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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

Reading language

Book I Chapter 8

42 Continued: the seasons

Spring is a season of the year blended from winter ending and summer beginning; or the season after winter and before summer. Summer is the season most thoroughly heated by the sun. Autumn is the blended season after summer and before winter. Winter is the season most thoroughly chilled, or the chilled air around the earth. Each year has two equinoxes and two solstices: equinoxes occur when night and day are equal, one in spring and the other in autumn; the solstices occur in summer and winter.²⁸⁷

42b ⟨Aëtius, Opinions⟩

Empedocles and the Stoics say that winter occurs when air predominates, being forced upward through condensation; summer occurs when fire predominates, as it is forced downward.²⁸⁸

42c ⟨Aëtius, Opinions⟩: planetary years

A year of Saturn is a circuit of thirty years; of Jupiter, twelve; of Mars, two; of the sun, twelve months. Mercury and Venus have the same period, for they travel at an equal rate. The moon’s period is thirty days, for this is the complete month from appearance to conjunction.²⁸⁹

42c ⟨Aëtius⟩, continued: the great year

The so-called great year occurs when the heavenly bodies return to the ⟨same⟩ positions from which they began their motion. Some place the great year in an eight-year cycle, others in a nineteen-year cycle, others in four times that number of years, and others in sixty ⟨less one⟩, including Oenopides and Pythagoras. Others place it in the so-called “head of Saturn”: this is the return of the seven planets, on that day, in their motion from the north.²⁹⁰ Heraclitus makes it eighteen thousand solar years. Diogenes the Stoic makes it three hundred and sixty-five years, each as long as the year according to Heraclitus.²⁹¹

43 Scythinus, On Nature

Time is the last and first of all things, contains all things within itself, and is always one. Time that has passed does not depart from what is, along a road opposite to itself [pareōniatōn: unresolved]. For tomorrow will in fact be yesterday, and yesterday ⟨was⟩ tomorrow.²⁹²

44 Plutarch, Lives of Numa and Lycurgus

Many say that Numa added the months January and February, and that originally the Romans used only ten months for the year, just as some non-Greek peoples use three, and among the Greeks the Arcadians use four and the Acarnanians six. The Egyptians, they say, had a year of one month and then of four months. This is why the inhabitants of that country seem to be the most ancient and bring down an extraordinary number of years in their genealogies: they count months as years.²⁹³

45 Plato, Timaeus, ⟨with Aëtius⟩

Plato calls time a moving image of eternity, or the interval of the universe’s motion. It is generated in conception; its nature is the motion of heaven. For he says in the Timaeus as follows:²⁹⁴

45 Plato, Timaeus, continued

When the father who begot it saw it moving and alive, a created image of the everlasting gods, he admired it. Delighted, he conceived the plan of making it still more like its model. As the model itself is an everlasting living being, so he attempted, as far as possible, to make this whole universe such a being too. Now the nature of that living being was eternal, and it was impossible to attach this character in its entirety to what had come to be. He therefore conceived the plan of making a moving image of eternity. As he put things in order, he made, together with heaven, an enduring image of eternity: eternity remains in unity, while its image advances according to number. This image is what we have named time.²⁹⁵

45 Plato, Timaeus, continued

Days and nights, months and years did not exist before heaven came to be. At the time of its formation he contrived that they should come to be along with it. All these are parts of time, and “was” and “will be” are forms of time that have come to be. We mistakenly and unawares transfer them to everlasting ⟨being⟩. For we say that it was, is, and will be, whereas in a true account only “is” belongs to it. “Was” and “will be” should be said of becoming as it proceeds in time, for it is motion. What always remains unchangingly the same should neither grow older nor younger through time, nor have come to be at some time, nor have now come to be, nor be going to exist hereafter. None at all of the conditions that becoming attaches to things moving within perception belongs to it. Rather, these have arisen as forms of time, which imitates eternity and revolves according to number.²⁹⁶

