The Timaeus of Plato

74 A] TIMAIO2. 273
with another, to make a common seed for all the race of mortals,
he formed of them the marrow ;
and thereafter he implanted
and fastened in it the several kinds of soul ;
and according to
the number and fashion of the shapes that the soul should have
corresponding to her kinds, into so many similar forms did he
divide the marrow at the very outset of his distribution. And
that which should be as it were a field to contain in it the divine
seed he moulded in a spherical form all round ;
and this part of
the marrow he called the brain, with the view that, when each
animal was completed, the vessel containing
it should be the
head. But that which was to have the mortal part of soul
which remained he distributed into moulds that were at once
round and elongated
: but he called all these forms marrow ;
and from these, as though from anchors, he put forth bonds to
fasten all the soul, and then he wrought the entire body round
about it, first building to fence it a covering of bone. And
bone he formed in this way having sifted out earth that was
:
pure and smooth he kneaded and soaked it with marrow, and
after that he placed
it in fire ;
and next he set it in water, and
again in fire, and once more in water : and thus having shifted
it
many times from one to another he made it indissoluble by
either. Making use of this, he carved a bony sphere thereof to
surround the brain, but on one side he left a narrow outlet ;
and
around the marrow of the neck and back he made vertebrae of
bone and set them to serve as pivots, beginning at the head and
carrying them through the whole length of the body. Thus to
all the seed he enclosed it in and he
preserve
a strong envelope,
c KO.I ol fiitv
WT& re KardyvvvTan /j.ifi.oi'>fj.(voi
her action to the rest of the body. The
curort, Kal 1/j.dvTas irepi(i\iTTovTj does not refer to any liga-
i\oyvfj.vaffTouffi Kal fipaxeias di/a/SoXas ment or the like, nor has it
any physical
through ^iW^paSex.
the spinal marrow and they transmit 15. jitrd TOVTO tU irvp] The process
P. T. 18