Epinomis

Key Words of the Dialogue

Each entry says what the word meant in Athens, what the dialogue does with it, and how it is rendered. The Glossary at the back lists the renderings with the places where they occur.

Wisdom, wise (sophia, sophos)

Sophia was skill of a high kind, a craftsman’s, a poet’s or a statesman’s, and, in the schools of Plato’s time, the knowledge of the highest things; sophos was “wise”, and could also mean “clever”. Clinias’ question is what a mortal must learn to be wise (973b), and the whole dialogue answers it. The Athenian first denies the name to the crafts: none of them “deserves to be called by the name of wisdom about these things, the human things” (974b), and none of the intelligent will call anyone “really wise” for quickness and memory (976c). Wisdom is “the greatest part of all virtue” (977d); the one who lacks it will never “become completely good, and so happy” (977d). At last it is named: “the true astronomer must be the wisest” (990a), and the one who has taken up all the studies “in this way” is “the most truly wisest” (992b); all must “summon the nocturnal council to this wisdom” (992e). The English renders sophia “wisdom” and sophos “wise” every time, as in the series and as settled with the publisher; the plural sophiai is “kinds of wisdom” (979d). It is kept apart from phronēsis, “intelligence” (see Intelligence).

Intelligence, intelligent (phronēsis; phronimos, emphrōn; aphrōn)

Phronēsis was good sense, the understanding that guides action; phronimos the man who has it. The dialogue opens with it: the three have come “to look into the matter of intelligence”, and into what makes the human state be “in the finest condition with regard to intelligence” (973a). It is the gift of number: “if we were to take number out of human nature, we would never become intelligent in anything” (977c), and Heaven is the cause of “by far the greatest” of our goods, “intelligence” (977a). The argument about the stars turns on it. “What moves in disorder we must hold to be unintelligent”, but ordered motion is “great evidence of its being intelligent” (982a–b); the many reversed this, so far as “to take the human as intelligent and alive because it moves, and the divine as unintelligent” (982d). The two middle kinds, of ether and of air, share in “a wonderful intelligence” (985a), and the god “has a share in being intelligent and in knowing in every respect” (985a). The English renders the family “intelligence”, “intelligent”, “unintelligent”, as in the series (Alcibiades I, Alcibiades II); phronimos and emphrōn are both “intelligent”. It is kept apart from sophia, “wisdom”, and from nous, “sense” (see Sense).

Sense (nous)

Nous was the ordinary word for mind or sense, as in noun echein, “have sense”, the common idiom for being sensible; Anaxagoras, as Socrates tells in the Phaedo, had made it the cause that orders all things (97b–c). The Epinomis uses it of the soul that rules: “the necessity of a soul that has acquired sense would be by far the greatest of all necessities” (982b). Men “ought” to have taken the stars’ regularity as evidence “that the stars and all this passage have sense” (982c). The lawgiver “who has acquired sense, even the least” will not innovate in worship (985c), and “the one that has sense good enough must lead” the three motions of equal speed, the sun’s and the two that keep pace with it (986e). The English renders nous “sense”, as in the series, so that the idiom stays audible; “senseless” is anoētos (976d, 984a). In the idioms kata noun, “to the liking of” (988c), and prosechein ton noun, “pay attention” (976b), the English follows the idiom. It is kept apart from phronēsis, “intelligence”.

Number, count, reckoning (arithmos, arithmein; logismos)

Arithmos was number in the Greek sense, a definite plurality counted. The first answer to the question of wisdom is number. Of all knowledge, the one “that has given number to the whole mortal race” would do most to make man intelligent, and its loss would leave him “the most senseless and most unintelligent” (976d–e); its giver is Heaven (977a–b). “A living being that did not know two and three, nor odd nor even, and was altogether ignorant of number, could never give an account” of what it perceives (977c); the bad is what “has been left without any number” (978a–b). The Athenian tells how we learned “to count”, from the days and nights and from the moon (978b–979a). Number returns as the first of the subjects of learning, “that of numbers themselves, but not of numbers that have bodies” (990c), and among the things that must come to light as one, “system of number” (991e). The English renders arithmos “number”, arithmein “count”, diarithmeisthai “count out” (978a–b), arithmētikos “able to count” (979a), logismos “reckoning” and logizesthai “reckon” (974a, 979a).

