Plato Timaeus 35

Robert Gregg Bury (Translator)

Timaeus. Plato. Robert Gregg Bury (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1929.

Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.

Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.

Current edition Perseus

Timaeus (English) (Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 9. Bury, R. G., translator. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1929 (printing).)

Editions (1)
Τίμαιος Perseus (Platonis Opera Tomus IV: Tetralogia VIII. Burnet, John, editor. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905.) — 35 focus

Notes on the current edition

Timaeus

1. The choice of these three as constituents of the Soul is explained by the use of the same terms in the Sophist (244-245) to denote certain Greatest Kinds or main categories. As Professor Paul Shorey has aptly observed ( Amer. Journ. Philol. ix. p. 298),
It is necessary that the Soul should recognize everywhere . . . the same, the other and essence, those three μέγιστα γένηof the . . . Sophist. Hence on the Greek principle that like is known by like, Plato makes real substances out of these three abstractions and puts them as plastic material into the hands of the Demiurgus for the formation of the Soul.
2.
  These seven numbers may be arranged in two branches, in order to show the two series of which Timaeus immediately goes on the speak:
  1 (the 1st), 2 (the 2nd), 4 (the 4th), 8 (the 6th); 3 (the 3rd), 9 (the 5th), 27 (the 7th). The former branch contains the double intervals, i.e., the powers of 2; the latter one the triple intervals, i.e., the powers of 3.