Plato - Timaeus.pdf

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360 BC
TIMAEUS
by Plato
translated by Benjamin Jowett
TIMAEUS
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: SOCRATES; CRITIAS; TIMAEUS; HERMOCRATES
Socrates. One, two, three; but where, my dear Timaeus, is the fourth
of those who were yesterday my guests and are to be my entertainers
to-day?
Timaeus. He has been taken ill, Socrates; for he would not willingly
have been absent from this gathering.
Soc. Then, if he is not coming, you and the two others must supply
his place.
Tim. Certainly, and we will do all that we can; having been
handsomely entertained by you yesterday, those of us who remain should
be only too glad to return your hospitality.
Soc. Do you remember what were the points of which I required you to
speak?
Tim. We remember some of them, and you will be here to remind us
of anything which we have forgotten: or rather, if we are not
troubling you, will you briefly recapitulate the whole, and then the
particulars will be more firmly fixed in our memories?
Soc. To be sure I will: the chief theme of my yesterday's
discourse was the State-how constituted and of what citizens
composed it would seem likely to be most perfect.
Tim. Yes, Socrates; and what you said of it was very much to our
mind.
Soc. Did we not begin by separating the husbandmen and the
artisans from the class of defenders of the State?
Tim. Yes.
Soc. And when we had given to each one that single employment and
particular art which was suited to his nature, we spoke of those who
were intended to be our warriors, and said that they were to be
guardians of the city against attacks from within as well as from
without, and to have no other employment; they were to be merciful
in judging their subjects, of whom they were by nature friends, but
fierce to their enemies, when they came across them in battle.
Tim. Exactly.
Soc. We said, if I am not mistaken, that the guardians should be
gifted with a temperament in a high degree both passionate and
philosophical; and that then they would be as they ought to be, gentle
to their friends and fierce with their enemies.
Tim. Certainly.
Soc. And what did we say of their education? Were they not to be
trained in gymnastic, and music, and all other sorts of knowledge
which were proper for them?
Tim. Very true.
Soc. And being thus trained they were not to consider gold or silver
or anything else to be their own private property; they were to be
like hired troops, receiving pay for keeping guard from those who were
protected by them-the pay was to be no more than would suffice for men
of simple life; and they were to spend in common, and to live together
in the continual practice of virtue, which was to be their sole
pursuit.
Tim. That was also said.
Soc. Neither did we forget the women; of whom we declared, that
their natures should be assimilated and brought into harmony with
those of the men, and that common pursuits should be assigned to
them both in time of war and in their ordinary life.
Tim. That, again, was as you say.
Soc. And what about the procreation of children? Or rather not the
proposal too singular to be forgotten? for all wives and children were
to be in common, to the intent that no one should ever know his own
child, but they were to imagine that they were all one family; those
who were within a suitable limit of age were to be brothers and
sisters, those who were of an elder generation parents and
grandparents, and those of a younger children and grandchildren.
Tim. Yes, and the proposal is easy to remember, as you say.
Soc. And do you also remember how, with a view of securing as far as
we could the best breed, we said that the chief magistrates, male
and female, should contrive secretly, by the use of certain lots, so
to arrange the nuptial meeting, that the bad of either sex and the
good of either sex might pair with their like; and there was to be
no quarrelling on this account, for they would imagine that the
union was a mere accident, and was to be attributed to the lot?
Tim. I remember.
Soc. And you remember how we said that the children of the good
parents were to be educated, and the children of the bad secretly
dispersed among the inferior citizens; and while they were all growing
up the rulers were to be on the look-out, and to bring up from below
in their turn those who were worthy, and those among themselves who
were unworthy were to take the places of those who came up?
Tim. True.
Soc. Then have I now given you all the heads of our yesterday's
discussion? Or is there anything more, my dear Timaeus, which has been
omitted?
Tim. Nothing, Socrates; it was just as you have said.
Soc. I should like, before proceeding further, to tell you how I
feel about the State which we have described. I might compare myself
to a person who, on beholding beautiful animals either created by
the painter's art, or, better still, alive but at rest, is seized with
a desire of seeing them in motion or engaged in some struggle or
conflict to which their forms appear suited; this is my feeling
about the State which we have been describing. There are conflicts
which all cities undergo, and I should like to hear some one tell of
our own city carrying on a struggle against her neighbours, and how
she went out to war in a becoming manner, and when at war showed by
the greatness of her actions and the magnanimity of her words in
dealing with other cities a result worthy of her training and
education. Now I, Critias and Hermocrates, am conscious that I
myself should never be able to celebrate the city and her citizens
in a befitting manner, and I am not surprised at my own incapacity; to
me the wonder is rather that the poets present as well as past are
no better-not that I mean to depreciate them; but every one can see
that they are a tribe of imitators, and will imitate best and most
easily the life in which they have been brought up; while that which
is beyond the range of a man's education he finds hard to carry out in
action, and still harder adequately to represent in language. I am
aware that the Sophists have plenty of brave words and fair
conceits, but I am afraid that being only wanderers from one city to
another, and having never had habitations of their own, they may
fail in their conception of philosophers and statesmen, and may not
know what they do and say in time of war, when they are fighting or
holding parley with their enemies. And thus people of your class are
the only ones remaining who are fitted by nature and education to take
part at once both in politics and philosophy. Here is Timaeus, of
Locris in Italy, a city which has admirable laws, and who is himself
in wealth and rank the equal of any of his fellow-citizens; he has
held the most important and honourable offices in his own state,
and, as I believe, has scaled the heights of all philosophy; and
here is Critias, whom every Athenian knows to be no novice in the
matters of which we are speaking; and as to, Hermocrates, I am assured
by many witnesses that his genius and education qualify him to take
part in any speculation of the kind. And therefore yesterday when I
saw that you wanted me to describe the formation of the State, I
readily assented, being very well aware, that, if you only would, none
were better qualified to carry the discussion further, and that when
you had engaged our city in a suitable war, you of all men living
could best exhibit her playing a fitting part. When I had completed my
task, I in return imposed this other task upon you. You conferred
together and agreed to entertain me to-day, as I had entertained
you, with a feast of discourse. Here am I in festive array, and no man
can be more ready for the promised banquet.
Her. And we too, Socrates, as Timaeus says, will not be wanting in
enthusiasm; and there is no excuse for not complying with your
request. As soon as we arrived yesterday at the guest-chamber of
Critias, with whom we are staying, or rather on our way thither, we
talked the matter over, and he told us an ancient tradition, which I
wish, Critias, that you would repeat to Socrates, so that he may
help us to judge whether it will satisfy his requirements or not.
Crit. I will, if Timaeus, who is our other partner, approves.
Tim. I quite approve.
Crit. Then listen, Socrates, to a tale which, though strange, is
certainly true, having been attested by Solon, who was the wisest of
the seven sages. He was a relative and a dear friend of my
great-grandfather, Dropides, as he himself says in many passages of
his poems; and he told the story to Critias, my grandfather, who
remembered and repeated it to us. There were of old, he said, great
and marvellous actions of the Athenian city, which have passed into
oblivion through lapse of time and the destruction of mankind, and one
in particular, greater than all the rest. This we will now rehearse.
It will be a fitting monument of our gratitude to you, and a hymn of
praise true and worthy of the goddess, on this her day of festival.
Soc. Very good. And what is this ancient famous action of the
Athenians, which Critias declared, on the authority of Solon, to be
not a mere legend, but an actual fact?
Crit. I will tell an old-world story which I heard from an aged man;
for Critias, at the time of telling it, was as he said, nearly
ninety years of age, and I was about ten. Now the day was that day
of the Apaturia which is called the Registration of Youth, at which,
according to custom, our parents gave prizes for recitations, and
the poems of several poets were recited by us boys, and many of us
sang the poems of Solon, which at that time had not gone out of
fashion. One of our tribe, either because he thought so or to please
Critias, said that in his judgment Solon was not only the wisest of
men, but also the noblest of poets. The old man, as I very well
remember, brightened up at hearing this and said, smiling: Yes,
Amynander, if Solon had only, like other poets, made poetry the
business of his life, and had completed the tale which he brought with
him from Egypt, and had not been compelled, by reason of the
factions and troubles which he found stirring in his own country
when he came home, to attend to other matters, in my opinion he
would have been as famous as Homer or Hesiod, or any poet.
And what was the tale about, Critias? said Amynander.
About the greatest action which the Athenians ever did, and which
ought to have been the most famous, but, through the lapse of time and
the destruction of the actors, it has not come down to us.
Tell us, said the other, the whole story, and how and from whom
Solon heard this veritable tradition.
He replied:-In the Egyptian Delta, at the head of which the river
Nile divides, there is a certain district which is called the district
of Sais, and the great city of the district is also called Sais, and
is the city from which King Amasis came. The citizens have a deity for
their foundress; she is called in the Egyptian tongue Neith, and is
asserted by them to be the same whom the Hellenes call Athene; they
are great lovers of the Athenians, and say that they are in some way
related to them. To this city came Solon, and was received there
with great honour; he asked the priests who were most skilful in
such matters, about antiquity, and made the discovery that neither
he nor any other Hellene knew anything worth mentioning about the
times of old. On one occasion, wishing to draw them on to speak of
antiquity, he began to tell about the most ancient things in our
part of the world-about Phoroneus, who is called "the first man,"
and about Niobe; and after the Deluge, of the survival of Deucalion
and Pyrrha; and he traced the genealogy of their descendants, and
reckoning up the dates, tried to compute how many years ago the events
of which he was speaking happened. Thereupon one of the priests, who
was of a very great age, said: O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are
never anything but children, and there is not an old man among you.
Solon in return asked him what he meant. I mean to say, he replied,
that in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down
among you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with
age. And I will tell you why. There have been, and will be again, many
destructions of mankind arising out of many causes; the greatest
have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water, and other
lesser ones by innumerable other causes. There is a story, which
even you have preserved, that once upon a time Paethon, the son of
Helios, having yoked the steeds in his father's chariot, because he
was not able to drive them in the path of his father, burnt up all
that was upon the earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt.
