Timaeus — Plato

mockery, to play and jest with us as if we were children, and to address us in a lofty tragic vein, making believe to be in earnest? How would they address us? After this manner : — A city which is thus constitutea can hardly be shaken ; but, seeing that everything which has a beginning has also an end, even a constitution such as yours will not last for ever, but will in time be dissolved.

And this is the dissolution: — In plants that grow in the earth, as well as in animals that move on the earth's surface, fertility and sterility of soul and body occur when the circumferences of the circles of each are completed, which in short-lived existences pass over a short space, and in long-lived ones over a long space.

But to the knowledge of human fecundity and sterility all the wisdom and education of your rulers will not attain ; the laws which regulate them will not be discovered by an intelligence which is alloyed with sense, but will escape them, and they will bring children into the world when they ought not.

Now that which is of divine birth has a period which is contained in a perfect number \ but the period of human birth is comprehended in a number in which first increments by involution and evolution \or squared and cubed] obtaining three intervals and four terms of like and unlike, waxing and waning numbers, make all the terms commensurable and agreeable to one another^.

The base of these (3) with a third added (4) when combined with five (20) and raised to the third power furnishes two harmonies ; the first a square which is a hundred times as great (400 = 4 x 100) -^ and the other a figure having one side equal to the former, but oblong ^, consisting of a hundred numbers squared upon rational diameters of a square (i. e. omitting fractions), the side of which is five (7 x 7 == 49 x 100 r= 4900), each of them

,46

M. e. a cyclical number, such as 6, which is equal to the sum of its divisors I, 2, 3, so that when the circle or time represented by 6 is completed, the lesser times or rotations represented by i, 2, 3 are also completed. 2 Probably the numbers 3, 4, 5, 6 of which the three first = the sides of the Pythagorean triangle. The terms will then be 3^ 4^ 5^, which together = 6^ = 216. <* Or the first a square which is 100 x 100 = 10,000. The whole number will then be 17,500 = a square of 100, and an oblong of 100 by 75. ^ Reading TrpofjifjKT] 6i.

The first step in the descent.

p. 251

being less by one (than the perfect square which includes Republic the fractions, sc. 50) or less by ^ two perfect squares of irrational diameters (of a square the side of which is five ^"*^'*'^o^^' =z 50 -|- 50= 100); and a hundred cubes of three (27 x 100 = 2700 + 4900 + 400 := 8000). Now this number represents a geometrical figure which has control over the good and evil of births.

For when your guardians are ignorant of the law of births, and unite bride and bridegroom out of season", the children will not be goodly or fortunate.

And though only the best of them will be appointed by their predecessors, still they will be unworthy to hold their fathers' places, and when they come into power as guardians, they will soon be found to fail in taking care of us, the Muses, first by undervaluing music ; which neglect will soon -extend to gymnastic ; . and hence the young men of your State will be less cultivated.

In the succeeding generation rulers will be appointed who have lost the guardian power of testing the metal of your different races, which, like Hesiod's, are of gold and silver 547 and brass and iron. And so iron will be mingled with silver, and brass with gold, and hence there will arise dissimilarity and inequahty and irregularity, which always and in all places are causes of hatred and war.

This the Muses affirm to be the stock from which discord has sprung, wherever arising ; and this is their answer to us. Yes, and we may assume that they answer truly. Why, yes, I said, of course they answer truly ; how can the Muses speak falsely? And what do the Muses say next?

When discord arose, then the two races were drawn Discord will different ways : the iron and brass fell to acquiriner money ^^«" ^"s^ ■' i. o J 2j^(j indiviand land and houses and gold and silver ; but the gold and dual take the .silver races, not wanting money but having the true riches in p'aceofcom- , nion property. their own nature, inclined towards virtue and the ancient order of things.

There was a battle between them, and at last they agreed to distribute their land and houses among individual owners ; and they enslaved their friends and maintainers, whom they had formerly protected in the condition of freemen, and made of them subjects and servants ; and ' Or, ' consisting of two numbers squared upon irrational diameters,' &c. ^= 100. For other explanations of the passage see Introduction.