The Timaeus of Plato

D] TIMAIOS. 129
taneous motion in the opposite way, being of all the swiftest
displays closest to itself that which departs most slowly from
it. And that there might be some clear measure of the relative
swiftness and slowness with which they moved in their eight
revolutions, God kindled a light in the second orbit from the
earth, which we now have named the sun, in order that it
might
shine most brightly to the ends of heaven, and that living
things, so many as was meet, should possess number, learning
it
from the motion of the same and uniform. Night then and day
have been created in this manner and for these causes ;
and
this is one revolution of the undivided and most intelligent
circuit ;
and a month is fulfilled when the moon, after completing
her own orbit, overtakes the sun ;
a year, when the sun
has completed his own course. But the courses of the others
men have not taken into account, save a few out of many and
;
they neither give them names nor measure them against one
another, comparing them by means of numbers nay I may
say they do not know that time arises from the wanderings of
these, which are incalculable in multitude and marvellously
intricate. None the less however can we observe that the
perfect number of time fulfils the perfect year at the moment
venly bodies could not see their way until cerning time: they do not reflect that the
their orbits were illumined by the Sun. revolutions of the other celestial bodies
6. [iaOovra irapd TTJS ravrov] Day equally afford measurements of time,
and night are caused by the diurnal rota- 1 7.
r6v rtXeov eviavrov] The perfect
tion of the universe, which is the motion year is when all the planets return to one
of the Same, round the earth : and these, and the same region of the heavens at
being smaller than any other divisions of the same time. See Stobaeus eel. I 264.
time produced by the celestial bodies, are J dfi
man derived the conception of number: