic. The first of these makes individuals virtuous,
reforms whole households and, what is more, organises the citizen body under an
outstanding constitution and the most precise laws. The second topic leads to the
knowledge of things divine: those that are themselves principles and causes, and
those others which come about from them. Plato has called this inquiry into
nature [Phd 96a8]. The third topic governs judgement and discovery in both of
these spheres. It is clear and everywhere agreed that it was above all Plato who
first brought together and unified all these parts of philosophy. Until then, they
had been scattered and flung about – like the limbs of Pentheus, as someone put it.
Plato showed that philosophy was a kind of body with its own organic integrity.
People are not ignorant of the fact that followers of Thales and Anaximenes and
Anaxagoras, and everyone else of that period, worked only at investigating the
nature of what exists. Nor has it escaped anyone that Pittacus and Periander and
Solon and Lycurgus and their like put their philosophy at the service of the state.
Zeno, along with the whole Eleatic movement, is known for his particular
devotion to the science of arguments. Plato came after all these: he was by nature
a genius, fresh from his initiation, as if actually sent to us from the gods so that
philosophy could through him be seen in its organic integrity. He left nothing out
and perfected everything, neither falling short in what was necessary, nor carried
away into anything useless.
‘Well then, since we have said that the Platonist partakes in every part of
philosophy – as someone who discusses physics, talks about ethics, and engages
in dialectic – let us examine each in turn.’
This is what Atticus says. (Eus. PE xi. 1.2-2.1-6, 509a-510a.)

2 ‘It is universally understood among philosophers that philosophy as a

whole holds out the promise of human happiness, and that it is divided in three,
reflecting the creative distribution of the universe. Our Peripatetic will be seen to
be so far from teaching any of Plato’s views in these matters that, although there
are many who differ from Plato, none will seem more opposed than he.
‘First of all, he effected a shift away from Plato in the greatest and most
important field, common to all philosophers, by failing to observe the measure of
happiness, and disagreeing that virtue is sufficient for it. He parted company with
the power that virtue has, and came to think that it needed the favours of chance
before it could capture happiness. Taken on its own, he complained, virtue was
powerless and incapable of attaining happiness. This is not the right time to show

1
what is ignoble and wrong-headed in his opinion on this or any other matter. But
what is quite clear, I think, is that the views Plato and Aristotle hold on what one
is aiming for and the nature happiness are neither the same nor alike. Whenever
he mentions it, Plato shouts and proclaims that the happiest man is the most just.
Aristotle on the other hand won’t allow that happiness is a consequence of virtue
unless it has the good fortune to coincide with birth and beauty – and gold as well
(so that ‘he goes to war dressed in gold like a girl’ [Iliad 2.872]). Necessarily,
then, as their view of the end differs, so the philosophy that leads there is different
as well. For it is not possible for someone walking along a road that leads to
something petty and base to come by that same road to what is great and exalted.
You see where is that high peak,
harsh and malign,
on which it sits, making light of your attack?
It is impossible for the sharp and crafty beast to ascend that ‘high peak’. If the fox
is to get there for the eagle’s brood, either they must have the bad luck to fall to
earth, their nest destroyed, or the fox must grow what it is not in its nature to
grow, ‘circle on swft wings’, and thus lifted from earth get to the ‘high peak’. But
while each remains on his own level, there is no communion between the
creatures of earth and sky.’
He goes on, after a bit:
‘This, then is how things stand. Plato tries to draw the souls of the young upwards
towards the divine, to accommodate them in this way to virtue and nobility, to
persuade them to look down on everything else. So tell me, Peripatetic, how will
you teach these things? How will you guide lovers of Plato to them? Where in
your school can one find reasoning so lofty that it acquires the ambition of the
Aloadae in seeking a path to heaven? (They thought one could be made by piling
mountains on top of each other, though as Plato says it actually comes about by
abstraction from human concerns.) What help can you offer the young in attaining
these things? Where will you find any argument that can help in the struggle?
From any of Aristotle’s writings? Or those of his followers? From his unwritten
doctrines? I’ll let you forge something if you wish, if only you give it some
vigour. But you have nothing to say; you have been bequeathed nothing by any of
the leaders of your school. Aristotle’s treatments of the subject – the Eudemian
Ethics, the Nicomachean Ethics, and the Magna Moralia – contain slim reflection
on virtue that is worthless and ordinary. It is the sort of thing that any uneducated
non-specialist could have come up with, even a child or a woman. Virtue has
received from Zeus a diadem, so to speak, and a royal sceptre which is not to be
taken away from her (since ‘when he nods his head there is no going back’ [cf.
Iliad 1.526-7]). But they have the nerve to take it away. For they don’t give her
the means to make people happy, but put her down on a par with wealth and
reputation and birth and health and beauty – and all the other things that it shares
in common with vice. For just as one of these things on its own without virtue
does not make the person who has it happy, so virtue without these things, by the

2
same reasoning, is not sufficient to make its possessor happy. Isn’t the honour due
to virtue annihilated and overthrown? Of course. But they say that virtue is far
more important than the other goods. What of it? So is health more important
than wealth; but it is true of all of them than none suffices for happiness without
the others. So whenever one tries to teach someone that the entirety of human
happiness is to be sought in the soul against the background of these doctrines, of
this school, one finds him saying that happiness does not mount the wheel, that
no-one suffering the fate of Priam could be happy or blessed. But it is not
implausible that a virtuous man might fall into such misfortunes. It follows, then,
that happiness does not always accompany the virtuous, and that it is not a
permanent possession if acquired.
Of leaves, the wind scatters some, and the forest
Luxuriant, gives others birth . . .
Such are the generations of men: one is born, another disappears.
But your example, my dear poet, is limited and lacks bite: when the season of
spring follows on.1 There is a great deal of time in between, in which nothing
grows. If you want an exact simile for the perishable and ephemeral quality of the
human race, compare it to Aristotle’s happiness. This is born and dies more
lightly than the leaves, not staying the course of time, nor a year, nor a month, but
in a day, in an hour, it comes to be and is destroyed. There are many things which
destroy it; and all of them come by chance. There are the cares of the body, and
thousands of them; there is poverty and disgrace and all such things. And the
resources of our beloved virtue are good for nothing, are able to furnish no help. It
is powerless to ward off unhappiness, powerless to preserve happiness. How,
then, can someone raised in these doctrines and pleased with these arguments,
either agree with Plato’s teaching or encourage others to adopt them? There is no
way that someone starting from these beliefs can take on board his Heraclean and
divine doctrines: the idea that virtue is something strong and entirely beautiful,
and is never in want of anything to produce happiness, and is never removed from
it. Even if poverty and disease and disgrace and torture, burning pitch and
crucifixion, if every misfortune from tragedy were to pour in together, the just
man would remain happy and blessed. At any rate, Plato proclaims of the just
man, his own strong-sounding voice as his herald, as if announcing some
victorious athlete, that he is the most happy of all; that due to his justice he plucks
the fruit of happiness. So make your subtle distinctions if you want, and classify
goods into three divisions, or four, or however many. It is all irrelevant: you will
never bring us to Plato this way. So what if some good things, as you say, are
worthy of honour, like the gods, while others are worthy of praise, as the virtues?
So what if some are capacities, as wealth and strength, while others are benefits,
as therapies? So what if you distribute them according to a more restricted
distinction and say that some goods are ends, some not ends (calling ‘ends’ those
things for the sake of which we choose the others, while those things chosen for
1
This half-line completes the elipsis in the quotation, which is Iliad 6.147-9.

3
the sake of others are ‘not ends’)? So what if someone finds out that there are
things that good simpliciter, but others that are not good in every circumstance?
Or that there are goods of the soul and goods of the body and ‘external’ goods? Or
again that, of goods, some are capacities, others dispositions and states, others still
activities; that some are ends, some materials, and some tools? And if someone
learns the ten categories from you and divides the good ten ways, what use is all
this learning for grasping Plato’s mind? You call the attributes of virtue ‘good’
(whether homonymously, or however you wish), but at the same time take other
things to be necessary for happiness, and rob virtue of its self-sufficiency. Plato
on the other considers these as things superfluous to requirements, and holds that
there is a sufficiency for happiness in virtue itself. And as long as this is so, we
can find nothing in common between you. You have your arguments, the
followers of Plato have theirs.
As there are no sure oaths between lions and men
nor do wolves and lambs share a common mind . . .
. . . so there is no friendship between Plato and Aristotle in this, the crowning and
most important doctrine, that concerning happiness. Obviously, even if they do
not bear ill-will towards each other, they are clearly saying completely opposite
things on what really matters in this area.’ (Eus. PE xv.4.1-21, 794b-798b.)
3 Again, Moses and the Hebrew prophets, and indeed Plato, who is in
agreement with them in these matters, have set out their views on universal
providence with great clarity. But Aristotle brings the realm of the divine to a halt
at the moon, and keeps the remaining parts of the cosmos fenced off from god’s
care. In this view he is also refuted by the aforementioned author, who goes
through the arguments like this:
‘Of all the things that conduce to happiness, the greatest and most
important is faith in providence. This above all keeps human life on the right
track, so long as we don’t end up unsure
Whether by justice the race of earthborn men
May scale the lofty wall,
Or by perverse deceit [Pindar fr. 213 Snell].
Plato sees all things in relation to god and as derived from god, for he says that
god ‘holds the beginning and middle and end of all things, and directly
accomplishes his purpose directly as he revolves’ [Laws 715e]. And again he says
that ‘he is good, and there is in the good no envy about anything, and he made
everything outside himself as good as possible . . . bringing it to order from
disorder’ [Tim. 29e]; he cares for everything, including men, and has taken the
trouble to brings as much order as possible to everything.’
And a little further on:
‘So Plato. But that man who casts off this divine character, excises the soul’s hope
of the hereafter, and removes all reverence for superior beings right now – what
has he in common with Plato? How could he exhort anyone to what Plato has in
mind, or give credence to his words? It is obvious that his collaboration tends in

