The Timaeus of Plato

83 c] TIMAIO2. 313
properties ;
and this contains all kinds of bile and serum and
phlegm. For as all these are going the wrong way and have
become corrupt, first
they ruin the blood itself, and furnishing
no nutriment to the body rush in all directions through the
veins, paying no heed to the periods appointed by nature, but
at war one with another, because they have no gcod of each
other ;
at war also with all that is established and fixed in the
body, which they corrupt
and dissolve. Now when the oldest
part of the flesh is decomposed, being hard to soften, it turns
black through long-continued burning, and through being everywhere
corroded it is bitter and dangerous to whatever part of
the body it attacks which is not yet corrupted. Sometimes this
black sort is acid instead of bitter, when the bitterness is more
refined away ;
and again the bitter sort being steeped
in blood
gains a redder hue; and when black is
mingled with this, it is
greenish sometimes too a yellow colour : is added to the bitterness,
when new flesh is
decomposed by the fire of the inflammation.
To all these symptoms the general name of bile has
been given, either by physicians, or by some one who in looking
at many dissimilar appearances was able to see one universal
quality pervading them all which deserved a name. All other
kinds of bile which are reckoned have their several descriptions
according to their colour. Of lymph, one kind is the mild
serum of blood, the other is an acrid secretion of black and
acid bile, when that is blended through inflammation with a
saline property : this kind is called acid phlegm. But that
either bitter or acid, produced by the 16. TOV irtpl rqv \OYI irvpos] If
degeneration of old flesh, (2) reddish, \bya is right it must signify 'the inwhere
there is an admixture of blood, (3) flammation'; but it is curiously abrupt,
green, apparently a combination of the and I am disposed to agree with Lindau
two former, (4) yellow, from the corro- in suspecting it to be corrupt, though I
sion of newly-formed flesh. cannot approve of his suggested altera-
15. xXowSes] This reading is clearly tion.
right: when Plato is classifying xo^c* 1 7-
Ka^ r& H^" *oiv6v ovopx] All
according
to colour, it were absurd to these different forms have received the
call one class xo^Ses. It wiH be re- general name of xM. bestowed either
membered too that at 68 C green is de- by medical men (and presumably somerived
from a mixture of red and black. what at hap hazard),
or more scientixXowSey
is found in one ms. and the margin fically by M a philosopher skilled in disof
another, and is also confirmed by cerning t XXots. Compare 68 D.
Galen. 23. KoXirai 8i