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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

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Book I Chapter 22

Whether the All Is One

Whether the all is one.⁶⁸⁷

3a ⟨Aëtius⟩: One world and the all

Empedocles held that there is one world, but that the world is not the all: it is only a small part of the all, while the remainder is matter.

The Stoics declared that there is one world, which they also identified with all that is corporeal.⁶⁸⁸

3a ⟨Aëtius⟩: A single ear of grain

Metrodorus, the teacher of Epicurus, says that it is absurd for a single ear of grain to grow in a great field, and for a single world to arise in the unlimited.⁶⁸⁹

3a ⟨Aëtius⟩: Unlimited causes and worlds

That worlds are unlimited in number is clear from the causes being unlimited. For if ⟨this⟩ world is bounded, but all the causes from which this world has arisen are unlimited, there must be unlimited worlds. For where the causes are ⟨unlimited⟩, so too are the results. The causes are either the atoms or the elements.⁶⁹⁰

3b ⟨Aëtius⟩: One world or infinitely many

Thales, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Ecphantus, Parmenides, Melissus, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno held that there is one world.

Anaximander, Anaximenes, Archelaus, Xenophanes, Diogenes, Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus held that there are infinitely many worlds in the unlimited, in every circuit.⁶⁹¹

3c ⟨Aëtius⟩: The distances between worlds

Among those who declared that the worlds are infinitely many, Anaximander held that they are equally distant from one another, while Epicurus held that the intervals between worlds are unequal.⁶⁹²

3d Plato: One heaven and its model

Plato declared that there is one world, for he says in the Timaeus: Have we then rightly spoken of one heaven, or would it have been more correct to speak of many, indeed infinitely many? One, if it is to have been fashioned according to its model. For that which contains all intelligible living beings could never be a second alongside another.⁶⁹³

3d Plato: What would contain two models?

For there ⟨would⟩ then have to be another living being enclosing those two, of which both would be parts; and this world would more correctly be said to have been made like that enclosing being, rather than like those two.⁶⁹⁴

3d Plato: A single, uniquely generated heaven

So that this world might resemble the all-complete living being in its singleness, the maker therefore made neither two worlds nor infinitely many; instead, this one uniquely generated heaven has come into being, exists, and will continue to exist.⁶⁹⁵

687.This heading is transmitted at this point in the manuscripts, unlike its supplied occurrence at the start of the chapter. The following accounts distinguish one world from all that exists, and then contrast one world with infinitely many worlds.

688.The Stoic qualification “corporeal” is decisive: it does not identify the world with the all including incorporeal void. Compare I.21.3b, where the world without the surrounding void is called the whole. The Empedoclean report, by contrast, places matter outside the one world.

689.“Teacher of Epicurus” is the designation transmitted in this report, not a secure identification to be inferred from the name alone. Diogenes Laërtius 10.13-14 preserves other accounts of Epicurus’s teachers, including Nausiphanes; 10.22 places the well-known Metrodorus of Lampsacus among his associates. The wording here is not silently changed to “pupil.”

690.The first Greek sentence has singular apeiros, “unlimited,” although the sense requires worlds in the plural. Wachsmuth identifies an old error and cites apeiroi as the intended wording; the translation gives that sense while retaining the printed Greek. The supplied article before “results” needs no separate English bracket. The argument counts worlds, rather than making each world spatially unlimited.

691.The lists are the report’s classification, not a claim that all members of each group held an identical theory. “In every circuit” follows the printed periagōgē, a difficult expression. Wachsmuth records peristasis in the parallel tradition; no particular cycle or spatial arrangement is silently supplied here.

692.The contrast concerns spacing, not the number or size of the worlds. The statement of equal distances is retained without imposing a geometrical reconstruction that the brief report does not supply.

693.Timaeus 31a-b. The introductory attribution belongs to the compiler. The “model” is the intelligible living being that includes all intelligible living beings; the argument concerns its uniqueness and the visible world’s likeness to it. Here paradeigma has its usual sense “model,” unlike its use for a copy in excerpt 1f.

694.The dual forms refer to the supposed pair of intelligible models. If a further living being contained both, that more inclusive being would be the appropriate model for the world. The supplied an marks the hypothetical statement; the repaired dual verb is also noted in Wachsmuth’s apparatus.

695.Monogenēs emphasizes that this generated heaven is unique, with no second of its kind. The Greek says that it has come into being as well as that it will continue to exist; neither part is suppressed. “All-complete” follows Wachsmuth’s correction from Plato in place of the manuscripts’ “incomplete.” This is the end of chapter 22.