4
precisely the opposite direction, that his aid is for those who wish to commit
injustice. For if someone were to despise the gods and think them irrelevant to
him on the grounds that, while alive he lives far away from them, and when dead
no longer exists, then, as a human being possessed of human urges, he would
readily want to indulge his desires. It is not impossible to be confident that one
can commit injustice without being found out – if it is only necessary to avoid
detection by humans. In fact it is not always necessary that you should seek to
evade notice, if you can wield power over the people who have seen you. So the
way is open for injustice where people despair of providence. In his great
benevolence, Aristotle holds out to us pleasure as something good, and offers us
release from fear of the gods – and then thinks he can provide a mechanism to
prevent injustice. He acts like a doctor who neglects to give any help while the
patient is still living, but when he has died tries to come up with mechanisms for
saving the dead. The Peripatetic is like this. For the pursuit of pleasure does
nothing to encourage injustice like a refusal to believe in divine concern. What
then? (someone might say) Do you put Aristotle and Epicurus in the same case?
Absolutely – on this matter, anyway. What difference is there as far as we are
concerned whether you locate the divine outside the cosmos and allow us no
contact with it, or whether you imprison the gods within the cosmos but keep
them away from what happens on earth? Both alike think the gods have no
concern for men, and provide the unjust with the same freedom from fear of the
gods. As to the idea that we receive some benefit from them although they remain
in their heaven: in the first place, that is something we share with irrational
creatures and inanimate objects; but then even Epicurus thinks that men get some
benefit from the gods. At any rate, they say that the superior emanations that come
from them are responsible for great goods in those who partake in them. But it is
not right to count either of them on the side of the argument for providence. On
Epicurus’ account, the effect of providence disappears, even though the gods
devote a lot of care (so he says) to the preservation of their own goods. Likewise
for Aristotle, providence will disappear even if the heavenly bodies are arranged
in due rank and order. We are looking for a providence that is distinguished by its
concern for us – and that is not available for anyone who denies that daimons and
heroes and souls in general are able to survive. In my judgement, however,
Epicurus seems to have come up with a position that is more modest as well. It is
as if he despaired of the gods’ ability to abstain from caring for men if they found
themselves in the same place: so he settled them as it were in a foreign country,
and established their home outside the cosmos, and then blamed their lack of
concern for man on their removal, their separation from everything. But this
extraordinary sleuth of nature, this unerring judge of matters divine, placed human
affairs under the very sight of the gods and left them go unheeded and uncared
for, organised by ‘nature’ rather than god’s reason. So Aristotle can’t reasonably
escape that criticism which some people level against Epicurus, namely that it was
not through his own conviction but out of fear of men that he allocated the gods
space in the universe (as if allocating a seat in the theatre). The evidence they

5
adduce for his real conviction is the fact that he denies them any activity exercised
towards us, which is the only thing that would make the existence of the gods
grounds for a proper faith. But Aristotle does the same thing. Since he sets the
gods apart, and hands faith over to sight alone – a weak faculty for making
judgements over so long a distance – it will perhaps seem to be only through
shame that he says there are gods there. For since he does not allow that there is
anything outside the cosmos, and does not bring the gods into contact with things
on earth, he had either to admit that he was a complete atheist, or else maintain the
reputation of apparently allowing the existence of the gods by exiling them
somewhere like that. To excuse the aloofness of the greater beings on the grounds
of their distance from society at least presents atheism gracefully.’
This is what Atticus had to say against Aristotle’s dismissal of the theory
of providence. He adds what follows, which is directed at his rejection of the idea
that the cosmos came to be. (Eus. PE xv.5.1-14, 798b-801a.)2
4 Moses defines the cosmos as something generated and establishes God as
the maker and craftsman of the universe. Plato’s theory is the same as Moses’.
But Aristotle takes the opposite road in this matter too, and is refuted by the
aforementioned writer, who writes this (I quote):
‘First of all, when Plato was looking into the question of the generation of
the cosmos, he also had it in mind that this great and beneficial doctrine of
providence needed thorough investigation. But he realised that there was no need
to posit an agent of creation or preservation for something that did not come into
being. So to make sure he did not deprive the cosmos of providence, he did away
with the idea that it was ungenerated. But let’s hope now that those of our own
household who suppose that Plato also thinks the cosmos ungenerated don’t get in
our way. They should forgive us if, when it comes to Plato’s beliefs, we put our
faith in what he explained to us and set out with complete clarity of expression as
a Greek speaking to Greeks. ‘God’ he says ‘took hold of all that was perceptible,
which was agitated, and in confused unordered motion, and he brought it to order
out of disorder, thinking the one a much better state than the other’ [Tim. 30a3-6].
What is more, the fact that Plato’s account of generation is not allegorical or
hermeneutical, is clear from the passage in which he has the father of the universe
speak about this after the creation of the universe. He says this: ‘Since you have
come to be’ (he is talking to the gods) ‘you are not absolutely immortal or
imperishable; but neither will you perish, since my wish is in your favour’ [Tim.
41b2-5]. But, as I said, we can settle the murmurings of our own camp with calm
and friendly refutation, since they are our friends. (For Aristotle seems to be
behind their change of mind too: they could not stand up to his criticism of Plato’s
doctrine, and didn’t want to impute to Plato a doctrine shown to be fallacious.)
But the way it sounds to us, Plato reckoned the cosmos to be the most beautiful
work of the most beautiful of craftsmen, and attributed to the maker of all a power

2
fr. 3bis ‘What is left of the snow, if you remove white and cold? What of fire if you quench the
heat? Or of honey without the sweet? Or of soul without movement? Or god without providence?’
(Alexander, Quaestiones 2.21, 69.7-10 Bruns.)

6
through which he made a cosmos which did not previously exist and, as its maker,
preserves it for as long as he wishes it preserved. The cosmos in this way is
established by Plato as something both generated and imperishing. Which of the
Peripatetics can establish all this for us? But one point on which we have to
reassure their fellow-traveller is that it is not at all necessary that something which
has come into being should perish – nor, conversely, is it necessarily the case that
what will never perish is ungenerated. For we should not admit that the sole cause
of a thing’s being imperishable is derived from its being ungenerated; not let pass
the idea that there is no remedy for a generated thing against transition to
destruction. So where are we to get any help on these points from Aristotle’s
writings? He gets his arguments on these matters not any old how, and not from
his own thinking, but by diametrical opposition to Plato. He menaces what is born
with the inevitability of death, and says that what does not die ensures its
imperishability by the sole fact of its not having been born, and thus leave god no
capacity by which he can effect any good. For what has never yet come to be, this,
he says, never can come to be. With these arguments, he is so far from helping
Plato’s account, that he has even succeeded in frightening some of Plato’s
followers by which he said into turning their back on his doctrine. They could not
understand that, although it is possible in the absence of god’s will and power to
conceive, according to the bare nature of things, that what is generated cannot be
imperishable, and what will never perish is ungenerated, nevertheless as soon as
you come to know the best cause, that which is from god, you are bound to see
that it is in control of all things, and admit that it is a cause second to none. It is
ridiculous to say that, because something has come to be, for this reason it will
perish although, if god wishes, it will not perish; or to say that because something
is ungenerated it has the power not to perish, although the will of god is incapable
of preserving any generated thing imperishable. A builder can construct a house
where one did not exist; one man is able to make a statue exist that did not exist
before, another builds a ship out of previously unworked timber and gives it to
those who want it. In fact every craftsman whose craft is productive has this
power to bring something that does not exist into being. So is it the case that the
King of Kings, the Great Architect, does not have even the power of a human
craftsman? That we were not brought into being at all? No – not if we are able to
grasp even a little understanding of the divine cause. But if he is capable of
making and wishing for what is beautiful (‘for he is good, and the good is envious
about nothing’), is he not up to caring for and preserving what has come to be?
Other craftsmen can do both: the builder and the shipwright don’t only construct
new ships and houses, but repair those that have become damaged in time,
replacing the parts that have suffered. We must acknowledge that god is
absolutely capable of as much. Surely the being capable of creating the universe
will not be incapable of making part of it? It is necessary that something new
come to be if there is to be a creator as such, and necessary that it should be
preserved – for it is an evil being that wishes to destroy what has come to be
under good conditions [cf. Tim. 41b]. And there is no greater bond for the

