The Timaeus of Plato

D] TIMAIOS. 173
saying is true, but we must put
it in clearer :
language and this
is hard ; especially as for the sake of we it must needs inquire
into fire and the substances that rank with fire. For it is hard
to say which of all these we ought to call water any more than
fire, or indeed which we ought to call by any given name,
rather than all and each severally, in such a way as to employ
How then are we
any truthful and trustworthy mode of speech.
to deal with this point, and what is the question that we should
properly raise concerning it ? In the first place, what we now have
named water, by condensation, as we suppose, we see turning
to stones and earth ;
and by rarefying and expanding this same
element becomes wind and air ;
and air when inflamed becomes
fire : and conversely fire contracted and quenched returns again
to the form of air; also air concentrating and condensing
becomes cloud and mist ;
and from these yet further compressed
comes flowing water ;
and from water earth and stones
once more : and so, it
appears, they hand on one to another
the cycle of generation. Thus then since these several bodies
never assume one constant form,
which of them can we positively
affirm to be really this and not another without being
shamed in our own eyes
? It cannot be : it is far the safest
course when we make a statement concerning them to speak
as follows. What we see in process of perpetual transmutation,
as for instance fire, we must not call this, but such-tike is the
three however are interchangeable. Note aWis. KVK\OV is perfectly right, being a
however that the present statement is predicate to yiveaiv: 'handing on their
guarded with the qualification ws doKov- generation as a circle': the re is also right,
/j.fv. Of course this limitation of the in- coupling diadiS6vra and yiyvofievov. There
terchangeability does not affect Plato's is more to be said for omitting re after
argument, which is probably the reason ISiav in
;
which case vvyKpidtv and KO.TO.-
why it is not mentioned here. fffieeOtv would be subordinate to dirioV :
n. dvdiroXiv &] This is just the 656$ but as it is in all the mss. I have not
dvu K&TU ula. of Herakleitos. Stallbaum thought fit to expunge it.
wishes to omit re after I8tav and after 20. \>.r\ TOVTO dXXd TO TOIOVTOV] That
ictK\ov, which he would alter to /cv/cXy. is to say, we must not speak of it as a
There is really no occasion for any of substance, but as a :
quality in Aristotelian
these changes. The main participles
in phrase, it is not inroicelfjievov, but ica.0'
the sentence ytyvopfvov, ffvyKpi8{v, Kara- vwoKfi^vov. TOVTO denotes what a thing
fffifffetv, &iri6v, Siadid6vra, are governed
is, TOIOVTOV what we predicate of it. Fire
by opw^ev, while the rest are subordinate is merely an appearance which the inroto
yiyv6fj.cvov, which has to be supplied SOXTJ assumes for the time being: we
again with the clauses ical ird\iv... \l6ovs must not say then 'this portion of space