The fragments of Numenius of Apamea

NUMENIUS fragments draft translation by George Boys-Stones Durham University © 2014 Based on the ‘Budé’ edition by E. des Places, Numénius, Fragments (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1973). Grey text either distinguishes context from quotation, or gives context not in des Places. Fragments not separated by a line-space are continuous in the source-text. CONTENTS On the Good 1 1 methodology 2 apprehension of the good 3-4 neither matter nor body is ousia On the Good 6 17 intellect prior to creator 18 creator as pilot (looking up to steer below) 19 first god = good 20 first god as good = form of creator 21 father / maker / made ancestor / offspring / descendent 22 animal itself from unknown works 30 water and generation (Naiads) 31 routes of descent / ascent (gates) 32 pleasure of generation (milk) 33 Odysseus gets through generation 34-5 descent / ascent (gates) 36 entry of soul into body 37 Atlantis = battle between souls 38 pleasure imprisons 39 soul compounded of monad & dyad 40 Theodorus’ ‘Numenian’ account of the soul 41 all is in all 42 unity of purified soul with its principles 43 parts of soul at war 44 two souls (not bipartite soul) 45 imagination an accident of perception 46a whole soul immortal (incl. vegetative) 46b intelligibles and perceptibles participate in forms 46c intelligibles and perceptibles participate in forms 47 whole soul separable (incl. vegetative) 48 embodiment always bad 49 animal reincarnation 50 god’s powers mixed with matter 51 everything mixed, nothing simple 52 monad & dyad; matter evil 53 Sarapis partakes in all natural things 54 delphos = ‘one’ 55 N.’s exegesis exposes the gods 56 the Jewish God 57 ‘Hermes’ = uttered word 58 Hephaestus = generative fire 59 Nemesis uses ‘luck’ as a tool of restitution On the Secrets in Plato 23 Plato uses his characters to deflect criticism dubium 60 cave as symbol of cosmos used for initiation On the Good 2 5 stability of ousia 6 incorporeality of ousia 7-8 ousia described in Timaeus On the Good 3 9 Jannes and Jambres faced down Moses 10 A story about Jesus expounded On the Good 4/5 11 the three gods 12 a god before the creator 13 first : second :: farmer : planter 14 knowledge not diminished in transmission 15 stillness the natural motion of first god On the Good 5 16 good, ousia, creator, cosmos On the Dissension of the Academy 24 Old Academy, Garden, Stoa. Plato a cross between Pythagoras and Socrates. 25 Zeno vs Arcesilaus 26 Lacydes 27 Carneades 28 Philo; Antiochus On the Indestructibility of the Soul 29 contained paradoxa Addenda On the Good book 1 1a And from the Pythagorean philosopher himself, I mean Numenius, I shall set out the following from On the Good 1: ‘On this matter, when one has set out a position and drawn one’s conclusions, it will be necessary to retire into the testimony of Plato and bind it all together by the words of Pythagoras; and to call on the aid of those nations held in honour, as Plato did, adducing their rites and ordinances and their rituals of consecration – whatever Brahmans and Jews and Magi and Egyptians have organised.’ (PE ix 7.1, 411bc. Fr. 9 follows.) More traditional alternative: ‘On this matter, when one has set out a position, and drawn conclusions on the basis of Plato’s testimonies, it will be necessary to go back and get it all bound together by the words of Pythagoras, and to invoke those nations that are held in honour, adducing such of their rites and ordinances and rituals of consecration as are consistent with Plato – all that the Brahmans and Jews and Magi and Egyptians have organised.’ 1b How much better than Celsus is Numenius the Pythagorean, who proved himself worthy of the highest regard in his many works, and who subjected the majority of philosophical beliefs to examination, and drew together from them what struck him as true. In book 1 of his work On the Good, where he is speaking about all the nations which have thought of god as incorporeal, he included the Jews among them, and did not even shrink from quoting the words of the prophets in his book or giving them allegorical interpretation. (Origen, Against Celsus 1.15.) 1c And I know that Numenius the Pythagorean too, a much better interpreter of Plato, and an advocate of Pythagorean doctrines, often quotes Moses and the prophets in his books, and interprets them as allegory in ways which are not implausible. For example, in the book called Hoopoe, and in the volumes On Numbers, and those On Place. In the third book of On the Good . . . (Origen, Against Celsus 4.51. Fr. 10a follows) 2 Again Numenius too, in his volumes On the Good, goes through expounding Plato’s meaning as follows: ‘We can apprehend bodies by induction from similar things and from the distinctive marks shared by things that are juxtaposed. But there is no way of apprehending the good from something juxtaposed with it, or from some perceptible thing that is similar to it. Another approach is needed. Imagine someone sitting at the top of a lookout: he catches a quick glimpse of a small fishing boat – one of those light skiffs, alone, in solitude, caught between waves – and he recognises it. So must one retreat far from the objects of perception to join alone with the good which is alone, where there is no human, nor other animal, nor body large or small, but an ineffable, a completely indescribable, divine solitude. There are the haunts of the good, its pastimes and festivals; but it, in peace, in benevolence, the calm, the gracious ruler, rides upon being [ousia]. 1 And if someone, intent on objects of perception, should imagine the good flying towards him, and preen himself with the thought that he has come across the good, he is completely mistaken. In fact, to get to it requires a divine methodology, one not easy. It is best employed by someone who does not care for the things of perception, applies himself with enthusiasm to his studies, contemplates numbers, and thus learns to master this subject: what is that which exists (to on).’ This in the first book. (PE xi, 21.7 - 22.2, 543b-d. Fr. 16 follows.) 3 That body is not, as the Stoics think, being. From Numenius, On the Good book 1: ‘“But what is that which exists, then? Isn’t it these four elements: earth and fire and the other two intermediate natures? Aren’t these what exist – whether taken together or singly?” “How can they be, these things that come into being and are recalled again? For you can see that they come into being from each other, change into each other, and don’t subsist as elements or even compounds.” “So because they are body, these things wouldn’t be what exists. But if not these, can matter be what exists?” “But that is completely impossible, since it lacks the strength to persist. Matter is a fast-flowing, turbulent river, deep and broad, in length unlimited and without end.”’ (PE xv. 17.1-2, 819ab.) 4a And after a little he adds: ‘“So it was a good argument according to which, if matter is infinite, it is unlimited; and if it is unlimited it is irrational; and if it is irrational, it is unknowable. But being unknowable it must, necessarily, be without order, since I suppose that what has been put in order would be very easily known. But what is without order is not stable; and nothing unstable can be what is. This is what we agreed with ourselves earlier: that it is impiety to associate these things with what is. “Everyone should agree – and even if they don’t, I do.” “So I deny that matter – either matter itself, or bodies – constitutes what is.” “But what does that leave us? Do we have anything else besides these things in the nature of the universe?” “Yes. It is not difficult to say what it is, if we try in the first place to discuss the issue together, with ourselves. Since bodies are in their nature dead things, corpses, borne about and never staying in the same place, must there not be something that keeps them together?” “Certainly.” “If they did not have this thing, would they persist?” “Not at all.” “So what is it that keeps them together? If it were body, it would need the services of Zeus the Saviour, as it would itself be disintegrating and dispersing! But if it must be free of what happens to bodies, so that when they have become agitated it can ward off destruction and keep them together – well, I don’t think it 2 could be anything other than what is incorporeal. Of all natural things, this alone stands firm and compact, and there is nothing corporeal about it. So it does not come to be, or grow, or change in any way whatsoever. This is why justice demanded, quite rightly, that the incorporeal should have the respect due to seniority.”’ (PE xv. 173-8, 819c - 820a) 4b To all those who say that the soul is a body, what Ammonius (the teacher of Plotinus) and Numenius (the Pythagorean) say will suffice. This is what they say. Bodies are, in their own nature, subject to change, dissolution, and infinite division. There is nothing left of them that is immutable. So they need something to hold and draw them together, as it were to bind and sustain them. This we call ‘soul’. Now if the soul were any kind of body, even of the very finest sort, what would there be to keep it together? For it has been shown that every body needs something to keep it together – and so on ad infinitum, until we find ourselves face to face with the incorporeal. Someone might say, with the Stoics, that there is a ‘tensile motion’ involved with bodies which simultaneously moves inwards and outwards, where the outward movement effects size and quality, the inwards one unity and substantiality. But since every movement comes from some power, we should ask them what the power is here, and what it is instantiated in. If the power itself is matter of some sort, we shall back to the same arguments. If it is not matter, but something material (which is different from matter: what is material participates in matter), what is it that participates in the matter? Is it matter or something immaterial? If it is matter, how can the power be material rather than matter? If it is not matter, it is immaterial – and if it is immaterial, it is not body, for every body is material. They might say that bodies are extended in three dimensions and that, since the soul pervades the whole body, it too is extended in three dimensions and therefore is without question body. But we shall say that while every body is three-dimensional, not every three-dimensional thing is body. Quantity and quality are, in themselves, incorporeal; yet through presence in something with mass they are, incidentally, extended. So the soul, considered in itself, is unextended; but by its presence in something threedimensional it too can be thought of as something extended in three dimensions. Again, every body is moved either by something external to it, or by something internal. But if it is moved by something external, it is inanimate; if by something internal, it is animated. So if the soul is a body, and is moved by something external, then it is inanimate; but if by something internal, then it is animated. But it is ridiculous to talk about the soul being either ‘inanimate’ or ‘animated’. So the soul is not a body. Again, the soul, if it is nourished, is nourished by something incorporeal, for it is learning that nourishes it. But no body is nourished by the incorporeal, so the soul is not a body. (This is Xenocrates’ argument.) If on the other hand, the soul is not nourished, but every living body is nourished, the soul is not a body.’ (Nemesius, de nat. hom. 2.8-14 Urmson.) 3 On the Good book 2 5 There are many people who have grappled with the study of these things. For my present purposes, it will be enough to quote the famous Pythagorean Numenius from the second book of his work On the Good. This is what he says: ‘Come then, let us cast off to get as close as we can towards what exists, and speak. What exists never once was nor one day will come to be: it is always in delimited time: the present alone. If you want to call this present moment ‘eternity’, I won’t argue. We must consider time that has passed and escaped us and fled to where it is no longer. What is to come does not yet exist, but only promises that it will in the future be able to arrive at existence. So it is not proper to think of what is as not existing, or existing no longer, or not yet existing – not without equivocation, anyway. For if something like this gets said, the expression gives rise to one great impossibility: that the same thing at the same time both is and is not. If that is how things are, then it is scarcely possible that anything else could exist, since even by the measure of what exists, what exists would not itself exist. So what exists is eternal and stable, always unchanging, always the same. It has nothing to do with generation and destruction, nor with growth and decline; nor again did it ever become more or less. In particular, it will never suffer change of place: it is not right for it to be moved, nor will what is it ever go chasing about backwards and forwards, or up or down, or right or left; it will not ever be moved around its own centre. Rather it will stand firm and compact, it will have been established to be the same in the same way for ever.’ (PE xi. 9.8 10.5, 525b - 526a) 6 And then he adds, after a bit: ‘All this by way of preparation for the journey. I will myself no longer dissemble, or claim that I don’t know the name of the incorporeal, for I imagine that by now it will be more pleasant to say than not. So, then, I say that its name is what has long been sought. And don’t let anyone laugh if I say that the name of the incorporeal is substance and being. The reason it is called being is that it was not generated and will not be destroyed, and permits of no other movement, or change for greater or worse whatsoever. It is simple and unchangeable, it takes the same form; it has no wish to distance itself from sameness, and nor will it be forced to do so by anything else. Plato says in the Cratylus that names are applied to things by virtue of their likeness to them. So be it – and let what exists be considered incorporeal.’ (PE xi. 10.6-8, 526a-c) 7 Then lower down he adds: ‘I said that what exists is incorporeal, and that this [sc. the incorporeal] is the intelligible. What was said, as far as I can remember, was something like this – but let me encourage the inquiry by suggesting that if these things don’t agree with Plato’s doctrines, they must be thought to agree with those of some other great man, someone very able, like Pythagoras. Anyway, Plato says (come: let me remember how he says it): “What is that which always is, and has no 4 generation? And what is that which is coming to be, but never is? One is grasped by the intellect with reason, the other is the subject of opinion, using opinion with irrational perception, since it comes to be and is destroyed, but absolutely never is” [Tim. 27d-28a]. For he was asking what is that which exists and saying that it is without question ungenerated. He denies that there is any generation in being, for otherwise it would have changed, and as something changing it would not have been eternal.’ (PE xi. 10.9-11 526c-d) 8 Then below he says: ‘If what exists is completely and in every way eternal and unchanged, and not at all in any way distancing itself from itself, but remains in the same state and stands just so, this would be what is “grasped by the intellect with reason”. And if body is in flux and is borne up by constant change, it is in flight and it does not exist. So isn’t it quite mad to deny that this thing is indefinite, “the subject of opinion, using opinion with irrational perception” and, as Plato says, “coming to be and being destroyed, but absolutely never being”?’ This, then, is what Numenius has said, expounding with clarity the doctrines that were both Plato’s and, much earlier, those of Moses. It lends plausibility to the attribution to him of the motto in which (as it is recorded) he said: ‘For what is Plato but Moses speaking Attic Greek?’ (PE xi. 10.12-14, 526d - 527a) On the Good book 3 9 And in book 3, he mentions Moses when he says this: ‘Next, at the time when the Jews were being expelled from Egypt, came the Egyptians Jannes and Jambres, sacred scribes, reckoned to be inferior to none in magic. These are the men whom the Egyptian people deemed capable of confronting Moses – the leader of the Jewish exodus, and man whose power of prayer to god was very great. And they proved themselves capable of dispersing the most violent of the plagues which Moses brought down on Egypt.’ In these words, Numenius bears witness both to the miracles performed by Moses, and to the fact that he was loved by god. (PE ix. 8.1-2, 411d - 412a) 10a In On the Good book 3, he even sets out a story about Jesus (though he doesn’t mention the name), and gives it an allegorical interpretation. (The question of whether his interpretation was successful or unsuccessful is one for another occasion.) He also sets out the story about Moses and Jannes and Jambres. (Origen, Against Celsus 4.51.) 10b [fr. 52 perhaps belongs here: so des Places, following Waszink] 5 On the Good book 4 or 5 11 Numenius gives precedence to Plato in his work On the Good, and when he speaks about the second cause, he interprets him as follows: ‘Someone who is going to understand about the first god and the second must first distinguish each part of the question according to its place in the overall arrangement, and with some sense of order. Then (but only then), once these several parts are well disposed, he must attempt to speak in an orderly manner, or else not at all. There is a saying that the treasure of someone who gets to work prematurely, before the first steps have been prepared, will turn to dust. May we not suffer that! Calling upon god to be his own interpreter and to show us by reason the treasury of his thoughts, let us begin like this: we should pray, and we must make our distinctions. The first god, being in his own place is simple; and being together with himself throughout can never be divided. The second and third god, however, is one. He comes into contact with matter, but it is dyadic and, although he unifies it, he is divided by it, since it has an appetitive and fluid character. Because he is gazing on matter, he is not intent on the intelligible (for in that case he would have been intent on himself); and by giving his attention to matter he becomes heedless of himself. And he gets to grips with the perceptible and is absorbed in his work with it, and by devoting himself to matter he takes it up even into his own character.’ (PE xi. 17.11-18.5, 536d 537b) 12 After some other things he says: ‘In fact what is first [or: the first principle; or the first (sc. god)] should not create either. Indeed, the first god must be considered the father of the creator god. If we were asking about the creative force, and reasoning that what preexisted was, for this very reason, best positioned to make things, this would have been the most appropriate starting-point for our discussion. But since the discussion is not about the creator, but we are asking about what is first, I renounce what has been said – let it be unspoken! – and I pass on to take up the argument by hunting it down elsewhere. Before taking it, however, let us agree amongst ourselves in unambiguous terms that the first god is not employed in any work at all, and is king. The creator god passes through the heavens and governs. Our equipment comes through him, since intellect is sent down for all those marshalled to join the expedition. When god looks at each of us, when he turns to us, then are our bodies alive and quickened, united [sc. as in marriage] with the radiance of god. When god turns back to surveying himself, our bodies are extinguished, though the intellect lives, enjoying a happy life.’ (PE xi. 18.6-10, 537b-d) 13 Listen to Numenius’ theological account of the second cause: ‘And again, as the farmer [or: farm-owner?] stands to the man who does the planting, in exactly the same way does the first god relate to the creator. He 6 that is the seed of every soul sows all things together into the things that have a share in him; but the lawgiver plants and apportions and transplants into each of us what has there been pre-prepared [sc. individual souls].’ (PE xi. 18.13-14, 536bc) 14 first: And he goes on to talk about how the second cause came about from the ‘All gifts which, when they have passed to their recipient, are no longer held by the giver – including services rendered, property, coinage hollow or stamped– these things are mortal, the concerns of men. Divine are those things which, when they have been given and have passed from one place to another, have not left the original place while they have come to the other. They benefit the recipient without harming the donor. Indeed, they benefit him too by reminding him of things that he knew. This beautiful possession is the beauty of knowledge, by which the recipient benefits while the donor is never without it. It is as one can see with a lamp, which is lit by another and takes light without depriving the original one of it, its matter being lit by its fire. Such a possession is knowledge. When given and received, it remains with the donor while coming at the same time to be with the recipient. The reason for this, stranger, is no human matter. It is because the state and substance which contains knowledge is the same for god who gave it and for you and me, as recipient. This is why Plato said that wisdom came to men by the offices of Prometheus with a bright flame [Philebus 16c].’ (PE xi. 18.15-19, 538c - 539a) And again, further down, he continues: 15 ‘This is how the first and second god live. Obviously the first god will be fixed, while the second, conversely, will be in motion. The first is concerned with intelligible objects, but the second with intelligible and sensible objects. Don’t be surprised that I say this – you will hear more surprising things yet. For instead of the motion which belongs to the second god, I maintain that the natural motion of the first is stillness, and from it pours out into the universe the order of the cosmos and its permanence and stability and safety.’ (PE xi. 18.20-1, 539ab. Fr. 17 follows) On the Good book 5 16 And in the fifth book he says this: ‘Now if substance and form is intelligible, and it was agreed that the intellect is prior to it and its cause, then intellect alone will be found to be the good. For if the creator is the god of becoming, it seems right that the good should be the principle of substance. The creator stands in relation to the good, which it imitates, just as becoming stands in relation to substance: it is its image and imitation. And if the creator responsible for becoming is good, well of course 7 the ‘creator’ responsible for substance will be the good-itself, an innate feature of substance. For the second [sc. god], being double, is personally responsible both for producing the form of himself, and for producing the cosmos; he is on the one hand a creator, on the other wholly absorbed in contemplation. ‘Since our arguments have led us to name four entities, let there be four of them: (1) the first god, the good-itself; (2) the imitator of this, the good creator; (3) then substance: one which is that of the first [sc. god], and another that of the second [god]; (4) the imitation of this is the beautiful cosmos, made beautiful by participation in the beautiful.’(PE xi. 22.3-5, 544ab. Fr 19 follows.) On the Good book 6 17 On top of this, he also says the following in book 6: ‘Since Plato realised that only the creator was acknowledged by men, but the first intellect, which is called being-itself, was completely unrecognised by them – because of this, he spoke as he did, as if to say “The intellect which you humans conjecture to be the first is not. There is another intellect prior to it, more ancient and divine.’ (PE xi. 18.22-3, 539bc) 18 And after some other things, he adds: ‘A pilot borne along in the middle of the sea sits high up, above the rudders, and steers the ship by their handles, but his eyes and mind are intent on the sky as he looks towards the heavens, so that as far as he is concerned his route follows a path through the heaven above, though he is sailing along the sea below. Just so the creator, having bound matter together in a harmony that it cannot knock or slip away from, is himself seated above it, as above a ship on the sea. And he directs the harmony, steering by the forms; and instead of the heavens, he looks to the god above who draws his eyes to him; and he takes his faculty of judgement from that contemplation, and his faculty of impulse from his yearning.’ (PE xi. 18.24, 539cd) 19 And in book 6 he adds: ‘The things which participate in him participate in nothing else, but only in thought. So in doing this (but in no other way) one can get the advantage of falling in with the good. And as to thought: this is something that goes with the first [sc. god] alone. And it would be a stupid soul that doubted whether this, by which everything else receives colour and value, is the sole property of him alone. For if the second [god] is good, not of itself, but by derivation from the first, obviously that in which he participates in order to be good is itself good – particularly since the second [god] participates in him as good. And so Plato has shown by syllogism to anyone with clear sight that the good is one.’ (PE xi. 22.68, 544cd) 20 And he goes on, again, to say this: 8 ‘This is how it is, and Plato has set it all down in various places. Writing about the creator in prosaic and everyday terms in the Timaeus he said that “He was good” [29e]. But in the Republic, he called the good “the form of the good” [508e], as the good is the form of the creator, who appears good to us by participation in the first and only [good]. For as men are said to be moulded by the form of man, oxen by the form of the ox, horses by the form of the horse, so quite reasonably the creator: if he is good by participation in the first good, then the first intellect, as the good-itself, would be his form.’ (PE xi. 22.9-10, 544d.) 21 Numenius raises a hymn to three gods. He calls the first father, the second maker and the third, artefact – for according to him the cosmos is the third god. According to him, then, the creator is double, the first god and the second, while what is created is the third. It is better to put it like this than to use his own rather dramatic language: ancestor, offspring, descendant. In saying this, he errs first of all in reckoning the good among these causes. It is not the kind of thing to be bound up with others, or to hold second rank to anything. (Proclus, in Tim. i. 303.27 - 304.7 Diehl) Amelius gets his triad of demiurgic intellects especially from these words: 22 he calls the first ‘being’, from ‘essence of animal’, the second ‘having’, from ‘are in’ (for the second is not, but enters into it), and the third ‘seeing’, from ‘saw’. (Plato, however, says that the ideas are in the ‘essence of animal’, so that it is not the case that being animal-itself is one thing, while that into which the forms of animals ‘enter’ is another: i.e. there is no difference between what ‘is’ and what ‘has’: what ‘is’ is the ‘essence of animal’, and what ‘has’ is that into which the ideas enter.) Numenius assigns his first intellect to ‘essence of animal’, and says that it thinks by using the second. The second he assigns to ‘intellect’, and says that this, again, creates by using the third. The third he assigns to ‘deciding’. (Proclus, in Tim. iii. 103.28-32 Diehl.) Note (GB-S): Proclus’ lemma is Tim. 39e: ᾗπερ οὖν νοῦς ἐνούσας ἰδέας τῷ ὃ ἔστιν ζῷον, οἷαί τε ἔνεισι καὶ ὅσαι, καθορᾷ, τοιαύτας καὶ τοσαύτας διενοήθη δεῖν καὶ τόδε σχεῖν (Intellect sees how many and what sort of ideas there are in the essence of animal, and decided that this (sc. the cosmos) should have just the same number and kind). Amelius and Numenius should presumably be understood as follows: Plato’s words τῷ ὃ ἔστιν ζῷον ἐνούσας ἰδέας νοῦς καθορᾷ καὶ διενοήθη Amelius intellect which is intellect which has intellect which sees Numenius first intellect second intellect third intellect 9 On the Secrets in Plato 23 [After quoting Euthyphryo 5e-6c:] So Plato in the Euthyphro. Numenius clarifies his meaning the his book on The Secrets in Plato, saying this: ‘If Plato had promised to write about Athenian theology, and then became disgusted at it, and criticised it for its internecine battles, its tales of incest and the cannibalism of children, for glorifying the revenge taken against fathers for such crimes, and against brother by brother, and so on – if Plato had brought all of this into the open and criticised it, I think he would have furnished the Athenians with another occasion to turn wicked, and kill him as they had done Socrates. He would not have chosen life over truth, but he saw that he would be able to live and tell the truth in safety, by having the Athenians represented by Euthyphro – an arrogant and stupid man, and a poor theologian if ever there was one. He set Socrates himself against him, and represented him with that characteristic manner with which he used to argue with all those he met.’ (PE xiii. 4.4 - 5.2, 650c 651a) On the Dissension of the Academics towards Plato 24 Such was the line of succession from Plato himself. As to what sort of men these people were: go on and read this, which is what Numenius the Pythagorean said in book 1 of his work On the Dissension of the Academics towards Plato: ‘In the time of Speusippus (Plato’s nephew) and Xenocrates (who followed him) and Polemo (who took on the school after Xenocrates), the doctrinal character of the school remained pretty constant – at least to the extent that the much-trumpeted ‘suspension of judgement’ and all the rest of it still lay in the future; for in fact they did drop some beliefs, distorted others, and did not remain with what was originally passed down to them. They started with Plato, but sooner or later diverged from him, whether through deliberate choice or ignorance – or, in some cases, for some other reason (perhaps not untainted by ambition?). I don’t want to end up sniping just because of Xenocrates – but I do want to speak up for Plato. For it pains me that they were not ready to do or suffer anything to maintain complete agreement with Plato in every way in all aspects of doctrine. Plato deserved this of them. He was no better than the great Pythagoras, but perhaps no worse than him either, and Pythagoras became so well respected largely because his pupils followed him closely and showed reverence towards him. This is what the Epicureans learnt (although it would have been better if they hadn’t): no-one has ever caught them opposing Epicurus in any way. And since they all think that they are agreeing with a sage, one can understand why they use this title of themselves. Among later Epicureans, it became an almost invariable rule never to say anything that contradicted themselves or each other or Epicurus, on any matter worth mentioning. Innovation with them is a crime – or rather a sacrilege – and is condemned. So no-one dares to do it, and their doctrines rest in great tranquillity due to their 10 constant agreement with each other. The Epicurean school is like a true republic, completely free of political friction, a single mind shared by all, a single policy. This is why there have been enthusiastic members of the school – and are and, I suppose, will be. ‘There have, on the other hand, been factions among the Stoics which started with their founders and continue today. They take pleasure in malicious refutation. Some of them maintain their original positions, others have shifted. Their founders were like oligarchs, whose divisions furnished their successors with plenty of reasons for criticising them, and plenty of reasons for criticising each other. Some are more Stoic than others – especially those who prove to be more captious in arguments about technical matters, because these men outpace the others in pettiness and pedantry and get their criticisms in first. ‘But long before them, the same thing happened with those followers of Socrates who took different lines – Aristippus his own, Antisthenes his own, the Megarians and Eretreians variously their own, and whoever else there might have been with them. The reason is that Socrates posited three gods, and discussed them in a style appropriate to each. Those who heard him did not understand, and thought that he was saying it all without order, directed by the winds of chance as they blew here and there at random. But Plato followed Pythagoras and knew that that was precisely where Socrates got it all from, and that he knew what he was saying. So he too bound his subjects together in a way that was neither conventional nor transparent. Treating each as he saw fit, he hid them in between clarity and obscurity. So he wrote in safety, but himself provided a cause for the dissension and distortion of his doctrines that happened later on: it was not because of envy or malice – but I don’t want to say anything inappropriate about venerable men. Rather, now we have learnt this, we should apply our thought elsewhere and, as we set out to distinguish Plato from Aristotle and Zeno, so now, with the help of god, we shall separate him from the Academy, and let him be in his own terms, a Pythagorean. As things stand, he has been torn apart in a frenzy more crazed than any Pentheus deserved, and suffers if considered as a collection of limbs – although, taken as a whole, he never changes back and forth with respect to himself considered as a whole. As a man who struck a mean between Pythagoras and Socrates, he reduced the solemnity of the one to make it humane, and elevated the wit and playfulness of the other from the level of irony to dignity and weight. He made this mixture of Pythagoras with Socrates, and proved himself more accessible than the one and more dignified than the other. (PE xiv. 4.16 - 5.9, 727a - 729b) 25 ‘But I am not here to spend time on these things, with which my present inquiry has no concern, but on what I originally intended: and that is where I’ll go. I feel like a deserter back on track, and we shan’t get distracted from the right path. ‘Arcesilaus and Zeno took up with Polemo – I shall mention them again at the end. I remember saying that Zeno spent time with Xenocrates, then Polemo, then Stilpo to learn Cynicism: now, then, let his association with Stilpo, 11 and with his Heraclitean arguments, be credited to his account! For the two of them were rivals, since they were both with Polemo, and they took allies in their battle with each other. Zeno took Heraclitus and Stilpo, and Crates along with them – and Stilpo made him a warrior, Heraclitus made him austere, Crates made him a Cynic. Arcesilaus on the other hand took Theophrastus, the Platonist Crantor and Diodorus, with Pyrrho in addition. Crantor made him persuasive, Diodorus made him a sophist, and Pyrrho made him versatile, reckless, and elusive [lit.: nothing]. This is the origin of the insulting parody about him: Plato in front and Pyrrho behind, Diodorus between them. [cf. Iliad 6.181] Timon says that Menedemus furnished him with the art of eristic as well – assuming that it was he who said of him: There will he rush, with lead in his heart taken from Menedemus, All wrapped up in Pyrrho-flesh – or else Diodorus. Weaving together Pyrrho’s arguments and sceptical method with the subtleties of Diodorus the logician, he adorned his babbling chatter with the power of Plato’s language, spoke pro and contra, wheeled about here and there and wherever chance took him, recanting, conflating, taking back his suggestions even as he made them, knowing nothing – as he was decent enough to say himself. Yet somehow he came out of it all looking as good as those who do know, adaptable as his trompe-l’oeuil arguments made him appear. In Homer, one never knows which side the son of Tydeus is on – whether he sides with the Trojans or Achaeans. It was just as unclear with Arcesilaus. He could never stick to one and the same argument. Nor, in fact, did he think that a clever man ever would. So he was called “clever sophist, butcher of those untrained”. For like the Empusae, he could drug and entrance people with his phantom arguments, well prepared and practised; and he could not allow anyone knowledge – neither himself, nor anyone else. He caused terror and confusion; he took first prize for sophisms and rhetorical fraud and rejoiced at the disgrace. He gave himself extraordinary airs because he did not know what disgraceful and honourable were, or good, or bad – but would say whichever came into his head; then change his mind, and tear down his position in more ways than he had used to set it up. He was a hydra cutting himself up, being cut up by himself, conflating each side with the other with no thought to propriety. He pleased his audience, though, who were able to enjoy his good looks while they listened. So the greatest pleasure was to see as well as hear him – for in fact people got quite used to his arguments since they came from a beautiful face and mouth, and not without a certain friendliness in the eyes. This is not something to be taken lightly, for he was like this from the beginning. As a boy he fell in with Theophrastus, a mild-mannered man, not untalented in matters of love. While still in the bloom of youth, his beauty led him to become boyfriend of the Academic Crantor. He joined Crantor; but there was a momentum to such 12 natural talent as he had which his ambition made him eager to exploit, so he went to Diodorus, where he got those persuasive and elegant villainies of his, and also spent time with Pyrrho. (Pyrrho got started on philosophy through Democritus somehow or other.) Having been trained here, he stayed true to the Pyrrhonian way of attacking everything, except he never called it that. Anyway, Mnaseas and Philomelus and Timon, who were sceptics, called him a sceptic like them, since he too did away with truth and falsehood and plausibility. ‘So he might have been called a Pyrrhonian, on the ground of his Pyrrhonian arguments, but out of respect for his lover he submitted to being called an Academic still. But he was a Pyrrhonian, except in name: he was no Academic, beyond being called one. I don’t believe Diocles of Cnidus when he says in his Diatribes that Arcesilaus took care not to be seen venturing any opinion through fear of Theodorus’ followers and the sophist Bion, who used to attack the philosophers and shrink from nothing in refuting them. He says that Arcesilaus, to avoid trouble, openly expressed no view, hiding behind “suspension of judgement” [epoch ] as the squid does its ink. I don’t believe it. ‘So Arcesilaus and Zeno, who started there, by means of such auxiliary forces as their warring arguments provided, forgot that they started out from a shared origin with Polemo. “Drawing apart”, they “armed themselves” [Iliad 12.86], and: clashed hides together, and lances and the might of men in brazen breastplates: but their bossed shields met each other, and a great noise