7
preservation of things that have come to be than the will of god. Many things that
benefited from human effort and will – peoples and cities and artefacts – remain
for an ‘extraordinarily long time’ [cf. Laws 705c] even when the will was no
longer there. So are those things that have a share of god’s attention and come
about through him and by his agency going to disappear and slip away while he is
still present? What cause can force the mind of god? The necessity of those
created things themselves? But that necessity admitted that it had been conquered
by god when submitting to creation. Some external cause that opposes god? None
exists; nor is it right to think that god can be overcome in the very arena where he
has previously prevailed and brought order – not unless we forget that we are
talking about the greatest and most divine power. But we appear to be getting
carried away by our enthusiasm for the truth. What we have set out is clear: no-
one can teach us about the generation of the cosmos unless they admit that its
generation was its beginning.’
And we must set out what he says about Aristotle’s fifth corporeal essence
(Eus. PE xv. 6.1-17, 801a-804a)
5 In the matter of the so-called ‘elements’, those primary bodies <from
which all other bodies> are constituted, Plato, like those before him, went along
with what is obvious about them, and said that there existed the four generally
recognised: fire, earth, air, water. Everything else was generated by their mixture
and movement. Aristotle apparently thought that he would acquire a reputation for
even greater intelligence if he added an extra body where it wasn’t needed, and
counted a fifth substance in addition to the four there obviously are. This was a
brilliant and generous way of treating nature; but he failed to see that the natural
scientist should investigate nature not legislate for it. So the Peripatetic has
nothing to contribute to a demonstration of the Platonists’ position that there are
four primary natures underlying bodies, and in fact is pretty well alone in
opposing. it. For we say that every body is ether warm or cold, dry or moist, soft
or hard, light or heavy, rarefied or dense; and we find that there is nothing that
participates in these qualities that is not one of the four. (If it is warm, it is fire or
air, if cold, water or earth; if it is dry, it is fire or earth, if moist, water or air; if it
is soft, it is fire or air, if hard, water or earth; what is light is also rarefied, as fire
and air; what is heavy is also dense, as water and earth.) And taking into account
all the other simple qualities [dunameis], we understand that there cannot be any
body besides these. This man alone opposes the position, asserting the possibility
of a body with no share in these qualities, a body neither heavy nor light, neither
soft nor hard, neither wet nor dry – a body that he only just stops short of saying is
not a body at all. For he leaves it the name, but he deprives it of all the qualities
which make a body. So he must either persuade us of his own assertions, and
divorce us form Plato’s view, or confirm Plato’s doctrines and turn his back on
Aristotle’s. In either case, he is of no use for understanding Plato.
Again, Plato thinks that corporeal entities can change and turn into each
other, insofar as they are understood to be products of a single, homogeneous
matter. Aristotle on the other hand does not want to be thought of as the

8
progenitor of some lowly thing, and thinks that, on top of the others, there is a
substance that is impassible, imperishable, and completely unchangeable. He is
not saying anything new or original at all, but only transferring to inappropriate
objects what Plato quite rightly saw to be the case with certain other things – a bit
like modern sculptors. They copy the head of one man, the chest of another, the
waist of a third, and sometimes bring things together which don’t belong with
each other, and tell themselves that they have made something original. And
indeed the composite, which is reprehensible for its lack of proportion, is theirs,
but the parts which make it up and do have some beauty in them are not theirs. In
the same way, Aristotle heard from Plato that there is some intelligible substance,
essentially incorporeal, colourless, and intangible, which neither came to be nor
perishes, and does not move or change, but is ‘always the same thing and the
same in quality’ [Sophist 248a]; and heard, again, that the heavenly bodies are
divine and imperishable and impassible bodies. He put these two ideas together,
and glued together from them things that are inharmonious. From one he took the
idea of what it is to be body, from the other what it is to be impassible, and he
constructed an impassible body. As to the statues: there may be nothing beautiful
about the kind made of different parts, but at least it is not an impossibility.
Homer himself teaches us about such things:
In eyes (he says) and head like Zeus who delights in thunder
his waist like that of Ares, his chest like Poseidon’s [Iliad 2.478-9].
But there could never be an impassible body. It is bound by nature to
passibility and mutability, and must necessarily be affected along with what it is
joined to. And if there is something impassible, thus must be released from what
is affected and free of it – so that it would be without matter; and without this is
must necessarily be agreed that it is incorporeal.’
Let’s attend to all the further matters in which he shows that Aristotle
differs from Plato. (Eus. PE xv. 7.1-7, 804b-806a)
6 ‘There are many other points on which he differs on top of his [or: in
consequence of this?] Plato says that the heavenly bodies take the greater part of
their form from fire, while Aristotle says that the heavenly bodies do not partake
in fire at all. Plato, speaking of the sun, says that god kindled a light in the second
orbit around the earth so that it could illuminate the whole heaven as much as
possible. Aristotle, since he does not think that the sun is fire, but knowing that
light is pure fire, or some fiery substance, does not admit that light is kindled
about it. Again, Plato attributes imperishablity to the appearance of the heavenly
bodies, and says that there are commensurate processes of material loss and
accretion. The facts themselves constrain him to say this: the rays of the sun and
the heat that flows from it force him to admit loss, and the constant level of
illumination of its size that there is accretion. (He would not have thought that
things could appear the same in size if they did not acquire something in place of
what they lost.) But Aristotle thinks their substance remains absolutely the same,
with nothing lost and nothing added. Again, in addition to the movement common

9
to all stars, by which both fixed stars and planets are bound to their spheres, Plato
adds another motion – one which in any case is extremely beautiful and
appropriate to their physical nature. For, being spherical, it is reasonable that they
should have a spherical motion, spinning as they move. But Aristotle takes away
from them this motion which makes their movement that of animated beings, and
leaves them only the motion they derive from each other, each from the spheres
that surround it – a motion that is suitable for inanimate objects. And then he says
that the impression we get that the stars are moving is an affect of our own sight,
which is weak and (so to speak) shaky: it is not true. As if Plato acquired the
conviction that the stars moved from this impression, and not from reason! This
teaches us that each star, since it is an animal, and has soul and body, must
necessarily be moved by its own motion: ‘for every body whose source of
movement is external is inanimate, and those whose source of motion is internal is
animate’ [Phdr. 245e]. And since a star is divine, its motion is the most beautiful
possible; and since the most beautiful motion is circular, that is how it moves.
Perception can witness to the truth of what is inferred by reason, but it does not
itself furnish grounds for conviction about the motion.
On the matter of the motion of the universe, Aristotle is kept in check by
what is obviously the case, and does not argue with Plato by suggesting that it is
not circular. But his beautiful discovery of a new body gives him the occasion for
differing here too. For Plato attributed the circular motion to the soul, since the
four elements have motions that are by nature absolutely simple and straight: fire
moves outwards, earth towards the middle, and the others to the intervening
region. But Aristotle, in order to give a different motion to each body, assigned
circular motion, as one kind of bodily motion, to the fifth body. He deceived
himself all too easily. For heaviness and lightness furnish the source of motion to
the bodies which move in a straight line, so the fifth body, which is neither heavy
nor light, should be motionless; but the cause of movement for things that move in
a straight line is not the pattern of circular motion, but inclination; for not only is
it the case that a body placed in the centre of some regular space cannot tend to
either side, it is also the case that, if it is placed in a circle around any other body
whatsoever, it does not have any reason to tend in any direction ‘whether to the
right towards dawn and the sun, or whether to the left’ [Iliad 12.239-40], whether
forward or backward.3 Again, when other bodies are thrust out of their proper
places their tendency towards them provides with their self-movement. But this
fifth body never strays from its proper place, so it ought to stay still.
And even ignoring the fifth body, Aristotle fails to say the same as Plato
3
My translation follows des Places, who relies on Thillet’s interpretation of the text as it stands in
the MSS. Gaisford translates Estienne’s emended text thus (with Estienne’s insertions indicated):
‘For to bodies which move in a straight line their heaviness or lightness supplied a source of
motion: but the fifth body, partaking neither of heaviness nor lightness, was rather <a cause of>
immobility, and not of motion in a circle. <For if> to bodies that move in a straight line <the
cause> of their motion is not their shape, but the inclination of their weight, a body, not only when
placed in the centre of any like body, will have no inclination in any direction, but, also, when set
in a circle round any kind of body whatever, will have no cause of inclination towards anything.’

