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Book I Chapter 42

Chapter 42: On the generation of living creatures

On the generation of living creatures.¹¹³⁵

1.1 · Plato: a remedy for bodily depletion

From Plato, from the Timaeus.

Now that all the parts and limbs of the mortal creature had grown together, and its life necessarily depended on fire and breath, it was being melted and emptied by these and was wasting away. The gods therefore devise a means of helping it.¹¹³⁶

1.2 · Cultivation and another kind of life

For they blend a nature akin to human nature with other forms and perceptions, so that it constitutes a different living creature, and plant it. These are the cultivated trees, plants, and seeds of today: schooled by agriculture, they have become tame toward us. Previously there were only the wild kinds, which are older than the cultivated ones.¹¹³⁷

1.3 · The third kind of soul

For anything whatever that shares in life may justly and most properly be called a living creature. Yet this creature of which we are now speaking shares in the third kind of soul, which is said to be situated between the diaphragm and the navel. This kind has no part in opinion, reasoning, or intellect, but does share in pleasant and painful perception accompanied by desires.¹¹³⁸

1.4 · Rooted life and inward reflection

For it continually undergoes everything that happens to it. Its origin has not given it the capacity to turn within itself about itself, to push aside movement from outside and use its own, and thus to reason about any of its own conditions by discerning their nature. It therefore lives and is nothing other than a living creature; but it stands fixed and rooted, because it has been deprived of movement originating from itself.¹¹³⁹

2 · Restored topic heading

⟨On conception.⟩

Text missing.¹¹⁴⁰

3 · Restored topic heading

⟨In how much time the embryo develops distinct parts.⟩

Text missing.¹¹⁴¹

4 · Restored topic heading

⟨From which part the embryo begins to take shape.⟩

Text missing.

5 · Restored topic heading

⟨How males and females are generated.⟩

Text missing.

6 · Restored topic heading

⟨How anomalous births occur.⟩

Text missing.¹¹⁴²

7 · Restored topic heading

⟨How resemblances to parents or ancestors arise.⟩¹¹⁴³

7.1 · (2) Hermes: the source of resemblance

From Hermes, from Aphrodite.¹¹⁴⁴

Why do infants resemble their parents or show the family to which they belong? I shall set out an explanation. When nourishing blood foams up and the generative process stores away seed, some substance of the limbs somehow issues like a breath from the entire body through divine activity, as though the same human being were coming into existence. It is likely that the same thing also occurs in the woman.¹¹⁴⁵

7.2 · The predominance of one parent’s contribution

⟨Thus,⟩ when what has flowed from the man predominates and remains untouched, the infant will prove to resemble its father; when the reverse occurs, it will in the same way resemble its mother. ⟨But⟩ if the contribution from a particular part predominates, the resemblance is to that part.¹¹⁴⁶

7.3 · Ancestral likeness and the decan

Sometimes, even across many generations, the infant matches the form of an ancestor,¹¹⁴⁷ when the decan associated with that person bears a relation to the hour at which the woman was conceiving.¹¹⁴⁸

8 · Restored topic heading

⟨How those who are born resemble others rather than their parents.⟩

Text missing.¹¹⁴⁹

9 · Restored topic heading

⟨Why female mules are sterile.⟩

Text missing.¹¹⁵⁰

10 · Restored topic heading

⟨How twins and triplets arise.⟩

Text missing.

11 · Restored topic heading

⟨Whether the embryo is a living creature.⟩

Text missing.¹¹⁵¹

12 · Restored topic heading

⟨How embryos are nourished.⟩

Text missing.

13 · Restored topic heading

⟨Why infants born at seven months are viable.⟩¹¹⁵²

13 · (3) ⟨Aëtius⟩: seven and nine months

Those associated with Aristotle and Hippocrates say that, if the womb is filled in the seven months, the offspring then emerges and is born viable.¹¹⁵³ But if it emerges without being nourished, the umbilical cord having [also] grown weak because the embryo has become a strain upon it, it lacks nourishment.¹¹⁵⁴ If, however, it remains in the womb for the nine months, it is complete when it then emerges.¹¹⁵⁵

1135.Much of this chapter is lost. Wachsmuth restores its topic headings from the index of the Laurentian florilegium, Γ.10; the general heading is absent from manuscripts F and P. The numbers 1-13 mark the printed sequence of topics. Only three excerpts survive, under topics 1, 7, and 13; the latter two also bear the excerpt numbers (2) and (3). Further subdivisions here serve facing-page comparison.

1136.Timaeus 76e-77c. The passage continues an account of the formation of the human body. The gods’ remedy is the plant life described next, which supplies what the mortal body loses. Pneuma is rendered “breath” here; fire and breath belong to the dialogue’s account of bodily life.

1137.The language of schooling and taming treats cultivation as an education of plants. Zōion, “living creature,” includes plant life in this argument; translating it simply as “animal” would obscure the claim. “Cultivated” renders hēmeros, whose range also includes “tame.”

1138.The plant is assigned the kind of soul associated with the lower region of the human body. The argument grants it perception and desire while withholding opinion, reasoning, and intellect. The printed phrēn, in the plural phrenes, names the diaphragm here.

1139.The passage contrasts being affected with the inward movement of reflection. Its concluding denial of self-originating motion accompanies the image of a rooted plant. It does not retract the preceding assertion that plants live and perceive. Wachsmuth prints physin, “nature,” where manuscripts F and P have physei, “by nature.” “By discerning their nature” connects physin with “discerning” and the preceding “own conditions”; this construal is tentative.

1140.The angle brackets mark a restored heading. The Latin deest, “is missing,” is Wachsmuth’s notice of the missing text; it is not part of the ancient Greek. The same presentation is used for the lost topics that follow.

1141.Diarthrousthai means to acquire distinct joints or an articulated structure. The heading concerns the development of bodily parts, not the total duration of pregnancy.

1142.Terata can denote marvels, portents, or anomalous offspring. In this sequence of topics about generation, it concerns unusual bodily formation. The lost text leaves the particular cases and explanations unknown.

1143.The restored heading introduces the chapter’s second surviving excerpt. Parents are distinguished from earlier ancestors, anticipating the final sentence of the passage.

1144.Aphrodite is the title of the work attributed to Hermes, not the name of the speaker in this excerpt. The explanation derives reproductive seed from the whole body and applies the process to both parents. Gennēsis, literally “generation” or “procreation,” is rendered “generative process”; the printed word does not itself name an anatomical organ.

1145.The apparatus credits Usener with “foams up,” exaphroumenou, and Meineke with “generation” and the corrected form ekpnein. Wachsmuth retains “as though the same human being were coming into existence,” although Meineke would delete it as a gloss. “Nourishing” follows the nutritious sense of nostimos (LSJ, s.v.).

1146.“Untouched” retains the printed athikton; alternative readings in the apparatus are not substituted. The supplements oun and de are attributed to Heeren and Wachsmuth respectively. The account allows a particular bodily feature, as well as an entire parental likeness, to predominate.

1147.“Ancestor” interprets “the one who begot” in light of “many generations” and the topic heading. The Greek can be construed as making that person’s decan the subject, but can also suggest that the ancestor himself has a decan’s role. The translation adopts the former construal. “Was conceiving” takes the general expression “was producing a child” in the reproductive context of this excerpt; the precise moment is not further defined.

1148.Decans are astral powers discussed earlier in I.21.9. They are associated with thirty-six divisions of the zodiac; compare Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica (1992), Introduction, on the Liber Hermetis. Here an astrological relationship is added to the preceding bodily explanation. Logos is kept as the broad “relation,” without specifying an unexpressed mechanism.

1149.This is a separate restored topic. The text that once distinguished its question from resemblance to ancestors in the preceding passage has not survived.

1150.The feminine article and adjective identify female mules. The heading preserves the ancient question; no explanation survives under it.

1151.The same term zōion appears in the opening discussion of plants. The heading preserves a question about the embryo’s status as a living creature; the lost passage supplies no surviving answer.

1152.Gonima here concerns the capacity of the offspring to live or develop, rather than its later fertility. The following passage is the third surviving excerpt of the chapter.

1153.Wachsmuth supplies the source attribution Aëtius V.18.4 (Diels, p. 428); the bracketed Latin source-heading is translated into Greek and English. “Those associated with” renders hoi peri: this is a reported position, not a quotation directly identified with a work by either named author. The printed “womb” is Canter’s correction from the parallel Placita text for the manuscripts’ “day.”

1154.Omphalos, literally “navel,” here denotes the umbilical connection that nourishes the embryo. “Lacks nourishment” follows atrophon and retains the repetition of “without being nourished.” The account’s sequence of emergence and failed nourishment is compressed. Wachsmuth records expansions proposed from the parallel text but does not print them; none is silently introduced here. The bracketed “also” represents the rejected particle de.

1155.“Complete” translates holoklēron, contrasting the final condition with deficient nourishment. The seven- and nine-month claims belong to this ancient physiological account. Wachsmuth does not add the separate excerpt headed “Euryphon the physician” that Diels proposed inserting here; the present translation follows the printed chapter’s ending.