45 Plato, Timaeus, continued

There are also statements such as these: what has become is what has become; what is becoming is what is becoming; what will become is what will become; and what is not is what is not. None of these expressions is exact. But perhaps this is not the right occasion to discuss them with precision. Time, then, came to be together with heaven, so that, having come to be together, they might also be dissolved together, should they ever undergo dissolution. It was made after the model of eternal nature, to be as like that model as possible. For the model is in being throughout all eternity, while heaven, continually throughout all time, has come to be, is, and will be.²⁹⁷

45 Plato, Timaeus, continued

From this reasoning and intention of the god concerning the creation of time, the sun, moon, and five other stars called wanderers came into being so that time might come to be, and so that its numbers could be distinguished and preserved. After making a body for each, the god set these seven bodies in the seven circuits traversed by the revolution of the Different: the moon in the first around the earth, the sun in the second above the earth, and the morning star and the star called sacred to Hermes in the circle that runs at the same speed as the sun, though they were allotted a power contrary to its own. Thus the sun, Hermes’ star, and the morning star alike overtake and are overtaken by one another.²⁹⁸ As for where he placed the others and all the reasons for doing so, an account of every detail, though incidental, would make more work than the subject for whose sake it is given.

45 Plato, Timaeus, continued

…

Nevertheless, it is still possible to understand that the complete number of time fulfills the complete year when the relative speeds of all eight revolutions, having completed their courses together, reach their culmination, measured by the circle of the Same, which moves uniformly.²⁹⁹

287.The seasonal definitions follow a textual gap and remain under the same numbered excerpt. “Blended” describes the temperate mixture between the hotter and colder seasons. Tropai, translated “solstices,” literally means turnings.

288.This is the ancient physical explanation reported by the compiler. Its account in terms of air, fire, and condensation is preserved as such.

289.The divine names denote the celestial bodies. These are the periods as stated in the ancient report, not modern orbital measurements. “Appearance” and “conjunction” render phasis and synodos; the latter is the moon’s conjunction with the sun.

290.The passage gathers differing recurrence cycles under “great year.” The obscure “head of Saturn” clause is translated closely; the wording about a day and motion from the north does not permit a confident reconstruction of the intended astronomical configuration.

291.The numbers and attributions are those of this report. Diogenes’s unit is explicitly the much longer Heraclitean year, not an ordinary solar year.

292.The middle sentence and the words ē men in the last are textually obscure. The bracketed phrase is this translation’s warning that pareōniatōn cannot be translated securely; the surrounding English is provisional. Wachsmuth records several conjectures, including attempts to recover verse, and supplies “was.” No metrical reconstruction is substituted for his printed text.

293.The source identifies this passage as Numa 18 within the paired Lives. The claims about early calendars and Egyptian genealogies are Plutarch’s reported explanation; the passage is not independent confirmation of those chronologies.

294.The opening is a report about Plato; the direct quotation begins in the next block (Timaeus 37c). The source supplies Aëtius’s name alongside Plato’s. “Generated in conception” renders kat’ epinoian and belongs to the report’s interpretation, not to Plato’s quoted words.

295.The model is the eternal living being; the universe is its created likeness. Aiōn is “eternity”; chronos is time in succession. Eternity remains in unity; its image advances numerically. Wachsmuth’s ouranōi hama is rendered “together with heaven.” The following passage contrasts “is,” “was,” and “will be.”

296.The supplied ousia, “being,” makes explicit what receives the mistaken temporal predicates. “Becoming” translates genesis: coming into existence and undergoing change. The translation follows the wording transmitted here rather than replacing it with another text of Plato.

297.The repeated “is” retains the difficulty that the speaker raises about predicating being of what becomes or is not. The final contrast returns to the model’s eternal being and heaven’s temporal existence. Dissolution is conditional here, not asserted as an event that must occur.

298.The “wanderers” are the planets; the morning star is Venus and Hermes’ star is Mercury. The Different is the name of a cosmic revolution in this account. Its seven circuits carry the seven named or implied wandering bodies, including sun and moon. The stated relations are those of Plato’s cosmology.

299.The source jumps from Timaeus 38d to 39d; the ellipsis makes that break visible. The eight revolutions include the seven just discussed and the uniform circle of the Same. The “complete year” is their common cycle of return, to be compared with the differing great years reported above in excerpt 42c.