10
about the other four, apparently out of a spirit of contention. Plato looked into the
question of whether a body was heavy or light by nature; but since these terms are
applied according to how a thing stands to ‘up’ and ‘down’, he also looked into
the question of whether or not there is something naturally ‘up’ and something
naturally ‘down’. He clearly showed that for each body, ‘down’ should refer to its
proper place, the place to which it tends, whereas ‘up’ should apply in each case
to places foreign to it, from which it returns. He set out heavy and light according
to the same disposition; and above all he showed that neither their middle nor
their periphery can reasonably be called up or down. Aristotle on the other hand
objects, thinking that he should do everything he can to undermine him, and tries
to get us to use the term heavy of what is borne to the centre, and light what is
borne to the periphery: the place in the middle he calls ‘down’ and the periphery
‘up’.’
This is how widely they differ over the comos and the heavenly bodies
which make it up. So much for their views: Moses and the Hebrew oracles do not
bother with these things – quite rightly, since they are reckoned to do nothing to
help those concerned with them achieve better lives. (Eus. PE xv. 8.1-12, 806b-
808c)
7 ‘And what can we add in the matter of the soul? It is clear, not only to
philosophers, but to pretty well all laymen too, that Plato held the soul to be
immortal, wrote a great deal about this, and in many places and in various ways
proved that the soul is immortal. There has also been great competition on behalf
of the doctrine and of Plato among the Platonists – in fact this is almost the only
thing that unites the whole movement. For the ethical system he proposes follows
the soul’s immortality: it is through the divinity of the soul that virtue is able to
maintain its importance and brilliance and vigour; and the natural world has the
ability to be well ordered through the soul’s organisation. ‘For,’ he says, ‘all soul
cares for every inanimate being, and ranges through the whole heaven, in different
forms at different times’ [Phdr. 246c]. Plato connects knowledge and wisdom to
the immortality of the soul as well. For all learning is recollection, and he thinks
that there is no other way of accounting for inquiry and learning, the sources of
knowledge. If the soul is not immortal, there is no recollection; in this case there
is no learning. So absolutely all of Plato’s doctrines are fixed to and dependent on
the divinity and immortality of the soul – and anyone who does not agree with this
overturns the whole of Plato’s philosophy. So who was it who first tried to
develop proofs against the idea, and deprive the soul of immortality and the rest of
its significance? Who else but Aristotle. Of other philosophers, some agreed that
the soul persisted [sc. after death], while others, even if they did not believe this,
still attributed to the soul what capacity the body has, its movement and works
and actions. But Aristotle strove – with as much energy as Plato devoted to
honouring the soul as the principle of generation, the ‘student of god’, and the
overseer of all things – to destroy and dishonour it and more or less show it to be
nothing at all. For he said that it was not pneuma or fire, or any kind of body; but
neither was it incorporeal, such as to exist and move on its own account; nor again

11
was it, so far as the body was concerned, unmoved and, as it were, inanimate. He
was so bold – or rather he was compelled – to remove the ‘primary movements’
form the soul: deliberation, thought, anticipation, memory, calculation. For
‘Nature’s Secretary’ (as they call him) denied that these are movements of the
soul. Here’s someone we can rely on to understand about the world external to us
– someone who is so mistaken about his own soul that he does not realise that it
thinks! It is, he says, not the soul, but the person who does each of these things –
the soul remaining unmoved. (His follower Dicaearchus, who was able to see the
consequence, did away with the soul’s substantial reality altogether.) That the soul
is something invisible, something not apparent, is obvious, so that we cannot grant
the existence of the soul on the basis of what is clear to the senses. But while it is
not apparent, its movements compel us to admit that the soul is something.
Everyone, it seems, knows that the soul is responsible for deliberation and
investigation, and every kind of thinking whatsoever. For when we think about the
body and its capacities, we also reflect that these activities are not like those of the
body; and we concede that the deliberative faculty in us – the soul – is something
different. How else did we come to believe in the existence of the soul? So if
someone removes those activities by which the soul manifests itself and attributes
them to something else, he would seem to have left us no evidence for its
existence or purpose. What help can someone who wants to prove the immortality
of the soul derive from a man by whom the soul is slain? Where is the account of
how it moves (how it comes to be self-moved, as we say) among those who
altogether deny motion to it?
Fine: but someone might say that he agrees with Plato about the
immortality of intellect. For even if he does not allow the whole soul to be
immortal, he does admit that the intellect is divine and imperishable. He
presumably has his own answer to the questions of what the essence and the
nature of the intellect is, where it comes from, how it enters people, and where it
goes off to again – if, that is, he understands anything about his own discussions
of the intellect, and wasn’t just avoiding refutation by wrapping up the difficulty
of the matter in the obscurity of his language, like cuttle-fish which produce
darkness making them hard to catch. But in any case he completely disagrees with
Plato in these matters. For Plato says that it is impossible for there to be intellect
without soul, but he separates the intellect from the soul. And as to immortality:
Plato gives it to the intellect along with the soul, and says that it is not possible in
any other way; but Aristotle says that immortality comes to the intellect on its
own, in separation from the soul. He did not think that the soul left the body, as
Plato did; but he severed the intellect from the soul – something that Plato said
was impossible.
So Atticus. (PE xv. 9.1-14, 808d-811a)

7bis Then he goes on, after a bit, to add this:

‘Everything that others have said about the soul bring shame on us. For
how is it not shameful to say that the soul is the ‘entelecheia of a natural organic

12
body’? How is is not utterly shameful to suggest that it is ‘relatively-disposed
breath’ or ‘intelligent fire’ lit up or hardened by contact with the surrounding cold,
as if tempered by the air; or to hypothesise that it is a collection of atoms; or to
represent it as coming to be from any corporeal thing at all? Plato in the Laws
calls this ‘impiety of impieties’ [891d]. All these theories are full of shame; but
no-one would feel shame, he says, in the face of someone who says that it is a
self-moving substance.’ (Eus. PE xv. 11.4, 813cd)
8 ‘Again, Plato says that the soul puts everything in order ‘pervading
everything’; that it is that which everyone else too can agree puts each thing in
order; that nature is nothing other than soul; and that soul is clearly not irrational.
From all this he infers that everything comes about according to providence – if,
that is, everything comes about according to nature. But Aristotle agrees with us
about none of this. He denies that nature is soul and says that, while things on
earth are organised by nature, they are not organised by soul. For he claims that
there are different causes for each thing. For heavenly bodies which ‘always
remain the same thing in the same way’ he posits fate as cause; for sub-lunary
things he posits nature; for human affairs, he posits intelligence and foresight and
soul. He shows subtlety in these distinctions, but does not identify reasons why
they must hold. For if there is not a single animate power ‘pervading all’ and
‘binding everything and keeping it together’, the universe could not be arranged in
a reasonable or beautiful way. It would be as short-sighted to hope that a city
could ever come to be well arranged without a unifying principle as it is to think
that one could advance an argument to preserve this universe, supremely beautiful
as it obviously is, which did not bind it together and harmonise its parts by having
them share in one common thing. Aristotle, then, said that there was something
like this, which pervades everything as a principle of motion; but he would not
allow that it is soul – even though Plato had shown that soul is the ‘principle and
source’ of motion for all moving things. What ought to be work of rational,
thinking soul, namely to ‘make nothing in vain’, this Aristotle attributes to nature.
But he does not let nature a share in the word ‘soul’ – as if things are understood
by the words for them, rather than their capacities.’ (Eus. PE xv. 12.1-4, 813d-
814d)
9 ‘The chief and determinative feature of Platonism, the scheme set out
concerning the forms, has met with disdain and insult and has been abused by
Aristotle in every way possible for him. He could not understand the theory, since
things so great, divine, and transcendent require a like faculty for their
comprehension. But he relied on his own feeble and base cleverness, which was
able to skulk about in terrestrial matters and see the truth in them, but was not up
to surveying the field of genuine truth [Phdr. 248b]. He appealed to himself as the
measure and criterion of things that were greater than him, and did not grasp the
particular nature of those things as Plato did. He dared to call the highest entities
‘waffle’ and ‘chatter’ and ‘nonsense’. The pinnacle and greatest achievement of
Plato’s philosophy is the doctrine of the intelligible and eternal substance
possessed by forms; ‘in that direction lies the soul’s greatest labour and struggle’.

13
Anyone who shares in it and achieves this end is completely happy. Anyone who
falls short and fails to see it is left with no share in happiness at all. This is why
Plato struggles everywhere to show the power of these natures. For he says that
one cannot properly express the cause of anything, except by referring to
participation in forms. Nor can one allow that there is knowledge of any truth that
does not have reference to them. Anyone who denies their reality [ousia] is bereft
of reason. Those who have come together to understand Plato’s philosophy
necessarily devote their greatest energies to the arguments on this matter, for
nothing of Plato is left if you don’t agree with them (and through them, with
Plato) about these principal and primary entities. It is in these matters that Plato
far exceeds everyone else. He conceived of god in relation to them as father of all,
as demiurge, lord and guardian; and he recognised in the case of men’s work that
the craftsman must first conceive what he is to make, and then bring about the
likeness in the actual things according to what he conceived. Well, it’s the same.
The conceptions of god are prior to the things he makes: they are incorporeal and
intelligible paradigms of the things which come to be. They are always the same,
existing pre-eminently and principally, but are contributory causes of every other
thing being the kind of thing it is, each according to its similarity with them. So
Plato perceived things that are not easily seen, nor even capable of being clearly
explained in words; and he dealt with them as far as it was possible to speak and
think about them, and to prepare those who were to follow on afterwards. He
arranged the whole of his philosophy with this in view: he says that in these things
and their understanding are rooted wisdom and knowledge, through which comes
the human end and the most blessed form of life.’
So much for Atticus – though there is more I could have quoted . . . (Eus. PE
xv. 13.1-6, 814d-816b)

?? On the Soul ??

