The Timaeus of Plato

TIMAIOS. 289
stationary and rooted fast, because it has been denied the power
of self-motion.
XXXV. Thus did the higher powers create all these kinds
as sustenance for us who were feebler; and next they made
canals in the substance of our body, as though they were
cutting runnels in a garden, that it might be irrigated as by an
inflowing stream. And first they carried like hidden rills, under
the place where the skin and the flesh are joined, two veins
down the back, following the twofold division of the body into
These they brought down on either side of the
right and left.
spine and the seminal marrow, first in order that this might be
most vigorous, next that the current might have an easy flow
downwards and render the irrigation regular. After that, they
cleft the veins around the head, and interweaving them crossed
them in opposite directions, carrying these from the right side of
the body to the left and those from the left to the right. This
placed therein two lesser webs opening
into the mouth and nostrils. And they
made alternately the great web to flow
towards the lesser webs, and again the
lesser towards the greater.
In the former
case the airy envelope of the greater
web penetrated through the porous substance
of the body to the cavity within,
in the latter the lesser webs passed
through the body outwards; and in
either case the fire followed with the
air. This alternation is kept up per-
and we
petually so long as a man lives,
give it the name of respiration. And so
when the fire, passing to and fro, encounters
food and drink in the stomach, it
dissolves them and driving them onwards
forces them to flow through the veins, like
water drawn into pipes from a fountain.
3.
ol KptCrrovs] Plato several times
applies this phrase to supernal powers :
cf. Sophist 216 B rdx' &" &" Ka^ ff l TIS
oCros rwf KpeiTrtivdw aiWirorro, (f>a6\ovs
ij/uas 6vTas iv rots \6yots
Ka.1
Symposium 188 D TOJS Kpflrroffiv
Oeois: Euthydimiis 291 A /ti} TIS TUV
P. T.
v Trapwv avrd. t6tyl;a.TO : the
last passage being ironical.
4. T^|l.VOVTS...OXt TO VS] Cf. 7 D T '? s
dprrjplas 6xerovs Ivl rov ir\ev/jLova. trefiov.
7. 8wo 4>Xpas] The two ' veins ' are,
according to Martin, the aorta and the
vena cava.
8. Seiois T KO.I dpicrrfpois ov] i.e.
with right and left sides : I doubt whether
pepefftv is to be supplied, any more
than fdpy with the phrases tirl 5ei