Heaven, cosmos (ouranos, Ouranos; kosmos)

Ouranos was the sky and, in Hesiod’s Theogony, the god Heaven, first ruler of the gods. The Athenian names the god who gave number: “Heaven, very nearly” (977a), and lets the reader call him “cosmos or olympus or heaven” as he pleases (977b). Kosmos meant “order” and “adornment”, and the philosophers had made it the word for the ordered world. In what follows “the heaven” is the region of the stars (981e, 982b), which soul filled with living beings (984c, 985b); without a soul in each, earth and heaven and the stars could not travel so precisely, “and for all the things that come about to come about as goods for us all” (983c). The eighth power, which travels contrary to all the others, “one might most of all name cosmos” (987b), and reason set the cosmos in order “to be visible” (986c). The English writes “Heaven” with a capital where the god is named (977a) and “heaven” elsewhere, keeping Burnet’s small letters at 977b; kosmos is “cosmos” and olympos “olympus”, as Burnet prints them.

Living being (zōion)

Zōion meant a living creature, most often an animal, man or beast, as against plants, and in painting a figure. The Athenian defines it, in a question that Clinias accepts: “this, at least, is most truly called by nature a living being, when one combination of soul and body, coming together, brings forth one shape” (981a). It then counts the kinds by the five bodies: the earthly, “all human beings, and all that are many-footed and footless, and all that move about and all that stay in place, held fast by roots” (981d), plants included, as in the Timaeus (77b); the fiery, the divine kind of the stars (981e); and the three middle kinds of ether, air and water (984b–985c). That the stars are living beings, ensouled and intelligent, is the dialogue’s central claim (982e–983c). The English renders zōion “living being” every time, so that the stars are called by the same word as men; zōntes, “living things”, is kept apart from it (982e).

Soul, body; older (psychē, sōma; presbyteros)

Psychē was life and the seat of life; sōma, the body. The Athenian takes over from Laws 10 the conclusion “that all soul is older than all body” (980d), and argues for it from the word presbyteros, which means both “older” and “more honored”: “what is better and more ancient and more godlike is, it is plausible, older than what is † young and younger and less honored” (980d–e). Soul is, “very nearly, the only one to which it belongs to mold and to craft”, while body is molded (981b–c); it is “the cause of all things”, body “the cause of no affection at all” (983d); and it is “the cause of the whole” and of “all motion and movement” (988d–e). The recapitulation at 991d recalls “that soul is at once older and more divine than body”. The English keeps “older” for presbyteros in each place, “oldest” for the superlative (988c), and “more ancient” for palaioteros (980d), so that the claim can be followed.

Gods, daimons, the daimonic (theos; daimōn; to daimonion)

Theos was a god; daimōn a divine power, sometimes a god, sometimes a lesser being between gods and men, as in Diotima’s speech in the Symposium (202e). The Athenian bids men honor Heaven “as do all the other daimons and gods alike” (977a). In his ordering of living beings, next after the visible gods and below them come “the daimons, and the kind of air, holding the third and middle seat, the cause of interpretation”, which “we must very much honor with prayers for the sake of the auspicious passage” (984e); the two middle kinds, of ether and of air, know our thought, welcome the good, hate the very bad, and “interpret everyone and everything to one another and to the highest gods” (985a–b). The gods of the cults, “Zeus and Hera and all the others”, are left where “anyone” wishes to set them (984d). At the end, to the wise “alone have all the things of the daimonic fallen as their lot” (992d). The English keeps daimōn as “daimon”, since “demon” has another sense in English, and renders to daimonion “the daimonic”, as in the Theages.