Now this has the form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of
the bodies moving in the heavens around the earth, and a great
conflagration of things upon the earth, which recurs after long
intervals; at such times those who live upon the mountains and in
dry and lofty places are more liable to destruction than those who
dwell by rivers or on the seashore. And from this calamity the Nile,
who is our never-failing saviour, delivers and preserves us. When,
on the other hand, the gods purge the earth with a deluge of water,
the survivors in your country are herdsmen and shepherds who dwell
on the mountains, but those who, like you, live in cities are
carried by the rivers into the sea. Whereas in this land, neither then
nor at any other time, does the water come down from above on the
fields, having always a tendency to come up from below; for which
reason the traditions preserved here are the most ancient.
The fact is, that wherever the extremity of winter frost or of
summer does not prevent, mankind exist, sometimes in greater,
sometimes in lesser numbers. And whatever happened either in your
country or in ours, or in any other region of which we are informed-if
there were any actions noble or great or in any other way
remarkable, they have all been written down by us of old, and are
preserved in our temples. Whereas just when you and other nations
are beginning to be provided with letters and the other requisites
of civilized life, after the usual interval, the stream from heaven,
like a pestilence, comes pouring down, and leaves only those of you
who are destitute of letters and education; and so you have to begin
all over again like children, and know nothing of what happened in
ancient times, either among us or among yourselves. As for those
genealogies of yours which you just now recounted to us, Solon, they
are no better than the tales of children. In the first place you
remember a single deluge only, but there were many previous ones; in
the next place, you do not know that there formerly dwelt in your land
the fairest and noblest race of men which ever lived, and that you and
your whole city are descended from a small seed or remnant of them
which survived. And this was unknown to you, because, for many
generations, the survivors of that destruction died, leaving no
written word. For there was a time, Solon, before the great deluge
of all, when the city which now is Athens was first in war and in
every way the best governed of all cities, is said to have performed
the noblest deeds and to have had the fairest constitution of any of
which tradition tells, under the face of heaven.
Solon marvelled at his words, and earnestly requested the priests to
inform him exactly and in order about these former citizens. You are
welcome to hear about them, Solon, said the priest, both for your
own sake and for that of your city, and above all, for the sake of the
goddess who is the common patron and parent and educator of both our
cities. She founded your city a thousand years before ours,
receiving from the Earth and Hephaestus the seed of your race, and
afterwards she founded ours, of which the constitution is recorded
in our sacred registers to be eight thousand years old. As touching
your citizens of nine thousand years ago, I will briefly inform you of
their laws and of their most famous action; the exact particulars of
the whole we will hereafter go through at our leisure in the sacred
registers themselves. If you compare these very laws with ours you
will find that many of ours are the counterpart of yours as they
were in the olden time. In the first place, there is the caste of
priests, which is separated from all the others; next, there are the
artificers, who ply their several crafts by themselves and do not
intermix; and also there is the class of shepherds and of hunters,
as well as that of husbandmen; and you will observe, too, that the
warriors in Egypt are distinct from all the other classes, and are
commanded by the law to devote themselves solely to military pursuits;
moreover, the weapons which they carry are shields and spears, a style
of equipment which the goddess taught of Asiatics first to us, as in
your part of the world first to you. Then as to wisdom, do you observe
how our law from the very first made a study of the whole order of
things, extending even to prophecy and medicine which gives health,
out of these divine elements deriving what was needful for human life,
and adding every sort of knowledge which was akin to them. All this
order and arrangement the goddess first imparted to you when
establishing your city; and she chose the spot of earth in which you
were born, because she saw that the happy temperament of the seasons
in that land would produce the wisest of men. Wherefore the goddess,
who was a lover both of war and of wisdom, selected and first of all
settled that spot which was the most likely to produce men likest
herself. And there you dwelt, having such laws as these and still
better ones, and excelled all mankind in all virtue, as became the
children and disciples of the gods.
Many great and wonderful deeds are recorded of your state in our
histories. But one of them exceeds all the rest in greatness and
valour. For these histories tell of a mighty power which unprovoked
made an expedition against the whole of Europe and Asia, and to
which your city put an end. This power came forth out of the
Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and
there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by
you called the Pillars of Heracles; the island was larger than Libya
and Asia put together, and was the way to other islands, and from
these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which
surrounded the true ocean; for this sea which is within the Straits of
Heracles is only a harbour, having a narrow entrance, but that other
is a real sea, and the surrounding land may be most truly called a
boundless continent. Now in this island of Atlantis there was a
great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and
several others, and over parts of the continent, and, furthermore, the
men of Atlantis had subjected the parts of Libya within the columns of
Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia. This vast
power, gathered into one, endeavoured to subdue at a blow our
country and yours and the whole of the region within the straits;
and then, Solon, your country shone forth, in the excellence of her
virtue and strength, among all mankind. She was pre-eminent in courage
and military skill, and was the leader of the Hellenes. And when the
rest fell off from her, being compelled to stand alone, after having
undergone the very extremity of danger, she defeated and triumphed
over the invaders, and preserved from slavery those who were not yet
subjugated, and generously liberated all the rest of us who dwell
within the pillars. But afterwards there occurred violent
earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune
all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island
of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea. For

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