The Timaeus of Plato

92 B] TIMAIO2. 343
And the race of brutes that walk on dry land comes
the sight.
from those who sought not the aid of philosophy at all nor
inquired into the nature of the universe, because they used no
longer the revolutions in the head, but followed as their guides
the parts of the soul that are in the breast. From these practices
their front limbs and their heads were by their natural affinity
drawn towards the ground and there supported and their heads
;
were lengthened out and took all sorts of forms, just as the orbits
in each were crushed out of shape through disuse. For the same
reason such races were made four-footed and many-footed for
;
God gave many props to the more senseless creatures, that
they might the more be drawn earthward. As to the most
senseless of all, whose whole bodies were altogether stretched
at length on the earth, seeing they had no longer any need
of feet, God made them footless to crawl upon the ground. And
the fourth class that lives in the water was formed of the most
utterly foolish and senseless of all, whom they that transfigured
because their
them thought not worthy even of pure respiration,
soul was polluted with all manner of iniquity ;
but in place of
inhaling the fine pure element of air they were thrust into the
turbid and lowly respiration of water. Hence is the tribe of
fishes and of all shell-fish that live in the water ;
which have the
6. irpojM]Kis TJ KCt^ iravroCas] Their merely because it respires under water ;
heads were elongated, because the circles and water-snails are probably as intelligent
of the brain were distorted into an ellip- as land-snails. It is possible, as Martin
tical form the :
proper and typical shape suggests, that Plato may have taken the
of the head is spherical, emulating the hint from Diogenes of Apollonia see
:
figure of the universe: see 44 D, 730, E; Theophrastos de sensu 44 Qpoveiv 8t,
and for the effect of the /cD/ua rijs rpo(f>TJs utairep A^x^ T