Manifest, visible (phaneros; horatos)

The dialogue’s gods are the gods that can be seen. Phaneros was “manifest”, what is in plain view; horatos “visible”, what can be seen at all. The second kind of living being “comes into being and at the same time can be seen” (981d); the two visible living beings are the earthly and the fiery (982a, 984b); the second to the fifth kinds begin their coming into being “from the manifest gods” (984d); “as the visible gods … we must speak of the nature of the stars” (984d); and the lawgiver must honor “the gods who are really manifest to us” and “make it manifest that they are other gods” (985d). The English renders phaneros “manifest” and horatos “visible” every time, from the opening wish “to make things manifest” (973b); dēlos and saphēs are “clear”, kataphanēs “plain” and diaphanēs “evident”.

Motion and the heavens (phora, kinēsis; periodos, kyklos, polos, diexodos)

The Greek had many words for the movements of the heavens, and the dialogue uses most of them; each has one English word. Phora is “motion” (978a, 982d, 986e, 987b, 988c–e) and kinēsis “movement” (978a, 988e); periodos is “circuit” (977b, 978e, 990a–b), kyklos “cycle” (978e, 990a), with metakykleisthai “change their cycles” (982d), polos “orbit” (986c), diexodos “course” (977b, 986e), poreia “procession” (982e), diaporeia “passage” (982c, 984e), poros “path” (982b), and periphora “revolution” (991e); the verbs are pheresthai, “be carried along”, peripherein, “carry round”, and poreuesthai, “travel”. The point of keeping them apart is the argument’s: the stars’ motions are always “in the same respects and in the same way” (982b, 982e), and the many took that sameness for a sign that they “have no soul” (982d). The English is sometimes more literal than idiom would choose, as with the stars’ “procession and dance” (982e), so that each word can be recognized when it returns.

Reverence toward the gods, piety (theosebeia; eusebeia; asebeis)

Theosebeia was reverence toward the gods; eusebeia piety, the right relation to gods and to parents; the asebeis were the impious, against whom Laws 10 is written (980d). In “the divine in coming into being and the mortal”, “reverence toward the gods will also be recognized” (977e); the lawgiver will not turn his city “to a reverence toward the gods that has nothing clear about it” (985c–d); and the studies of the wise are “what things of reverence toward the gods” one will learn (990a). Nothing of virtue is greater: “let no one ever persuade us that anything of virtue is greater, for the mortal race, than piety” (989b), and it has not come about in the best natures “through the greatest stupidity” (989b). The English renders theosebeia “reverence toward the gods”, eusebeia “piety”, asebeis “the impious” and anosioi “the unholy” (988e).

Astronomy and the subjects of learning (astronomia; mathēmata)

Astronomia was the study of the stars. Glaucon in the Republic values it for knowing the seasons, months and years, as farming, sailing and generalship need (7.527d), and Hesiod’s farmer times his year by the risings and settings of stars; but the Laws reports that the many think those who take up astronomy become godless, since they see things come about by necessity (12.967a). The Athenian gives it to the wise man by name, “a name that one would never expect, through inexperience of the matter: astronomy”, and denies it to the one who “does astronomy after Hesiod’s fashion” (990a). The true astronomer studies “the seven circuits of the eight” (990a), and is prepared by mathēmata, “subjects of learning”: numbers themselves (990c), geometry, “a very ridiculous name” (990d), stereometry (990d–e), the proportions and means (990e–991b). “This is the way, this the nourishment, these the subjects of learning” (992a). The English renders mathēmata “subjects of learning”, as in the Lovers, astronomia “astronomy”, geōmetria “geometry” and stereometria “stereometry”.

Play and earnest (paidia, prospaizein; spoudazein, spoudaios)

Paidia was play, a child’s or a festival’s; spoudē and spoudazein earnest. The imitative arts are “a kind of play, imitative for the most part but in no way serious” (975d). Yet the lawgiver who likens the gods well “makes use of a fine play” (980a), Clinias wishes that the Athenian, “having celebrated the gods in play”, should meet with the best and finest end (980b), the proportions of music are given men “for the sake of the play of rhythm and harmony” (991b), and the Athenian makes his last affirmation “in play and in earnest at once” (992b). The English renders paidia “play”, prospaizein “celebrate in play” (980b), spoudaios “serious” and spoudazein “be in earnest”; at 980a it translates Burnet’s paidia, “play”, from the margins of L and O, where the text of all three manuscripts has paideia, “education”.