arose. [Iliad 4.447-9] Shield pressed against shield and crest against crest, and man against man did battle. [Iliad 13.131 + 4.471] Then went forth together the boasting and lamentation of men, the slaying and the slain [Iliad 4.450] . . . . . . who were the Stoics. For the Academics were not hit by them, but were spoiled for choice as to where best to take the Stoics. They themselves might have been taken, and their foundation rocked, had they no governing principle or starting-point for the fight. But they had their principle: to refute the Stoics where they did not say what Plato said. Their starting-point was that the Stoics would have nothing at all if they changed the definition of the “cognitive impression” by dropping just one element of it. This is not the right time to mention it, but I shall mention it again when I really get there. ‘So they drew apart openly and shot one another – not both: Arcesilaus shot Zeno. For Zeno in battle had a certainly solemnity and heaviness, and was as ineffective as Cephisodorus the orator. This Cephisodorus saw his teacher Isocrates overthrown by Aristotle. He did not know anything about Aristotle, but he had come across the better-known doctrines of Plato, and thought that Aristotle 13 followed Plato in his philosophy. So his battle was with Aristotle, but it was Plato he shot. His criticisms began with the forms, and ended with other matters which he didn’t know himself, but guessed from things that people said. In this way Cephisodorus did not fight the man his battle was with, but fought someone with whom he had no wish to do battle. As for Zeno: if, after parting ways with Arcesilaus, he had not done battle with Plato, he would in my opinion have been a very good philosopher, if only for keeping the peace. He may or may not have been aware of Arcesilaus’ views, but he was certainly ignorant of Plato’s (something of which his polemical writings convict him), and he too did the opposite of what he wanted: he did not hit the man he knew, but he treated someone he should not have done with outrageous and violent disrespect – much worse than a dog deserves! Anyway, in his arrogance he evidently failed to engage Arcesilaus; either from ignorance of what he thought, or through fear of the Stoics he turned “the great mouth of bitter war” [Iliad 10.8] elsewhere, against Plato. But I shall speak elsewhere of Zeno’s terrible and absolutely shameless innovations against Plato, if I ever have a break from philosophy – although I hope I never get a break long enough to do this, unless as a game. ‘So Arcesilaus saw that Zeno was matched in skill and a worthy opponent, and set about destroying his arguments, and no holds barred. I am perhaps not in a position to speak about the other things he had fought with him about – and even if I were, there is no need to mention them now. But he fought with every device against that doctrine which Zeno invented, especially when he saw that its very name won respect among the Athenians: the cognitive impression. Zeno was in the weaker position. He kept quiet so that he could not be assaulted, and ignored Arcesilaus. He would have had much to say; he just did not want to (unless there was some other reason). Instead, he took to shadowboxing with Plato, who was no longer among the living, and hurled the whole catalogue of abuse at him, noting that Plato could not defend himself, and no-one else was about to stand up for him. Even if Arcesilaus had done so, Zeno thought that he would profit by it, turning Arcesilaus from himself. (He knew this sophistical trick as one that Agathocles the Syracusan had also pulled against the Carthaginians.) The Stoics listened in amazement: “Their Muse then was not” educated or “in the pay” of the Graces [cf. Pindar, Isthmian 2.6], with whose help Arcesilaus knocked down Zeno’s arguments, or cut them to shreds, or tripped them up – and was persuasive. And so when those he argued against had been defeated, and those around him when he was speaking were dumbfounded, people at the time found that it had been proved somehow that nothing existed – and that no word, or feeling, or even the smallest and most inconsequential action could ever seem otherwise – unless Arcesilaus of Pitane thought that it did. But he thought nothing at all, and proved that all these things were no more than words and fears.’ (PE xiv. 5.10 - 6.14, 729b - 733d) 24 Such was the line of succession from Plato himself. As to what sort of men these people were: go on and read this, which is what Numenius the Pythagorean said in book 1 of his work On the Dissension of the Academics towards Plato: 14 ‘In the time of Speusippus (Plato’s nephew) and Xenocrates (who followed him) and Polemo (who took on the school after Xenocrates), the doctrinal character of the school remained pretty constant – at least to the extent that the much-trumpeted ‘suspension of judgement’ and all the rest of it still lay in the future; for in fact they did drop some beliefs, distorted others, and did not remain with what was originally passed down to them. They started with Plato, but sooner or later diverged from him, whether through deliberate choice or ignorance – or, in some cases, for some other reason (perhaps not untainted by ambition?). I don’t want to end up sniping just because of Xenocrates – but I do want to speak up for Plato. For it pains me that they were not ready to do or suffer anything to maintain complete agreement with Plato in every way in all aspects of doctrine. Plato deserved this of them. He was no better than the great Pythagoras, but perhaps no worse than him either, and Pythagoras became so well respected largely because his pupils followed him closely and showed reverence towards him. This is what the Epicureans learnt (although it would have been better if they hadn’t): no-one has ever caught them opposing Epicurus in any way. And since they all think that they are agreeing with a sage, one can understand why they use this title of themselves. Among later Epicureans, it became an almost invariable rule never to say anything that contradicted themselves or each other or Epicurus, on any matter worth mentioning. Innovation with them is a crime – or rather a sacrilege – and is condemned. So no-one dares to do it, and their doctrines rest in great tranquillity due to their constant agreement with each other. The Epicurean school is like a true republic, completely free of political friction, a single mind shared by all, a single policy. This is why there have been enthusiastic members of the school – and are and, I suppose, will be. ‘There have, on the other hand, been factions among the Stoics which started with their founders and continue today. They take pleasure in malicious refutation. Some of them maintain their original positions, others have shifted. Their founders were like oligarchs, whose divisions furnished their successors with plenty of reasons for criticising them, and plenty of reasons for criticising each other. Some are more Stoic than others – especially those who prove to be more captious in arguments about technical matters, because these men outpace the others in pettiness and pedantry and get their criticisms in first. ‘But long before them, the same thing happened with those followers of Socrates who took different lines – Aristippus his own, Antisthenes his own, the Megarians and Eretreians variously their own, and whoever else there might have been with them. The reason is that Socrates posited three gods, and discussed them in a style appropriate to each. Those who heard him did not understand, and thought that he was saying it all without order, directed by the winds of chance as they blew here and there at random. But Plato followed Pythagoras and knew that that was precisely where Socrates got it all from, and that he knew what he was saying. So he too bound his subjects together in a way that was neither conventional nor transparent. Treating each as he saw fit, he hid them in between 15 clarity and obscurity. So he wrote in safety, but himself provided a cause for the dissension and distortion of his doctrines that happened later on: it was not because of envy or malice – but I don’t want to say anything inappropriate about venerable men. Rather, now we have learnt this, we should apply our thought elsewhere and, as we set out to distinguish Plato from Aristotle and Zeno, so now, with the help of god, we shall separate him from the Academy, and let him be in his own terms, a Pythagorean. As things stand, he has been torn apart in a frenzy more crazed than any Pentheus deserved, and suffers if considered as a collection of limbs – although, taken as a whole, he never changes back and forth with respect to himself considered as a whole. As a man who struck a mean between Pythagoras and Socrates, he reduced the solemnity of the one to make it humane, and elevated the wit and playfulness of the other from the level of irony to dignity and weight. He made this mixture of Pythagoras with Socrates, and proved himself more accessible than the one and more dignified than the other. (PE xiv. 4.16 - 5.9, 727a - 729b) 25 ‘But I am not here to spend time on these things, with which my present inquiry has no concern, but on what I originally intended: and that is where I’ll go. I feel like a deserter back on track, and we shan’t get distracted from the right path. ‘Arcesilaus and Zeno took up with Polemo – I shall mention them again at the end. I remember saying that Zeno spent time with Xenocrates, then Polemo, then Stilpo to learn Cynicism: now, then, let his association with Stilpo, and with his Heraclitean arguments, be credited to his account! For the two of them were rivals, since they were both with Polemo, and they took allies in their battle with each other. Zeno took Heraclitus and Stilpo, and Crates along with them – and Stilpo made him a warrior, Heraclitus made him austere, Crates made him a Cynic. Arcesilaus on the other hand took Theophrastus, the Platonist Crantor and Diodorus, with Pyrrho in addition. Crantor made him persuasive, Diodorus made him a sophist, and Pyrrho made him versatile, reckless, and elusive [lit.: nothing]. This is the origin of the insulting parody about him: Plato in front and Pyrrho behind, Diodorus between them. [cf. Iliad 6.181] Timon says that Menedemus furnished him with the art of eristic as well – assuming that it was he who said of him: There will he rush, with lead in his heart taken from Menedemus, All wrapped up in Pyrrho-flesh – or else Diodorus. Weaving together Pyrrho’s arguments and sceptical method with the subtleties of Diodorus the logician, he adorned his babbling chatter with the power of Plato’s language, spoke pro and contra, wheeled about here and there and wherever chance took him, recanting, conflating, taking back his suggestions even as he made them, knowing nothing – as he was decent enough to say himself. Yet 16 somehow he came out of it all looking as good as those who do know, adaptable as his trompe-l’oeuil arguments made him appear. In Homer, one never knows which side the son of Tydeus is on – whether he sides with the Trojans or Achaeans. It was just as unclear with Arcesilaus. He could never stick to one and the same argument. Nor, in fact, did he think that a clever man ever would. So he was called “clever sophist, butcher of those untrained”. For like the Empusae, he could drug and entrance people with his phantom arguments, well prepared and practised; and he could not allow anyone knowledge – neither himself, nor anyone else. He caused terror and confusion; he took first prize for sophisms and rhetorical fraud and rejoiced at the disgrace. He gave himself extraordinary airs because he did not know what disgraceful and honourable were, or good, or bad – but would say whichever came into his head; then change his mind, and tear down his position in more ways than he had used to set it up. He was a hydra cutting himself up, being cut up by himself, conflating each side with the other with no thought to propriety. He pleased his audience, though, who were able to enjoy his good looks while they listened. So the greatest pleasure was to see as well as hear him – for in fact people got quite used to his arguments since they came from a beautiful face and mouth, and not without a certain friendliness in the eyes. This is not something to be taken lightly, for he was like this from the beginning. As a boy he fell in with Theophrastus, a mild-mannered man, not untalented in matters of love. While still in the bloom of youth, his beauty led him to become boyfriend of the Academic Crantor. He joined Crantor; but there was a momentum to such natural talent as he had which his ambition made him eager to exploit, so he went to Diodorus, where he got those persuasive and elegant villainies of his, and also spent time with Pyrrho. (Pyrrho got started on philosophy through Democritus somehow or other.) Having been trained here, he stayed true to the Pyrrhonian way of attacking everything, except he never called it that. Anyway, Mnaseas and Philomelus and Timon, who