10 There is much disagreement among Platonists themselves. Some, as

Plotinus and Porphyry, rank the kinds and parts of life, along with their activities,
under one system and one form; others, as Numenius, set them at war with each
other. Others still, as Atticus and Plutarch, bring them from conflict to harmony:
they say that there is unordered and irregular movement at first, but then come
movements which bring order and regularity; and thus they weave harmony from
both of them. (Iamblichus ap. Stob. Ecl. i. 374.21-375.5 W)

11 Atticus and <some other> Platonists4 do not agree, but think that there is
only one mode of encounter by which complete souls join with bodies. They
always and in every case of the embodiment of a soul posit an irrational,
disorganised soul in the matter, and say that it acquires an affinity with reason
4
Reading < > < > ω , the text printed by des Places. But an
easier emendation might be: (‘Atticus and Plutarch . . .’).

14
when it has been brought to order. (Iamblichus ap. Stob. Ecl. i. 379.25-380.5 W)

?? Commentary on the Timaeus ??

12 Atticus, teacher of Harpocration, identifies the demiurge with the good,

although he is called ‘good’ by Plato not ‘the good’, and is called intellect, and the
good is the cause of every substance and is itself beyond substance, as we are
taught in the Republic. And what could he say about the paradigm? For either it is
prior to the demiurge, in which case there will be something superior to the good,
or it is in the demiurge, and the first principle will be many; or it is after the
demiurge, in which case the good is turned towards things posterior to it and
contemplates them. (Proclus, in Tim. i. 305.6-16 Diehl.)

13 As a carpenter makes all kinds of wooden things, (says Atticus), but

different things to different designs –– one for a pedestal, another for a couch – so
god, insofar as he is good, makes everything like himself, making them good, but
as far as the forms which distinguish the essence of each is concerned, he makes
them with an eye to the paradigm-causes. (Proclus in Tim. i. 366.9-13 Diehl)

14 I’m amazed to find the assiduous Atticus talk about a ‘double krater’ – and
this from someone who is accustomed to follow the words of the text very closely.
Nevertheless, he talks about the ‘double krater’ in his exegesis of the Phaedrus as
well. (Proclus, in Tim. iii. 247.12-15 Diehl.)

15 Some people, making only the rational soul immortal, have it that the
whole of the non-rational animal, including the vehicle of the soul, is destroyed.
(They think that they only exist for the soul’s descent to the realm of becoming.)
Only the intellect is immortal, as being single, and stable, and like the gods and
not subject to destruction. This is what the older <Platonists> thought–I mean
Atticus and Albinus–judging that they were following the letter of Plato’s text,
when he says that the irrational soul is destroyed and calls it mortal. (Proclus, in
Tim. iii. 234.9-18 Diehl.)

16 Except for this, Atticus indicates the matter correctly: it is likely that the
person who is missing here is one of Timaeus’ unnamed friends. (Proclus, in Tim.
i. 20.21-3 Diehl.)

17 Atticus the Platonists says that Theopompus has maliciously falsified

history: for at his time, some people came from Sais to revive their kinship with
the Athenians. But Plato said about these things that the Saites were ‘friends of
Athens’, and ‘family, in some sense’. He could have said this because their cities
share a guardian deity. (Proclus, in Tim. i. 97.30 - 98.6 Diehl.)

15
18 Plato does not say that the demiurge always looks at everything, as Atticus
thinks, but that the intelligible is always in he same state – unless Atticus
understands by ‘always looks’ that he prevents what is not beautiful finding
access to creation by sometimes seeing and sometimes not. For as long as he is
demiurge, then, let him look to the eternal, so that he might make his creation like
himself and beautiful. (Proclus, in Tim. i. 271.31-272.6 Diehl.)

19 Plutarch and Atticus and many other Platonists take <Plato’s use of the
word> ‘creation’ in a temporal sense, and they say that the point at issue is
whether the cosmos is created or not in time. For before the cosmos was made,
there was disorderly movement; but time always accompanies movement, so there
was time before the universe. However, time in the sense of a measure of cosmic
movement came into being with the universe. The other sort of time existed
before the universe as the measure of unordered movement. (Proclus, in Tim. i.
276.30-277.7 Diehl.)

20 But let’s follow the extraordinary hypotheses of Atticus. He says that the
‘irregular and unordered movements’ are without beginning, but that the cosmos
came to be in time. Let us say about this that it is well said that the cosmos ‘came
to be’. (Proclus, in Tim. i. 288.27-30.)

21 If this is not the case, then Atticus’ arguments is invalid and inconclusive .
. . So much against Atticus. (Proclus, in Tim. i. 284.5-6, 285.6-7.)

22 By the same argument it will be clear why one should not say with Atticus
and Plutarch that the ‘irregular’ which was before the cosmos is ‘ungenerated’: for
if nothing generated came to be before the heavens, it would be ridiculous to ask
whether the cosmos came to be in addition to what was eternal or what was
generated. But this is exactly what Plato does now ask. Hence there was
something generated before the cosmos. (Proclus, in Tim. i. 325.30 - 326.5 Diehl)

23 Followers of Plutarch of Chaeronea and Atticus persistently cite these

words as showing that the creation of the cosmos happened in time; and they say
that unordered matter pre-existed, before creation, and that the maleficent soul
pre-existed which was responsible for its chaotic movement. For where does
movement come from if not soul? And if the movement is unordered, then it
comes from an unordered soul. For it is said in the Laws that the good soul
teaches upright and wise things, but the evil soul moves without order and
governs what is ruled by it without measure. But when the creative activity of the
demiurge is brought to bear, matter changes into the structure of the cosmos, and
the evil soul, partaking of intellect, is made wise and moves in an orderly way: for
what leads the former to order is participation in form; the latter, the presence of
intellect. (Proclus in Tim. i. 381.26-382.12 Diehl.)

16
24 Concerning matter itself, one might ask whether it is created by no cause,
as followers of Plutarch and Atticus say, or whether it is created and, if so, by
what cause. (Proclus, in Tim. i. 384.2-5 Diehl.)

25 Harpocration and Atticus, who understand Plato to have said in the

Timaeus that the cosmos was generated in time, have an answer for Aristotle.
Aristotle in the de caelo criticises the divine Plato for saying both that the cosmos
is generated in time (as he himself thinks) and that it is imperishable.
Harpocration and Atticus reply that the cosmos is perishable in its own nature, but
remains imperishable through the will of God. However, the philosopher does
well to point out to them that if you can talk about something perishable in its
own nature which came to be perishable, why not say that something generated,
something which came to be in time, can be ungenerated ‘through the will of the
demiurge’? In fact Plato meant ‘generated’ in the sense of being caused, not in a
temporal sense . . . The right answer to Aristotle is to say that since Plato thinks
the cosmos ‘generated’ in the sense of being caused, not in the sense of coming to
be in time, he can quite reasonably say that it is not destructible. (scholion ad
Procl., in Remp. ii. 377.15-378.6 Kroll.)

26 So let’s get to grips briefly with Porphyry’s pious thoughts on these things.
First, he deals with the followers of Atticus, who suggest that there are many
principles joining the demiurge and forms to each other. They also say that matter,
moved by ungenerated, irrational, maleficent soul, is borne along in a ‘confused
and disorderly’ manner. They make matter temporally prior to the perceptible,
irrationality to reason, disorder to order. (Proclus, in Tim. i. 391.4-12 Diehl [= A4
part: see Addenda])

27 But on other occasions they say something different, that god does exist
without creating – showing their ignorance of the fact that true capacities are
exercised just by existing (Proclus, in Tim. i. 393.1-3 Diehl [=A4 part: see
Addenda])

28 Thirdly, Porphyry shows that the maker which they [sc. ‘followers of
Atticus’] take to be a principle, has nothing to do with Plato. For forms [ideai] do
not exist on their own separated from the intellect: rather, the intellect turning into
itself sees all the forms [eidê] (this is why the Athenian Stranger likens the
activity of the intellect to the revolution of a ‘ball made on a lathe’ [Laws 898b]).
They make the forms inactive, like clay models, existing on their own and lying
outside the intellect. Nor is the demiurge the very first god: for he must be greater
than all intelligible substance. Nor does any irrational soul move what is borne in
an ‘irregular and unorderly’ manner: for all soul is the offspring of the gods. Nor
in general is the universe produced by organising what was disorderly. (Proclus,
in Tim. i. 393.31 - 394.12 Diehl = A4 part: see Addenda)

17
29 The phrase ‘was going to be at a certain moment’ [Tim. 34b1] does not
indicate a beginning in time, as Atticus thinks, but that the cosmos has substance
yoked to time . . . So this ‘certain moment’ is not a part of time. (Proclus, in Tim.
ii. 100.1-3, 6 Diehl.)

30 The terms ‘prior’ and ‘posterior’ are not to be taken temporally, as Atticus
takes them . . . but in order of being. What is closer to the demiurge is ‘prior’,
what is further from him ‘posterior’. (Proclus, in Tim. ii. 114.33-115.3 Diehl)

31 If there were no movement, there would have been no irregular movement.

So in vain do the followers of Atticus say that there was time before the
generation of the heavens, but not ordered time. Wherever there is time, there is
before and after, and where there are these things, there is absolute past and
future. But the past and the future are kinds of time created by the demiurge: this
is why Plato called them created things. So there was no time before creation.
(Proclus, in Tim. iii. 37.11-18 Diehl).