were sceptics, called him a sceptic like them, since he too did away with truth and falsehood and plausibility. ‘So he might have been called a Pyrrhonian, on the ground of his Pyrrhonian arguments, but out of respect for his lover he submitted to being called an Academic still. But he was a Pyrrhonian, except in name: he was no Academic, beyond being called one. I don’t believe Diocles of Cnidus when he says in his Diatribes that Arcesilaus took care not to be seen venturing any opinion through fear of Theodorus’ followers and the sophist Bion, who used to attack the philosophers and shrink from nothing in refuting them. He says that Arcesilaus, to avoid trouble, openly expressed no view, hiding behind “suspension of judgement” [epoch ] as the squid does its ink. I don’t believe it. ‘So Arcesilaus and Zeno, who started there, by means of such auxiliary forces as their warring arguments provided, forgot that they started out from a shared origin with Polemo. “Drawing apart”, they “armed themselves” [Iliad 12.86], and: clashed hides together, and lances and the might of men 17 in brazen breastplates: but their bossed shields met each other, and a great noise arose. [Iliad 4.447-9] Shield pressed against shield and crest against crest, and man against man did battle. [Iliad 13.131 + 4.471] Then went forth together the boasting and lamentation of men, the slaying and the slain [Iliad 4.450] . . . . . . who were the Stoics. For the Academics were not hit by them, but were spoiled for choice as to where best to take the Stoics. They themselves might have been taken, and their foundation rocked, had they no governing principle or starting-point for the fight. But they had their principle: to refute the Stoics where they did not say what Plato said. Their starting-point was that the Stoics would have nothing at all if they changed the definition of the “cognitive impression” by dropping just one element of it. This is not the right time to mention it, but I shall mention it again when I really get there. ‘So they drew apart openly and shot one another – not both: Arcesilaus shot Zeno. For Zeno in battle had a certainly solemnity and heaviness, and was as ineffective as Cephisodorus the orator. This Cephisodorus saw his teacher Isocrates overthrown by Aristotle. He did not know anything about Aristotle, but he had come across the better-known doctrines of Plato, and thought that Aristotle followed Plato in his philosophy. So his battle was with Aristotle, but it was Plato he shot. His criticisms began with the forms, and ended with other matters which he didn’t know himself, but guessed from things that people said. In this way Cephisodorus did not fight the man his battle was with, but fought someone with whom he had no wish to do battle. As for Zeno: if, after parting ways with Arcesilaus, he had not done battle with Plato, he would in my opinion have been a very good philosopher, if only for keeping the peace. He may or may not have been aware of Arcesilaus’ views, but he was certainly ignorant of Plato’s (something of which his polemical writings convict him), and he too did the opposite of what he wanted: he did not hit the man he knew, but he treated someone he should not have done with outrageous and violent disrespect – much worse than a dog deserves! Anyway, in his arrogance he evidently failed to engage Arcesilaus; either from ignorance of what he thought, or through fear of the Stoics he turned “the great mouth of bitter war” [Iliad 10.8] elsewhere, against Plato. But I shall speak elsewhere of Zeno’s terrible and absolutely shameless innovations against Plato, if I ever have a break from philosophy – although I hope I never get a break long enough to do this, unless as a game. ‘So Arcesilaus saw that Zeno was matched in skill and a worthy opponent, and set about destroying his arguments, and no holds barred. I am perhaps not in a position to speak about the other things he had fought with him about – and even if I were, there is no need to mention them now. But he fought with every device against that doctrine which Zeno invented, especially when he 18 saw that its very name won respect among the Athenians: the cognitive impression. Zeno was in the weaker position. He kept quiet so that he could not be assaulted, and ignored Arcesilaus. He would have had much to say; he just did not want to (unless there was some other reason). Instead, he took to shadowboxing with Plato, who was no longer among the living, and hurled the whole catalogue of abuse at him, noting that Plato could not defend himself, and no-one else was about to stand up for him. Even if Arcesilaus had done so, Zeno thought that he would profit by it, turning Arcesilaus from himself. (He knew this sophistical trick as one that Agathocles the Syracusan had also pulled against the Carthaginians.) The Stoics listened in amazement: “Their Muse then was not” educated or “in the pay” of the Graces [cf. Pindar, Isthmian 2.6], with whose help Arcesilaus knocked down Zeno’s arguments, or cut them to shreds, or tripped them up – and was persuasive. And so when those he argued against had been defeated, and those around him when he was speaking were dumbfounded, people at the time found that it had been proved somehow that nothing existed – and that no word, or feeling, or even the smallest and most inconsequential action could ever seem otherwise – unless Arcesilaus of Pitane thought that it did. But he thought nothing at all, and proved that all these things were no more than words and fears.’ (PE xiv. 5.10 - 6.14, 729b - 733d) 26 ‘I want to tell a nice story about Lacydes. Lacydes was quite greedy – a real economist you might say. He was generally held in good regard, but used to open and lock up his storehouse himself. He would take out what he needed and do everything else of the kind himself, not at all because he approved of selfsufficiency, or because he was in penury, or had a shortage of slaves. (In fact he had rather a lot.) You can guess the reason, so I shall continue to tell the nice story I promised. For while he looked after his own storehouse, he thought he should not carry the key around with him, so when he had locked up he would put it in a hollow writing tablet. He would seal it shut with his ring, and roll the ring through the keyhole into the building when he left it, so that later, when he came back and opened it up with the key, he would be able to get the ring back, lock up, seal the key away and throw the ring back into the building through the keyhole. Well, the slaves noticed this bit of cleverness, and whenever Lacydes when out for a walk, or wherever else, they themselves would open up the storehouse and eat and drink and pillage to their heart’s desire; then follow the sequence: they locked, they sealed, they dropped the ring into the building through the keyhole – laughing a great deal at Lacydes. Lacydes, then, found empty vessels which he had left full, and could not understand what was happening; but he heard about Arcesilaus’ philosophical doctrine of incomprehensibility, and thought that this was just what was happening to him with his storehouse, so he joined Arcesilaus in arguing that no act of seeing or hearing is clear or sound. And one day he got one of his friends in his house and was putting up (or so it seemed to him) a very powerful case for suspension of judgement, when he said: ‘I can tell you that there is no room for doubt about this, and I know it from my own experience, not just at second hand.’ And then 19 began to tell him everything that had happened to him with the storehouse. ‘So,’ he said, ‘what would Zeno say in the face of the absolutely consistent and manifest incomprehensibility I have encountered here? I locked the door with my own hands, I myself made the seal, I myself dropped the ring inside, and coming back and opening up I see my ring inside but not everything else. How can I be wrong to maintain distrust reality? For myself,’ he said, ‘I am not going to say that someone else came along and stole these things while my ring is inside.’ His friend, who was a rude man, listened to the whole story as best he could, but could barely contain himself, and burst out laughing uproariously, and continued laughing and chuckling while he refuted his empty belief. From then on, Lacydes no longer threw his ring inside, and no longer held and attitude of incomprehensibility towards his storehouse, but grasped his losses: his philosophy had been in vain. ‘His slaves, however, were the low sort that you get in comedies, ‘not to be caught with a single hand’: they were all Getas and Dacuses, able to talk and chatter with the loquacity of the Dacians. What is more, they had picked up sophisms from the Stoics, or learnt them some other way, and went straight off to their daring task. The broke the seal, and sometimes replaced it with a different one, sometimes none at all, since they thought it would all be incognitive to him whatever they did. When he came back, he would carry out an inspection. When he saw his writing-tablet unsealed, or sealed with some other seal, he was very angry. But they would say that it was sealed, that they could see his seal. He would get precise and work up a proof; and when they were beaten by his proof, they would say that, if there were no seal there, perhaps he has forgotten to seal it himself. He would say that he remembered doing it, and offered proof, and covered all the angles with his arguments, and complained and swore at them, supposing that he was being mocked. But they were suspicious of his attacks and thought themselves mocked by him, since being a wise man Lacydes had decided to live without beliefs. In that case, he would have to live without memory, since a memory is a belief. Anyway, they said that they had heard him say this to his friends a short time before. When he repulsed their attacks and stopped speaking like an Academic, they went to a Stoic to learn what they should say, and began to return sophism for sophism, and matching his skill as an Academic thief. He accused them in the manner of a Stoic, but the slaves would refute his accusations with an appeal to incomprehensibility, and not without some scoffing. There were disquisitions on every subject, and arguments and counterarguments, and there was not one thing left to see: no jar, nothing to put in a jar, absolutely nothing else that goes towards a household’s provisions. ‘For a while, Lacydes was at a loss: he could see that he was not benefiting from the help of his own doctrines, and thought that if he could not refute them, everything would be ruined. He became helpless and cried out to his neighbours and the gods: Oh! Oh! and Alas! Alas! and By the gods! and By the goddesses! – all those ingenuous appeals to trust that one finds when those given to strong language have lost trust. All this at a shout compelling one’s trust. 20 Finally, since he had a battle of words raging at house, he took what I suppose was a Stoic line against his slaves, since they were maintaining the Academic position, and so that he would have no more trouble, he became a watch-dog, sitting guard over his storehouse. He had been of no use, and saw where his cleverness was going. He made this revelation: ‘We take these things one way in discussion; but it is not the way we live.’ ‘So much for Lacydes. He had many students, one of whom was distinguished, Aristippus of Cyrene; but of all his pupils, it was Evander and his successors who took on his school. After them, Carneades took over and established the ‘Third Academy’. His method of argument was that same as Arcesilaus’: he too employed argument on both sides of the question, and destroyed whatever other people were saying. He differed from Arcesilaus only in the doctrine of suspension of judgement. Carneades said that it was impossible for a human being to suspend judgement about everything. There is, he said, a difference between being unclear and inapprehensible, and while everything is inapprehensible, not everything is unclear. He engaged with Stoic arguments as well, and by taking a polemical stance against them grew every stronger, aiming always at what seemed plausible to most people rather than at the truth. Hence he gave the Stoics a lot of grief.’ And Numenius also writes this about him: (PE xiv. 7.1-15, 734a - 737a) 27 ‘Carneades succeeded Hegesinus and with it the duty to preserve his doctrines, both those Hegesinus had passed on unchanged, and those he had changed. But he ignored him, and ascribed everything, better and worse, to Arcesilaus, and after a long time renewed the battle.’ He goes on: ‘So he too would advance and retreat, bring counter-arguments and subtle twists to the battle, deny all sorts of things and assert them, and argue against each from the opposite side. If ever arguments were needed, even for something counter-intuitive, he would be roused up as violent as a river in full spate, filling everything on every side, and would fall on his audience and drag them along by his uproar. So he would carry off everyone else, but he remained himself unassailable – something not achieved by Arcesilaus. For while he was able to contain his enthusiasts by his intoxicating speech, he did not notice that he was the first to be taken in, by believing that what he said was true without having observed it, since he overturned everything at once. Carneades on top of Arcesilaus came as evil added to evil. He did not make any concession however small, unless he could render his opponents impotent by allowing as plausible what he called positive or negative impressions [of some particular thing being an animal or not]. Having conceded that, giving ground like those animals that draw back to throw themselves all the more and with more force against the spears, he would come back more powerfully. And once he had gained his position and things were going well, he would happily ignore what he thought previously, and not mention it. He agreed that there is truth and falsehood in things, as if co-operating in the enquiry; but like a clever wrestler, he would give 21 the hold and come out on top. Putting forward each side according to the weight of plausibility, he would say that neither could be securely grasped. He was, then, a cleverer thief and magician [sc. than Arcesilaus?]. He would come up with something false which was like any truth, something else that had been grasped similar to any cognitive impression, and get them on an equal footing. And so [after all] he would not allow that there was truth or falsehood, or that one was no more than the other, or more than what is plausible. It was all dreams for dreams: for false impressions were similar to true ones, as one can see by comparing a wax egg with a real one. So these misfortunes and more came about. Carneades took control of men’s souls when he spoke, and enslaved them. He stole unnoticed but was obviously a thief, seizing whether by craft or force even people extremely well armed. Whatever position Carneades wanted to triumph did so, and nobody else ever had a thought that did, since those with whom he did battle were not such good speakers. Antipater, his contemporary, was intending to write some exercise or other; but in the face of the arguments pouring out of Carneades daily, he never made it public: he said nothing, uttered nothing whether in classroom discussions or in the colonnades; they say that no-one heard so much as a syllable from him. He threatened to write a response, and taking to a corner he wrote books which he left to posterity, which have no importance now, and had less then against such a surpassingly powerful man as Carneades, one so esteemed by his contemporaries.’ He goes on: ‘Mentor was Carneades’ student at first, but not his successor. For while he was still alive Carneades found him committing adultery with his concubine – and not by means of a plausible impression, or one he did not grasp. He absolutely believed his eyes, and grasped him and excused him from the school. Mentor seceded and became his opponent in sophistry and professional rival, refuting the incomprehensibility he maintained in his arguments.’ And again, he adds this: ‘But Carneades was controversialist in his philosophy, used lies as adornment, and hid the truth beneath them. He used lies like curtains, and hid away inside like a shop-keeper, where he traded in truth. It was like what happens to beans, when the hollow ones float at the surface of the water and stand out, while the good one are at the bottom, unseen.’ This is what is said about Carneades. Clitomachus was his successor, and presided over the school, and after him Philo, about whom Numenius says this: (PE xiv. 8.1-15, 737b-739a) 28 ‘This Philo, when he had just taken over the school, was overcome by joy, and he gratefully honoured Clitomachus and praised his doctrines. Against the Stoics he armed himself in gleaming brass [Iliad 7.206]. But as time went on, and their ‘suspension of judgement’ was becoming a commonplace and losing its force, his opinions all changed. The clarity and consistency of his experiences converted him. Since his perception was so very clear, you can imagine how 22 much he wanted to find someone to refute him, so that he would not seem to be deliberately turning his back [Iliad 8.94] and deserting. A student of Philo’s was Antiochus, founder of another Academy. At least, he studied with the Stoic Mnesarchus and got many strange ideas opposed to those of his professor, and foisted them on the Academy.’ This, and a great deal more like it, is what he says of the successors of Plato. (PE xiv. 9.1-4, 739b-d) On the Indestructibility of the Soul 29 Even Greeks have related that miraculous things have sometimes appeared to men – not only those who might be suspected of making it up, but also people who have proved themselves over a long period to be true philosophers, who set down what they encounter with strict regard for the truth. We have read such things in Chrysippus of Soli, in Pythagoras, and in more recent, sometimes very recent, writers: Plutarch of Chaeronaea, for example, in his On the Soul; and the Pythagorean Numenius in Book 2 of his work On the Indestructibility of the Soul. (Origen, Against Celsus 5.57.) Fragments of unknown works 30 Nymphs which represent the powers of the waters we call, specifically, ‘Naiads’, a name used by the Pythagoreans to refer in general to all souls descending into generation. For they think that the souls settle on the water which contains the breath of god, as Numenius says, adding that it is because of this that the prophet said that the spirit of god was borne over the water, and because of this that the Egyptians place all their daemons not on anything solid but, in every case, on a ship – the Sun and absolutely all of them. One is supposed to understand by them the souls floating on water as they descend to generation. This is also why Heraclitus said that ‘to become moist is pleasure, not death, for souls’: the fall to generation is a pleasure for them. Elsewhere Heraclitus says that we live their death and they live our death, which is why the poet calls those in the realm of generation ‘liquid’, as their souls are wet. Blood and humid seed are dear to them as well, and water nurtures plants. (Porphyry, Cave of the Nymphs 10) 31 Since the cave presents an image and representation of the cosmos, Numenius and his friend Cronius say that there are two extremities in the heaven: nothing is more southerly than the winter solstice, and nothing more northerly than the summer solstice. The summer solstice is in Cancer, and the winter in Capricorn. Cancer being closest to us on earth, it makes sense that it was associated with the moon, which is the closest body to the earth; and since the southern pole of the heavens is so far removed from us as to be invisible, 23 Capricorn is associated with the farthest of the planets [sc. Saturn]. [22] The signs of the Zodiac are organised in sequence from Cancer to Capricorn: first Leo, house of the Sun; then Virgo, house of Mercury; Libra, of Venus; Scorpio, of Mars; Sagittarius, of Jupiter; Capricorn, of Saturn. And from Capricorn back again: Aquarius, of Saturn, Pisces of Jupiter, Aries of Mars, Taurus of Venus, Gemini of Mercury, and the remaining one, Cancer, of the moon. And so the theologians call these two, Cancer and Capricorn, ‘gates’ – or ‘mouths’ according to Plato. It is Cancer through which souls descend, and Capricorn through which they ascend: Cancer is northerly and suited to descent; Capricorn southerly and suited to ascent. [23] The northern parts are inhabited by souls descending to generation; so it is right that the gates of the cave through which men descend should also point north, while those at the south are – not for the gods, but for souls ascending to the gods. For the same reason, Homer does not say that it is the gods’ road, but the ‘road of immortals’, which refers to souls as well, whether immortal in themselves or because of their substance. [Numenius says that] Parmenides mentions these two gates, in his Physics, as do the Romans and Egyptians. For the Romans celebrate the Saturnalia when the sun is in Capricorn, and they celebrate it by dressing slaves up as free men, and sharing everything in common. Whoever founded the festival was hinting that all those who are now slaves because they have come through this heavenly gate and entered the realm of generation, will be freed through the Saturnalian festival and the house associated with Saturn, will come back to life, and return to their native land and self-generation. The road from Capricorn is, they recognise, the route downwards, and this is why they call a door janua and January the month in which the sun turns North and goes back up from Capricorn eastwards [24] The Egyptian year does not begin with Aquarius, as the Roman year does, but Cancer: for Sothis, what the Greeks call the Dog star [Sirius], is near Cancer. The rising of Sothis, which rules the generation which comes to this cosmos, marks the beginning of their months. (Porphyry, Cave of the Nymphs 21-4) 32 Homer talks somewhere of the ‘gates of the sun’, meaning Cancer and Capricorn. For they limit the sun’s course, as it goes from North to South, and back again to the North. Capricorn and Cancer are situated at the edge of the Milky Way, Cancer to the north, and Capricorn to the south. What Pythagoras calls the ‘citizenry of dreams’ are souls. These, he says, are gathered in the Milky Way, so-called because souls are nourished by milk when then fall into the realm of generation. People who invoke souls pour them libations of honey mixed with milk, in the hope that the pleasure will make them think of generation so that they come; and lactation starts at the same time as their conception. (Porphyry, Cave of the Nymphs 28) 33 Numenius’ followers seem to me to hit the mark when they say that the Odysseus of Homer’s Odyssey presents an image of someone travelling through 24 successive generation until he escapes to a people beyond the waves and the sea, things of which they have no knowledge: You will arrive among men who know not the sea Nor eat food which is mixed with its brine [Odyssey 11.122-3] The sea and the ocean and the waves represent the condition of matter in Plato as well. (Porphyry, Cave of the Nymphs 34) 34 Of the descent itself, by which a soul falls from heaven into the inferior regions of this life, the order is arranged thus. The galaxy encircles the Zodiac, but with its circuit oblique to that of the Zodiac in such a way as to intersect it where the two solstice signs, Capricorn and Cancer, begin. Natural philosophers call these the ‘gates of the sun’ because in each case when the solstice occurs the sun is prevented from going any further, and it regresses to the path of the zodiac, whose limits it never abandons. Through these gates souls are believed to travel from heaven to earth and to return from earth to heaven. So one is called the gate ‘of men’, the other ‘of the gods’: that of men is Cancer, because the descent to the lower regions passes through it; that of the gods is Capricorn, because through it souls achieve the seat of their proper immortality and rejoin the company of the gods. This is what Homer meant, in his divine wisdom, by his description of the cave at Ithaca. And so it is that Pythagoras believes that the power of Dis begins from the galaxy and reaches downwards, because souls fallen from there seem already to have left superior realms. And this is, he says, why the first nourishment offered to the new-born is milk, because the initial movement of their descent to terrestrial bodies begins from the milky way. And so it is that when the Milky Way is shown to Scipio he is told that the souls of the blessed “have come from here, and shall here return”. Therefore, when the souls about to descend are still in Cancer, since being placed there they have not yet left the milky way, they are still counted in the number of the gods. But when they have fallen as far as Leo, there they start to rejoice in their future condition. (Macrobius, in Somn. Scip. i. 12.1-4) 35 Numenius says that this is the centre of the whole cosmos and of the earth as being in the middle of heaven and in the middle of the earth. Here sit the judges and send some of the souls to heaven, and others to the region under the earth and the rivers that are there. He calls the fixed sphere ‘heaven’ and says that there are two chasms in it, Capricorn and Cancer, the one a chasm of descent to generation, the other of ascent. The rivers beneath the earth are the planets (he makes the rivers, and Tartarus itself, refer to them). And he introduces another great fantasy in the leaps and movements made by souls from the solstices to the equinoxes, and from these to the solstices, making a leap himself in applying this to our affairs, connecting Plato’s words with nativities [i.e. horoscopes] and these to mystic rites. He calls the poetry of Homer to witness to the two chasms: it does not only say ‘Those [sc. gates] to the North are paths of descent for men’, since 25 the sun +. . . +; but ‘Those to the South, through which men cannot pass, <are more divine>, and paths of the immortals alone’. For as Capricorn leads the souls up it releases them from their life among men, and receives only the immortal and divine. It [i.e. Homer’s poetry] does not only say this, but also celebrates the ‘gates of the sun’ and the ‘citizenry of dreams’ – calling the signs of the two solstices ‘gates of the sun’ and the Galaxy the ‘citizenry of dreams’. And in fact Pythagoras, in mysterious language, calls the Galaxy ‘Hades’ and the ‘place of souls’, as the place where they are gathered. This is why some people pour libations of milk to the gods who purify souls, and why milk is the first nourishment for those that fall to generation. And [sc. according to Numenius] Plato, it has been said, meant by the two chasms the two gates, and by the light, which is the bond of heaven, the galaxy. The souls ascend here from the place of the judges in twelve days: and the place was the centre. So the dodecad starts there and ends in heaven; and in the dodecad are the centre, earth, water, air, the seven planets, and the fixed sphere itself. And the zodiacal signs of the solstices are (by other names) the double chasms and the two gates; and again, the galaxy is the same as the ‘light as of a rainbow’ and the ‘people of dreams’. In fact the Poet elsewhere too compares souls without bodies to dreams + . . . + (Proclus, On Plato’s Republic ii. 128.26 - 130.14) Numenius fills the galaxy only with souls ascending from here to heaven, and while Plato denies that the blessed can go to the subterranean place, Numenius is forced to take them there, since every soul must first go to its judge, and then ascend to the place above heaven, where souls lead a blessed existence. (Proclus, On Plato’s Republic ii. 131.8-14 Kroll.) 