32 Come: if things are dissoluble in themselves, but indissoluble by the will

of the father, as Severus, Atticus and Plutarch used to say . . . how do they come
to be dissoluble in themselves? (Proclus, in Tim. iii. 212.6-11 Diehl.)

33 By ‘individual’ and ‘generic’ [sc. as used by Plato at Timaeus 30c7-8]

some – like Atticus – have said that he divides atomic from shared forms. Such
people call ‘atomic forms’ the immediate causes of individuals (man-itself, as it
might be; or horse-itself, and so on through each species); but the genera are
wider and more all-embracing than these. (Proclus, in Tim. i. 425.11-16 Diehl.)

34 Atticus, considering this text [Timaeus 30d2-31a1], was not sure whether
the Demiurge was contained in the intelligible Animal. It seems that, if he were
contained, he would not be complete: for living parts, he says, are imperfect, and
because of this things that resemble them are not beautiful. But if he were not
contained, the Animal itself would not embrace all intelligibles. Finding himself
in this quandary, he thought it easier to put the Demiurge above the Animal-itself.
(Proclus, in Tim. i. 431.14-20 Diehl.)

35 Among earlier thinkers, some made the soul’s substance mathematical, as

being something between the physical and the metaphysical. Of these, some say
that it is number, and construct it from the monad (as indivisible) and the
indefinite dyad (as divisible); but others make it geometrical, having its being in a
combination of the point and the interval – the former being indivisible, the latter
divisible. The former view is held by followers of Aristander and Numenius
[39dP] and many other commentators; the latter by Severus [12T Gioè]. Those
considering it [i.e. the substance of the soul] as physical call the irrational soul
that pre-exists the rational ‘divisible substance’, and divine soul ‘indivisible’; and
from the two they make the rational soul: the one as bringing order, the other as

18
underlying. Such are Plutarch and Atticus. And they say that the soul is
ungenerated as far as its substrate is concerned, but generated in form. (Proclus, in
Tim. ii. 153.25-154.1 Diehl)

36 Atticus takes the word logos here to refer to the soul’s faculty of attention;
Porphyry to the charioteer who drives the two horses; Iamblichus takes it to refer
to the whole soul: for it moves its whole self and the understanding (logos) of the
things that are comes through its whole self. All of these interpretations seem to
grasp Plato’s intention . . . (Proclus, in Tim. i. 306.1-6 Diehl.)

37 The prolix Atticus, lover of Plato, sets out his beloved’s opinions and says
somewhere that he studies the nature and order of the cosmos, which is such that
it is neither ungenerated nor eternal, but created by a god greater in power and
more perfect and prior and intelligible. For as something that can be seen and
touched it would be extraordinary if it were ungenerated. How can we fail to say
that those things whose substance needs help to exist are created and preserved by
their creator? He criticises Aristotle as laughable since he agrees that the universe
is something that can been seen and touched, something corporeal; yet in his
arrogance he makes it ungenerated and imperishable. (Aeneas of Gaza,
Theophrastus 85, 964ab.)

38a I shall pass by the followers of Plutarch and Atticus who, as everyone
agrees, declared outright that Plato thought the cosmos created in time, and set
themselves up against everyone who thought the opposite. People who teach our
doctrine have already given long extracts from them in their own works – notably
the leader of the Caesarean Church, Eusebius. (Philoponus, de aet. mund. iv. 27,
211.10-18 Rabe.)

38b Let us leave alone Atticus and Plutarch and anyone else who thinks that
Plato said the world was generated in time. (Philoponus, de aet. mund. xiii. 15,
519.22-5 Rabe.)

39 The followers of Atticus did not need to look only at the passages in the
Timaeus which make god absent, then present where he was absent; they could
also look at passages in the Politicus which make him present, then absent from
where he was present. And as they make order from disorder in the former
passage, so can one make disorder from order in the latter. (Philoponus, de aet.
mund. xviii, 606.16-22 Rabe.)

?? Commentary on the Categories ??

40 There are things in the realm of the complex and divided and plural, of
what sink into generation and the material; but there are other things which are
perfectly simple, and single in form, and untouched by generation and matter.
What is so amazing if we separate these things that are so different from each
other? So we don’t envy the Platonists Plutarch and Atticus and Democritus for

19
this, that they think that the universal principles subsisting eternally in the
substance of soul are Forms. It is true that they distinguish these [‘universal
principles’] from those things that perceptible objects have in common [τῶν ἐν
τοῖς αἰσθητοῖς κοινοτήτων]; but one must not go on to confuse the thoughts of
the soul and the so-called enmattered intellect with paradigmatic and matterless
forms and demiurgic thoughts. As the divine Plato says, our intellect is unified
and numerically one in its discursive thought, and is recollection of those things
that we saw when we once walked with god; but the divine is unchanging in
respect of them. They should follow the same division, if they wish to be
Platonists. (Syrianus, in Met. vi.1, 105.36-8 (wider context: 105.32-106.5))

41 Nicostratus has raised another problem about homonyms: Atticus has set
out the problem more clearly. For if it is a definition of synonyms that they have a
shared name and a shared definition, and homonyms have a shared name (being
called ‘homonyms’) and the definition of a homonym (for it is true to say of every
homonym that it has only a shared name, but the account of the essence going
with the name is different), then homonyms are synonyms. But synonyms are
synonyms. Therefore everything that has the same name is a synonym.
Porphyry solves this problem by saying that nothing prevents the same
things being both homonyms and synonyms depending on how you refer to them.
So the Aiantes can be called ’Aiantes’ and ‘men’: insofar as they are ‘men’ they
are synonyms; insofar as they are each Ajax, they are homonyms. So in turn the
homonyms Ajax and Ajax are, insofar as they are homonyms, synonyms; but
insofar as they are Ajax and Ajax, they are homonyms.
But someone could easily attack this and say insofar as homonyms are
homonyms they are not homonyms (but synonyms): and insofar as they are not
homonyms but the Aiantes, to this extent they are homonyms. And perhaps there
is nothing strange: if the nature of homonyms is shared, then things partaking in
them are synonyms, since both are homonyms; but if it the name that is shared,
then, since the things partaking in it do not partake of a shared nature, but only the
shared name (as that of Ajax), to this extent they are homonyms.
Another example: the disyllable, considered as ‘disyllable’, is not
disyllabic but tettrasyllabic; but considered as Dio or Crates (or anything else that
does not share the nature of the disyllable), it partakes in the dissyllable and to this
extent is disyllabic: there is nothing strange there. Homonyms too, then, insofar as
they partake of the shared nature of the homonym, are not homonyms, but
synonyms; but insofar as they partake not of the nature of the homonym, but only
the shared name, to this extent they are homonyms.
Someone might say that partaking in the nature of the homonym is nothing
other than partaking in the shared name alone: for this is the nature of a
homonym, since this is its definition. In this case again, insofar as it is a
homonym it turns out to be a synonym. The reply to this is that words for things
(both distinctive and shared) have primary predication, but the terms
homonymous or synonymous are not predicated primarily. They apply through a
certain coincidence between words. When the name of Ajax is so partaken of that
only the name is common to the things partaking, the participation is a

20
homonymy; but when the homonymy is so partaken of that not the name only is
shared by those thing partaking, insofar as they are called homonymy, but they
partake also in the very nature of the homonym, then the form of participation is a
synonym.
These are the problems raised about homonyms, and such are the solutions
to the problems. At this point there are commentators who number the types of
homonym. They say that at the highest level, there are two meanings to the term
homonymy. There are (A) those that come about by chance, as in the case of
Alexander (- Paris, - of Macedon); and (B) those that come about deliberately,
when someone gives them the same name on purpose for some reason [ for
]. The type that comes from chance, since it is adventitious and undefined,
remains undivided. But the type that comes about deliberately has four divisions.
(B1) Some come from similarity: among these is the example of ‘animal’ (- the
man, - the picture) which Aristotle himself gives to illustrate homonymy: for the
name is shared, but the definition is different, since a man is an animals as being a
perceiving ensouled substance, but a picture or sculpture of a man is an ‘animal’
through its similarity to a perceiving ensouled substance. (B2) The second
deliberate type is that from analogy, as in the case of ‘source’ which is said
homonymously of the monad in respect of numbers, and the point in respect of
line, the spring of rivers, and the heart of animals. For as monad is to number, so
in the other cases – which is the distinguishing characteristic of analogy. (B3) The
third deliberate type arises when a predicate is shared among a diverse range of
things, as a medical book from medicine, because it contains a transcription of
medical wisdom; medical drug, because it is useful for a cure. The name is shared,
but the definition is different. (B4) The fourth type is when differences are
referred to a single end, and the things gets its appellation from this : e.g. healthy
food and healthy drugs and exercise and so on are named for health, as their end. (
42a Some people join these last two (that from a single thing [B3] and that
with an eye to some single thing [B4]) into a single class; others count them
neither as homonyms nor as synonyms, but as something in between the two.
They are like synonyms because they partake of some common account
(medicines from medicine, healthy things from health: it is not only the name that
is shared); but they are not synonyms because they do not partake in the same way
(for the book that encompasses medical knowledge is not medical in the same
way as the scalpel, not is a drug and a walk healthy in the same way). And some
people, including Atticus, take the metaphorical type [B1] along with the
analogical [B2], and say that the two make a single type of homonymy. The claim
is worth looking at. For Porphyry says that: “when a thing has its own name, but
someone refers to it in another way by catachresis, transferring to it the name of
some other thing and using this as applying it, then this would not be any kind of
homonymy (for names used as tropes would not by homonyms for the things
called by the proper terms); but when things do not stand like this, then
homonymies arise. E.g. The lower part of mountains is called the hyporia (‘They
inhabit the hyporia of many-springed Ida’ [Il. 20.218]). But these hyporias the
poets call the ‘foot’: ‘The whole foot of many-springed Ida shook’ [Il. 20.59].
And they also call the things that raise a couch or table of the floor a ‘foot’, and

21
the rudder of a ship (‘For he kept guiding the ship’s foot’, says the poet [Od.
10.32]).” Of these, says Porphyry, one should not say that the ‘foot’ of the ship or
the mountain is said homonymously, because they have their own names (hyporia,
rudder); but in the case of table and couch they are not metaphors, but
homonymies: for they do not have any other name, and the appellation ‘foot’ is
applied to them metaphorically – unless something is a similarity, and for this
reason a homonymy. So Porphyry, in his [Commentary on the Categories] By
Question and Answer says that the foot of a ship is so-called metaphorically,
saying that it is properly called a rudder; but in the Ad Gedalium he says that the
foot of a mountain is so called metaphorically, but that of a ship homonymously:
for there is no other word for it, though there he had said that it is called a rudder.
Perhaps he is right in both passages, if in the one he means ‘rudder’ by ‘foot’, but
in the other a part of the mast, for which there is no other word; though it seems
that he is talking about the rudder there too, since he applied to it the line ‘For he
kept guiding the ship’s foot’, which is talking about the rudder. (41 = Simplicius,
in Cat. viii, 30.16-17; 42a = 32.19-21 Kalbfleisch; whole = 30.16-33.21 K)

42b Q: Since one type of homonymy, you say, is by analogy, is there a type
that is by metaphor? <. . .>
A: A lot of people, Atticus among them, make the mistake of saying that
homonymy by metaphor and by analogy form one type, confusing that by
metaphor with that by analogy.
Q: So tell me clearly what you want to say.
A: Well, I say that a word is used metaphorically when a thing has its own
name, but someone refers to it in another way by catachresis, transferring to it the
name of some other thing and using this as applying it, then this would not be any
kind of homonymy (for names used as tropes would not by homonymys for the
things called by the proper terms); but when things do not stand like this, then
homonymies arise. E.g. The lower part of mountains is called the hyporia (‘They
inhabit the hyporia of many-springed springed Ida’ [Il. 20.218]). But these
hyporias the poets call the ‘foot’: ‘The whole foot of many-springed Ida shook’
[Il. 20.59]. And they also call the things that raise a couch or table of the floor a
‘foot’, and the rudder of a ship (‘For he kept guiding the ship’s foot’, says the poet
[Od. 10.32]. In these cases, one should not say that the foot of the ship and the
foot of Ida are homonyms. The thing that keeps a ship straight is properly called a
‘rudder’. Nor should one call the foot of the mountain a homonym: the word for it
is hyporia. But in the case of table and couch one should not say it is a metaphor
but a homonym: in the case of the couch and the table, the word for the thing that
raises the whole surface is derived by analogy from the feet of animals. That is
why one should only count among homonyms those things which only have a
name in common. But the name for these part of a couch and table is ‘feet’,
whereas in the case of the mountain and the ship, the words are hyporia and
rudder, the word ‘foot’ being transferred to them for different reasons. It can be
called a metaphor, but not a homonymy. For you would not say that homonymy
came about by similarity: what similarity does the hyporia have to the feet of an
animal? The hyporia is called ‘foot’ metaphorically , not homonymously (unless
some homonym is appropriate to the mountain, because the hyporia is called

22
‘foot’ as is the foot of a man, and the word ‘foot’ is common, but the account
different, the word being shared in the metaphor too). That’s why this is worth
investigating. (Porphyry, in Cat. iv.1, 66.34-67 [66.29 - 67.32] Busse)

43 And the man who pursues too much does not allocate to himself too much
of just anything, but of the good. That is why some say that such things [sc. as
wealth, possessions, reputation] are indifferent to human beings, and further that
they do not even give value to human beings, but are worth the same as their
opposites. The people who say this include Aristonymus in former times, and now
even some people who pretend to be Platonists, including Atticus. They adopt this
opinion and declare justice to be altogether useless: distributive and corrective
justice [they say] do not deal with the goods associated with the virtues, and it is
useless to inquire about things that are completely indifferent. (Anon., in EN xx,
248.24-9 Heylbut)

44 Who are the people speaking with each other now? If they are the ‘genuine
philosophers’, how is it that they suffer common passions? If they are progressing,
why are they called ‘genuine’? Onetor and Atticus say the former, Paterius and
Plutarch the latter. Proclus himself thinks the discussion is between genuine
philosophers, but applies in general people who suffer such passions.
([Olympiodorus] <Damascius> in Phaed. 104.18-23 Norvin)

23
 ADDENDA

Fragments not in des Places

see M. Baltes (1983), ‘Zur Philosophie des Platonikers Attikos’ in H.-D.

Blume and F. Mann (edd.), Platonismus und Christentum: Festschrift für Heinric
Dörrie. Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum Ergänzungsband 10. (Aschendorff:
Münster), 38-57.
The numbering is mine.

A1 Again, let us examine Atticus’ extraordinary suggestions. He says that

what is moved ‘in a confused and disorderly manner’ was ungenerated, but that
the cosmos was generated in time. And let us say about him that this ‘came to be’
*** well [?]. So, since he concedes that there is a cause of generation, let us see
what sort of thing it is. The cosmos is ‘visible and tangible’ [Tim.]: so, is
everything visible generated in time? If it is, then even ‘what is moved in
confused and disorderly manner’ will be generated in time, because Plato says
that this too is visible. If it is not, Atticus’ argument is invalid and proves nothing
– unless he should say that the cosmos is visible and tangible, but that ‘what is
moved in confused and disorderly manner’ is not visible now, but was so only
before creation. Plato indeed says that ‘everything visible was moved in confused
and disorderly manner’, and then in the words we are considering: ‘For it [the
cosmos] is tangible and corporeal.’ So he shows that everything that is visible and
tangible was generated – not everything that was. So in case Atticus should say
this – and he is notorious for seizing on the words Plato uses – we need to say that
there is nothing like this in the definition of the generated. It is simply said that
everything generated ‘is grasped by opinion with non-rational perception’. So that
if something is perceptible, it absolutely must be generated. But every visible
thing is perceptible: hence ‘what is moved in confused and disorderly manner’
would be generated. In addition to this, Plato says plainly that it is generated:
‘Before the heavens came to be,’ he says, ‘there were three things’: being, place,
and generation [Tim. 52d], existing in the traces of forms. So the ‘confused’ is
generated, just as it is visible. So, then, one must not say that the confused is
ungenerated in time but that the universe is so generated: either both came to be in
time, or both were ungenerated. For both alike are visible, and both alike are
referred to by Plato as acts of generation. But if both were generated, the cosmos
formerly changed into the confused: for absolutely all generation is of contrary
into contrary. And if its maker was good, how could he put something together
any way except well? Or destroy what was well made? And if he was not good,
how did he, not being good, make something organised and ordered? For it is the
work of the good to bring other things into order and organisation. But if what is
visible and ‘generated’ is not generated in time, it is not necessary to jump to the
conclusion that the universe is generated in time just because it is visible and

24
generated. So much for Atticus. (Proclus, in Tim. i. 283.27 - 285.7; cf. Baltes
1983: 39 n. 3)

A2 They say, however, that time is twofold, the one disorderly, but the other
proceeding according to number. For motion is twofold, the one kind disorderly
and confused, but the other orderly and elegant. (Proclus, in Tim. i. 286.26-9; cf.
Baltes 1983: 46 n. 46)

A3 Those who call the Demiurge the Good are entirely ridiculous, For the
Good and one who is good are not the same. For the former is imparticipable by
itself, and is exempt from all things; but the latter is good through participation of
the former. (Proclus, in Tim. i. 359.22-7; cf. Baltes 1983: 40)