36 If the embryo were potentially alive as having received hexis, or rather were actually alive, it would be difficult to define the moment of the soul’s entry, and any attempt to do so would involve telling some highly implausible story. This is true if you say that the right moment is when the sperm is deposited in the womb (as if it is impossible that it should be fertilised once in the womb; or that a soul could effect fertilisation by its own entry): on this Numenius had a lot to say, as well as the exegetes of the Pythagorean allegories, who understand as sperm the river Ameles in Plato, the Styx in Hesiod and the Orphics, and the ‘efflux’ of Pherecydes. (Porphyry, ad Gaurum 34.20 - 35.2) 37 [Of the Atlantis narrative:] Others, as Origen, see here certain daemons opposed to each others: some better, some worse; some superior in numbers, some in strength; some conquering, some being conquered. Others again see a conflict between souls: the more noble, the pupils of Athena, against others wedded to the business of generation who have allegiance to the god who presides over generation. The champion of this interpretation is Numenius. Others, who as they see it are combining the views of Origen and Numenius talk about souls opposed to daemons. The daemons try to drag the souls down, but the 26 souls are drawn up. According to these people, the word ‘daemon’ is used in three senses. They say that there is a race of divine daemons, another of daemons by disposition, filled by particular souls that find themselves appointed to the role, and a third, evil class which is destructive to soul. Daemons of the latter class wage war on souls during their descent towards generation. Things which (as they say) the ancient theologians ascribe to Typhon or Dionysus and the Titans, Plato traces back out of piety to the Athenians and Atlantans. Before the souls reach solid bodies, he puts them in conflict with the material daemons who live near to the West – since the West, as the Egyptians said, is the land of harmful daemons. The philosopher Porphyry is of this opinion (though it would be amazing if he said anything very different from Numenius). (Proclus, in Tim. i. 76.30-77.23 Diehl = Origen fr. 12 Weber.) 38 Using these criteria we shall easily show that the good is not the prison [sc. of the soul], as some say it is, nor pleasure, as Numenius thinks . . . Thus Porphyry already hinted in his commentary (Olympiodorus, in Phaedonem 84.21-85.3 Norvin) 39 Among earlier thinkers, some made the soul’s substance mathematical, as being something between the physical and the metaphysical. Of these, some say that it is number, and construct it from the monad (as indivisible) and the indefinite dyad (as divisible); but others make it geometrical, having its being in a combination of the point and the interval – the former being indivisible, the latter divisible. The former view is held by followers of Aristander and Numenius, and many other commentators; the latter by Severus [12T Gioè]. (Proclus, in Tim. ii. 153.17-25 Diehl) 40 Theodorus, the philosophy from Asine, full of Numenian ideas, has quite original things to say about the generation of the soul, which he attempts to derive from letters, characters, and numbers. (Proclus, in Tim. ii. 274.10-14 Diehl) 41 So let’s proceed up to the incorporeal essence considered in itself, distinguishing in this case too, in order, all the opinions concerning the soul. There are some who claim that all such substance is homoiomerous and one and the same, so that the whole exists in any part of it. They place the intelligible cosmos and gods and daemons and the good and everything superior in the particular soul and declare that everything is thus in everything–at least in a manner appropriate to its substance. Numenius is incontestably of this opinion; Plotinus with reservations. Porphyry has doubts about it, sometimes distancing himself from it clearly, at other times following it as a doctrine handed down from antiquity. According to this doctrine, the soul does not at all differ from intellect and gods and the greater genera, at least in its total substance. (Iamblichus ap. Stobaeus, Eclogue i. 365.5-21 Wachsmuth) 27 42 Numenius seems to defend the union and absolute identity of the soul [sc. after re-ascending] with its principles (Iamblichus ap. Stob. Ecl. i. 458.3-4 W) 43 Already, then, there is a great deal of disagreement among Platonists themselves. Some, as Plotinus and Porphyry, rank the kinds and parts of life, along with their activities, under one system and one form; others, as Numenius, set them at war with each other; others still, as Atticus and Plutarch, bring them from conflict to harmony . . . Others disagree with these, and locate the source of evil for the soul in things that are externally engendered: often matter for Numenius and Cronius; sometimes bodies themselves, for Harpocration; usually nature and the irrational soul for Plotinus and Porphyry. (Iamblichus ap. Stob. Ecl. i. 374.21 - 375.1, 12-18 W) 44 Others, among whom Numenius, do not think there are three parts of a single soul, or two, the rational and irrational, but that we have two souls (as other things): one rational, one irrational. (Porphyry, On the Powers of the Soul ap. Stob. Ecl. i. 350.25 351.1 W) 45 Numenius says that the faculty of assent is receptive of activities; the imaginative faculty is an accident of this – not its function or purpose, but something that accompanies it (Porphyry, On the Powers of the Soul ap. Stob. Ecl. i. 349.19-22 W) 46a Some people, as Numenius, think that immortality stretches from the rational soul to the ensouled hexis; others as far as nature, as on occasion Plotinus; others as far as the irrational, as Xenocrates and Speusippus among the ancients and Iamblichus and Plutarch among more recent thinkers; others again think that it stretches only to the rational, as Proclus and Porphyry. (Olympiodorus, in Phaed. 124.13-18 Norvin) 46b Numenius, Cronius, and Amelius thought that both intelligibles and perceptibles partake in forms, but Porphyry thinks only perceptibles do (Syrianus, in Arist. Metaph. 109.12-14 Kroll) 46c If, as Amelius writes, and Numenius before him, there is participation among the intelligibles as well, there will also be images among them. (Proclus, in Tim. iii. 33.33 - 34.3 Diehl) 47 Among those who say that the soul is separable, some have said that the whole soul is separable from the body, including the rational, the irrational, and the vegetative. Numenius is one of these, misled by certain aphorisms of Plato, who said in the Phaedrus (245c5): ‘All soul is immortal’. (Philoponus, in de an. 9.35-8 Hayduck) 48 I think that differences in the end make a difference to the modes of the soul’s descent. For one which comes down for the salvation, purification and perfection of the things that are here makes a descent that is itself pure. But one which comes for exercise and correction of its own moral state is concerned with 28 bodily things and is not completely impassive nor is left alone and free. A soul that comes down here for judgement and punishment would seem to be dragged and forced in some way. <But some more recent thinkers do not> judge the matter in this way. They ignore the issue of purpose implied in the difference, explain the embodiment of all souls in the same way, and assert that it is always an evil. So, especially, followers of Cronius and Numenius. (Iamblichus ap. Stob. ecl. i. 380.6-19 W) 49 Plotinus and Harpocration, not to mention Boethus and Numenius, found ‘hawk’ in Plato and interpreted it as ‘hawk’; likewise ‘wolf’ and ‘ass’. ‘Monkey’ for them means precisely that, and ‘swan’ they reckon to mean nothing other than ‘swan’. For before entering a body, they say that the soul is capable of filling itself with evil and making itself like irrational brutes. What it becomes like it is carried to: different souls taking on the life of different animals. (Aeneas Gazeus, Theophrastus 12 Boissonade.) 50 We should not say of all those gods who direct generation that their substance is mixed in matter, as the Stoics do . . . nor that, while their substance is unmixed in respect of matter, their capacities and activities are so mixed, which is what followers of Numenius say. (Proclus, in Tim. iii. 196.12-19 Diehl.) 51 So Numenius, who thinks that everything is mixed, thinks that nothing is simple. (Proclus, in Tim. ii. 9.4-5 Diehl.) 52 [295] Now let us review what the Pythagoreans think. Numenius the Pythagorean refutes the Stoic theory of first principles with Pythagoras’ doctrine with which, he says, Plato’s is in accord. He says that Pythagoras called god ‘singularity’ [sc. ‘monad’] and matter ‘duality’ [dyad], and maintained that indefinite duality is not generated, but that duality limited is generated. I.e., duality has no origin or generation before it is adorned and acquires form and order; but it is generated when it is adorned and embellished by god the agent of order. Since its generation happens later, the unordered and ungenerated duality should be thought coeval with god, who brought it to order. But [Numenius says that] some Pythagoreans did not understand this claim correctly. They thought Pythagoras meant that indeterminate and unmeasured duality itself sprang from the one singularity, singularity regressing from its nature and taking on the guise of duality. Their understanding is incorrect in making singularity cease to be what it was, and subsist as what it was not, namely duality; in transforming god into matter, and singularity into vast and indeterminate duality. No-one even moderately educated would accept this. Finally, [Numenius says] the Stoics say that matter is definite and limited in its own nature, but Pythagoras that it is infinite and unlimited. The Stoics argue that something whose nature is to be unmeasured cannot be brought to limit and order, but Pythagoras asserts that one thing, god, has the capacity and power to do it. What nature cannot bring about, god easily can, since he is more powerful than any capacity, the very source of nature’s capacities. [296] And so, Numenius says, Pythagoras also thinks that matter is in flux and without quality – though not in the Stoics’ sense of having a nature intermediate between good and evil (what they call ‘indifferent’), since he thinks it is 29 straightforwardly harmful. For he (and Plato too) thinks that god is the principle and cause of what is good, matter of what is evil. It is the product of form and matter that is indifferent: not matter, but the cosmos as a blend of form’s goodness and the evil of matter. This is why the ancient theologians thought the world born of providence and necessity [297] So the Stoics agree that matter is unformed and without quality just as Pythagoras does, but Pythagoras thinks that this is also evil, while the Stoics think that it is neither good nor evil. Further down the road, however, when the Stoics encounter evil and are asked where evil comes from, they blame it on ‘aberration’. But they don’t go on to explain where ‘aberration’ comes from when, according to them, there are two principles, namely god and matter, and god is good to highest degree and eminence, and matter, they agree, neither good nor bad. Pythagoras is not afraid to defend the truth, even when what he says is surprising and tends to contradict common belief. For he says that, if providence exists, evil also must exist. In fact it exists because matter exists and matter is imbued with evil. And if the cosmos is made out of matter, this means that it must be made out of some existing thing that was by nature evil. This is why Numenius praises Heraclitus in his criticism of Homer, who expressed a wish for the destruction and extinction of life’s evils. He did not understand that what he was wishing for was the destruction of the cosmos, since matter, the source of evil, would be eradicated. Again, Numenius praises Plato, because he asserts the existence of two world souls, one thoroughly benevolent, the other, i.e. matter, evil. Although matter is in a state of disordered flux, nevertheless it is alive, since it moves by internal motion which is proper to it, and must be animated by a soul according to the law of all things which move with genuine motion. What is more, matter is the author and guide of the passionate parts of the soul, which have something corporeal and mortal and body-like about them – just as god and reason are author of the rational part. In any case: this world was made from god and matter. [298] So according to Plato the world was allocated its good things by the liberality of a father-like god, but bad things cling to it through the evil of matter, its mother. This is why one can see that the Stoics vainly blame some ‘aberration’ when they say that what comes comes from the movement of the stars. Now the stars are bodies, celestial fires; but matter feeds all bodies, so that even those things that are upset by the motion of a star, causing obstruction and disadvantage, appear to have their origin in matter, which is characterised by a great intemperance, by thoughtless impulse, chance, and excited and wilful presumption. And so if god corrected it, as Plato says in the Timaeus, and brought it to order from its disordered and tumultuous agitation, then certainly this confused intemperance comes to it by chance and baleful lottery, not from the protective plans of providence. And so according to Pythagoras the soul of matter is not without substance, as most people think: it opposes providence, working to fight its plans with the forces of its own evil. But providence is the product and proper activity of god, while blind and chance-ruled temerity comes from matter, with which it is cognate, so that it is evident, according to Pythagoras, that the mass of the universe was constructed in the meeting of god and matter, or providence and chance, if you prefer; but that after order came to matter, it was made the mother of bodies and of the corporeal and engendered gods. Its fortune is in large part favourable, but not entirely, since the evil which is part of its nature cannot be altogether eliminated. 30 [299] And so god by his magnificent power adorned matter, and in every way corrected its faults. He did not do away with them, because the nature of matter itself would have been utterly destroyed if he had; but he did not permit them to expand and spread out. Its nature, which is capable of being recalled and changed from obstruction to assistance, remains the same, but god imposed order on its disordered confusion, limit on its limitlessness, and decency on its ugliness, and by embellishing and ornamenting it, converted its whole state. Finally, Numenius asserts – rightly so – that nothing in the realm of generation has the luck to be free from evil: no human artefact, nothing in nature, the body of no animal, no tree or plant or fruit, nothing in the extent of the air or the expanse of the water; nothing in heaven itself. Some taint of the worse nature everywhere mixes itself with providence. He tries to show what matter unadorned is like, to bring it into the light, as it were, by abstracting every individual body which in the womb of matter enters into the reciprocal process of being changed and changing. Then he says that we should contemplate in our minds what the void left by this process of removal. This is what he calls ‘matter’ and ‘necessity’. It is from this, along with god, that the mechanism of the world was constructed: god persuading, necessity obeying. This is what Pythagoras has to say about first principles. (Calcidius, in Tim. 297.7-301.20 Waszink) 53 The story of Sarapis is long and contradictory. It was only recently that he came to public attention, through some sleight-of-hand by Ptolemy, who wanted to show the Alexandrians a manifest god. I have learnt from Numenius the Pythagorean, writing about his attributes, that he partakes in the substance of everything, animal and plant, which is governed by nature, in order that he should seem to be constituted as a god [sc. at the dedication of his statue] accompanied by impious rites and spells to invoke daemons performed not only by the statue-makers, but also by magicians and sorcerers and the daemons bewitched by their chants. (Origen, Against Celsus 5.38) 54 They call him ‘Delphine’ Apollo ἐκ τοῦ δηλοῦν τὰ ἀφανῆ – i.e. because he shows in the clarity of light what was obscure; or else, as Numenius thinks, because he is one and unique. For he says that in early Greek the word δέλφος meant ‘one’: this is why (he says) the word for brother is ἀ-δελφός – as if to say someone who is ‘not alone’. (Macrobius, Sat. i. 17.65, p. 99.1-16 Willis) 55 Numenius, a philosopher rather too curious about the mysteries, offended the gods by exposing the Eleusinian rites through his interpretation of them. This was revealed to him in dreams in which he appeared to be seeing the Eleusinian goddesses dressed as prostitutes and standing in front of an open brothel. When in his astonishment he asked the reason for this disgrace so unworthy of divinity, they angrily replied that he himself had forcibly removed them from the sanctuary of their modesty and prostituted them everywhere to passers-by. (Macrobius, in Somn. Scip. i. 2.19, pp. 7.23-8.3 Willis) 56 Lucan says that god of the temple in Jerusalem is obscure; but Numenius says that he is unique, the father of all gods, who rates no other worthy to share in his honour. (Lydus, de mensibus iv. 53) 31 57 Numenius the Roman thinks that Hermes represents the uttered word. For an embryo does not speak out, he says, until it has touched the earth, so that people rightly take ‘Maia’ to mean ‘earth’. (Lydus, de mensibus iv. 80.) 58 Hephaestus, as Numenius says, is generative fire, the zoogonic warmth of the sun. This is why they make Hephaestus lame: it is the nature of fire to limp when left on its own, when it is not joined by the other elements (Lydus, de mensibus iv. 86.) 59 For they say that Nemesis returns affairs to their previous pleasant state by strokes of luck – so says Numenius – and introduces equality by the same cycle. (Lydus, de mensibus p. 184.10-13 Wünsch) DUBIA 60 [5] The ancients quite reasonably consecrated caves and grottoes to the cosmos... [6] And so the Persians too perform their initiations in rites involving the downwards entrance of the of the soul and its exit, naming the place a cave. Eubulus says that Zoroaster first consecrated a natural grotto, with flowers and springs, in the mountains near Persia to the honour of Mithra, the maker and father of all. The cave presented to him an image of the cosmos which Mithra created, while its contents, arranged at appropriate intervals, presented symbols of the elements and zones of the cosmos. After Zoroaster the custom became prevalent elsewhere too to perform initiations in caves and grottoes, whether natural or man-made. (Porphyry, Cave of the Nymphs 5-6.) 32 ADDENDA Testimonia not in des Places (a) I would be amazed at Harpocration if he were happy to set out things like this about the creator. For while he follows this man [sc. Numenius] in his doctrine of three gods and insofar as he makes the creator double, he calls the first god Ouranos and Kronos, the second Zeus and Zên, the third ‘heaven’ (ouranos) and ‘cosmos’. But then he changes, and calls the first god not only ‘Zeus’ but also ‘king of the intelligible’, and the second ‘ruler’. Zeus, Kronos and Ouranos thus became the same: all these are the first [sc. god], that thing from which Parmenides removes everything: every name, every state, every account. For our part, we could not put up with calling the first god ‘father’ even; but he declares it to be at once father, offspring, and descendant. (Proclus, in Tim. i. 304.22 – 305.6 Diehl) (b) In our seminars, he [Plotinus] would have commentaries read out, those of Severus, Cronius, Numenius, Gaius or Atticus; or (from the Peripatetics) those of Aspasius, Alexander, and Adrastus – and whoever was to hand. None of these was given the last word: he always had his own view. (Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 14) (c) Some people from Greece said that Plotinus had been appropriating Numenius’ views. Trypho, the Stoic and Platonist, told Amelius this and Amelius wrote a book which he called On Plotinus’ [5] Doctrinal Distance from Numenius. He dedicated it to ‘Basileus’, meaning me. (‘Basileus’ is another way of referring to me, instead of ‘Porphyry’. In my native language I am called Malkus, which was also the name my father had; but malkus translated [10] into Greek is basileus [‘king’]. This is why Longinus, when he dedicated his On Impulse to Cleodamus and me, Porphyry, wrote ‘To Cleodamus and Malkus’. So Amelius translated my name, and just as Numenius changed Maximus [‘Greatest’] to Megalos [‘Great’], so he changed Malkus [15] to Basileus.) This is what he wrote: ‘Amelius to Basileus: greetings. You know very well that I would not have said a word just because certain fine gentlemen have been spreading the view that the doctrines of our friend derive from Numenius of Apamea – a view which you say has reached your own hearing. [20] It is too obvious that it is an example of the sort of glib and specious position they revere so much. First of all they say that he is a complete fool, then they say that he is a plagiarist, and finally they accuse him of dealing with trivialities. It is obvious that their attacks are just satire. [25] But you think that we should use the occasion of their attack to set down our own beliefs, to make them easier for us to recall, and at the same time to make both them and the name of our friend, the great Plotinus, more widely known – though they have for a long time been in the public domain. For this reason, I hereby present my account, worked up in [30] three days, as you already know. You must forgive me for the fact that I have not been guided by his own writings in my composition or in the selection of topics, but went back to when we used to meet, and put things down in the order they happened to arise. The main reason I did this was that Plotinus has been brought to [35] trial here by certain people for an outlook which he shares with us, an outlook which it is not easy to pick up from his published work because of his tendency to treat of the same topics in different ways in different places, as he sees fit. I am sure that, if I end up defacing any of the doctrines, all of which I have gone to our shared philosophical home to find, [40] you will be kind enough to put me right. As the tragedy says somewhere, I felt like a ‘meddler, correcting and disclaiming’ when faced with an account of our leader’s doctrines which is so far from the truth – but that only shows how great was my wish to please you completely. Farewell!’ (Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 17) 33 (d) He [sc. Origen] spent all of his time with Plato and in the company of writings by Numenius, Cronius, Apollophanes, Longinus, Moderatus, Nicomachus and the famous Pythagoreans; and he used the books of Chaeremon the Stoic and Cornutus from which he learned the allegorical method of the Greek mysteries, which he applied to Jewish writings’ (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 6.19.8) (e) But let it be that these things [sc. the disagreements of Greek philosophers] do not impede or prevent the obligation that you should listent to them and form strong beliefs: what is there in this that means you have a greater right to belief or that we should have less? You believe in Plato, you believe in Cr[ot]onius, you believe in Numenius, or whoever you want. We believe in Christ, and find our peace in him. (Arnobius, Against the Nations 2.11) Speculative Identifications In an article called ‘Plotin oder Numenios?’, divided over three issues of Hermes, F. Thedinga argued that extracts from Numenius, On the Good can be detected in Plotinus, viz.: • • • Enneads 3.6.6-19 (Hermes 52, 1917, 592-612) Enneads 1.8.6 (second half), 1.8.8 + 1.8.10-15 (Hermes 54, 1919, 249-78) Enneads 6.9.4, 7, 9-11 (Hermes 57, 1922, 189-218) In ‘Die Paraenese in des Porphyrios Schrift Περὶ ἀποχῆς ἐμψύχων’, Rheinisches Museum 76 (1927), 54-101, he further argued that Porphyry derives material from Numenius in On Abstinence 1.27-57; 2.37-46, 49-52; 3.26; and 4.20. 34