A4 So let’s get to grips briefly with Porphyry’s pious thoughts on these things.
First, he deals with the followers of Atticus, who suggest that there are many
principles joining the demiurge and forms to each other. They also say that matter,
moved by ungenerated, irrational, maleficent soul, is borne along in a ‘confused
and disorderly’ manner. They make matter temporally prior to the perceptible,
irrationality to reason, disorder to order [= fr. 26 des Places] Well then: let matter
and god both be without causal generation (ἀγένητα ἀπ' αἰτίας), as they say: in
this case, they have being ungenerated in common. But they do differ from each
other all the same: so they differ in some other respect, not in being ungenerated.
In other words: what makes them different from one another could not be
ungenerated: so it is generated. But ungenerated things cannot possibly differ
because of something generated. Again: what makes them distinct, so that one
sustains while the other destroys? One cannot believe that it is the ungenerated –
for either everything ungenerated would be sustaining or everything ungenerated
would be destructive, i.e. if the ungenerated was what made god sustaining, or the
ungenerated was what made matter destructive. But if it is something else, is it
ungenerated or generated? Not generated: one cannot believe that the generated is
the cause of things that are ungenerated. But not ungenerated either: how can
there be some other ungenerated cause of things that are absolutely ungenerated?
It would no more be their cause than they were causes of it, everything being
ungenerated. So we would have to look for another cause, prior to all these, to
explain what made them different . . . and so on ad infinitum. If there were no
cause for the difference of these different things, for one of them being sustaining
while the other is destructive, then chance will be in charge of the principles.
Eliminate cause, and the confluence of such principles will be without reason or
explanation. Again: it is absurd to make evil eternal as good is. The godless is not
as honourable as the divine, nor is it its equal in being ungenerated, nor is it at all
to be analysed in the same way. For how can either be more independent, or
unshaken, or unchanging, if each of them is eternal, and neither in want of the
other. Again, then: if one is suited to being ordered, the other to bringing order,
where does this suitability come from? There must be something that joins both
together and makes them commensurate – for these things are torn apart from
each other and diametrically opposed: they certainly don’t render themselves

25
suitable for coming together. Of course we could always say that this happens by
chance, but we would have to close our ear to the Athenian Stranger when he says
[Laws 891c] that it is the source of unintelligent opinion to make put the irrational
in charge rather than reasoning, chance rather than intelligent skill. We would also
have to ignore Socrates in the Republic when he says that we should not remain
with the crowd, but get away from the many to the monads they share in common.
Again: we should characterise the highest principle not only by the fact that it has
no other principle (for this does not yet show its value), but by the fact that
everything comes from it. If this is right, there is not more than one principle –
otherwise god is not the cause of everything, but only of some things. And if he
governs matter, there is one principle, not many. Again: if being a principle
consists in this, in being the principle of some things and in bringing order to the
disordered, it will be on a par with the things that come from it – and things
posterior to it will be no more obstructed by its removal than it would be
annihilated if they did not exist. This objection is based on the fact that they often
say that being a principle consists in the act of creation. But if this is true, the
principle could not exist if the cosmos did not exist. But on other occasions they
say something different, that god does exist without creating – showing their
ignorance of the fact that true capacities are exercised just by existing. [= fr. 27
des Places] The powers of increase and of nutrition nourish the body and increase
it just by existing. This, then, is the way that the soul ensouls and animates and
moves its own instrument. For it is not a matter of our choice that the body
perceives or the veins throb: it is only the present of the soul that accomplishes
these activities. Again: everything which has come into being for some purpose,
always and essentially possesses that capacity. But what changes into different
things at different times comes into possession of it. So if god is always creating,
the capacity of creation would be innate with him; if not, it would be something
he came to possess. So how does he acquire perfection when he was imperfect
before? How does he become a craftsman when he was no craftsman before?

Under the second heading, Porphyry shows that Plato too refers everything to a
single principle. This he does from the Republic [508bc] where Plato makes the
sun the cause of visible things while the good is the cause of intelligible things
(and he calls the sun itself the ‘offspring of the good’); from the Letters, where he
says that ‘everything is about the king of everything’, and ‘everything is due to
him’ [312e] (for if everything turns towards him and has its being in his orbit, he
is the principle of everything, and not just of some things: whatever you pick on
will derive from him); from the Philebus [23c], where he clearly says that
everything comes from limit and the unlimited, and that the single governing
cause of those principles is god (in this sense there is one principle, and many
principles: but the many are perfected by the one); and from the Sophist [238 ff],
where he confronts those who say that there is a plurality of being and,
independently, those who posit being itself as the principle, and shows that one
should start neither from a plurality of being nor from one being, but from the one
itself.

Thirdly, Porphyry shows that the maker which they take to be a principle, has

26
nothing to do with Plato. For forms [ideai] do not exist on their own separated
from the intellect: rather, the intellect turning into itself sees all the forms [eidê]
(this is why the Athenian Stranger likens the activity of the intellect to the
revolution of a ‘ball made on a lathe’ [Laws 898b]). They make the forms
inactive, like clay models, existing on their own and lying outside the intellect.
Nor is the demiurge the very first god: for he must be greater than all intelligible
substance. Nor does any irrational soul move what is borne in an ‘irregular and
unorderly’ manner: for all soul is the offspring of the gods. Nor in general is the
universe produced by organising what was disorderly. [= fr. 28 des Places] For if
god wishes to bring everything to order, how does he wish it? Always or at a
certain time? If at a certain time, then it is either due to something in himself or to
matter [sc. that he didn’t wish it before]. But it is absurd that it should be to do
with himself, for he is always good, and the good always inclines to make things
well. If it is to do with his meeting opposition from matter, how has matter been
brought to order now? They say that it is because matter became suitable to
receive the creator’s plan – and god was on the lookout for this, its suitability. So
if it was not disorderly, it must have been brought to order – for it would not have
been suitable <if it had not> ceased its disorder. For its disordered motion is its
unsuitability. In this case, matter is not the cause of disorder. But nor is the will of
god – for he is always good, and the cosmos is always kept in order and the
demiurge always sets in order the irregular and disorderly nature. Why, then, did
Plato ever introduce the idea of disorder? In order for us to reflect on the
difference between the generation of bodies and the order that those generated
bodies assume, we need to suppose that they are entities, but that they move in a
disorderly way. For it is impossible for bodies to draw themselves up in order.
Since, then, he wished to make the point that order comes to them from
somewhere else, he represented disorder as something proper to their movements
in the absence of the divine cause. Aristotle criticises him for saying that disorder
is grasped before order by way of hypothesis. His grounds are that these results do
not follow the hypotheses meant to establish them as they do in the geometry:
geometrical hypotheses can stand on their own, for one thing. The answer to this
is that Plato does not mean to posit that disorder pre-exists by way of hypothesis
in this sense, but rather in the sense that Aristotle himself talks about our seeing
something unformed before seeing forms, although it never exists apart from
forms. So that which is enformed, but still unarticulated is grasped before order,
although it never existed before order, but came into existence with it.

The fourth heading, in addition to what has already been said, deals with Plato’s
demonstration of how creation took place – something effected by the divine
intellect by its very existence. He provides a number of arguments. (1) Craftsmen
need tools to do their work, since they are not in command of all matter; but they
show themselves to be using those tools to make their matter easy to work, boring,
or planning, or turning it on the lathe – all of which is meant, not to instil the form
[eidos], but to remove its unsuitability for receiving the form. The plan [logos]
itself comes instantaneously to be present in the substrate from the exercise of the
art when all the impediments have been removed. If there were no impediment in
the case of these things, the form would rush in to join with the matter, and there

27
would be no need at all for tools. (2) An impression too has many effects in the
body just by virtue of its own activity. Someone gets the impression of something
disgraceful and is ashamed and turns red; someone else has the idea of something
terrible and is frightened and his body looks pale. The effects are bodily, but the
cause of them is the appearance, which does not push and pull, but is active
simply by being present. (3) Again: according to the theologians there are certain
powers greater than us who use impressions to do certain things which effect
whatever it is they want the moment they come into being – drawing down light,
or making certain divine forms appear by their own movements, showing such
things externally to those able to see such apparitions. If, then, human crafts and
the impressions of partible souls and the activities of daemons can do such things,
what wonder is it that the demiurge gives all its reality to the perceptible by the
very act of thinking everything, producing the enmattered by immaterial process,
generating the tangible without employing touch, and stretching out the extended
without being divisible? (4) And there is no need to be amazed at the idea that
some incorporeal and unextended being gives reality to this universe: for the seed
of man, despite its size, contains within it all the principles necessary, and brings
about as many distinctions – among the hard parts, as the bones, some of which
are solid and some hollow; among the soft parts, like the lungs and liver; among
the dry parts, as nails and hairs; among the wet parts, as blood and phlegm; of the
oily, as marrow and fat; and of the bitter, as bile; of the parts without quality, as
saliva; of things densely-packed, like the arteries; and of things spread out, like
the skin. All these things, the homoeomerous parts and the things made out of
them, derive their existence from a small mass – or, rather, from something
without mass. For it is the principles that generate these things, and these are
absolutely without mass. For whatever portion of the seed you take, you will find
everything in it. The demiurgic principle is much more able to being everything
forth without even needing matter to exist, as the principle of seed does. For that
is not outside matter; but the creator of everything is eternally established in
himself, and he brings forth everything from himself while remaining the same.
(Proclus, in Tim. i. 391.4-396.26; cf. Baltes 1983: 43 n. 30)

A5 [Good soul rules everything; good and bad soul rule sublunary sphere]
(Proclus, de mal. subs. 40.5-7, 14-17; cf. Baltes 1983: 50)

DUBIUM

A6 One of my Platonist teachers said that the soul which is disposed through
the whole cosmos is responsible for forming embryos. My view is that the skill
and capacity involved is worthy of it, but I couldn’t believe that it is responsible
for forming scorpions and spiders, flies and gnats, snakes and worms and
maggots, reckoning that such a belief comes close to impiety. (Galen, de foet.
form. iv. 700 K; cf. Baltes 1983: 55)

28