Diotimos Reading Desk

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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

Reading language

Book I Chapter 49

11.2 · A beginning cannot come into being

A beginning does not come into being. For everything that comes into being must come from a beginning, while the beginning itself comes from nothing. For if a beginning came from something, it would not come from a beginning. Since it does not come into being, it must also be indestructible. For if a beginning were destroyed, neither would it ever come into being from anything nor would anything else come from it, if everything must come into being from a beginning.¹³⁰⁶

11.3 · The source of all motion

Thus the beginning of motion is what itself moves itself. This can neither perish nor come into being; otherwise the whole heaven and the whole process of becoming would collapse and stand still, and would never again have a source from which they could be set in motion and come into being.¹³⁰⁷

11.4 · Self-motion as the nature of soul

Since what moves itself has been shown to be immortal, one need feel no shame in saying that this very thing is the essence and account of soul. For every body whose motion comes from outside is soulless, while a body whose motion itself comes from within, from itself, is ensouled, since this is the nature of soul. If this is so, if what itself moves itself is nothing other than soul, then soul must necessarily be both ungenerated and immortal.¹³⁰⁸

11.5 · The winged team and charioteer

Enough, then, about its immortality. Concerning its form, we must speak in this way: to describe what it is would require an account wholly divine and lengthy; to say what it resembles requires a human and shorter one. Let us therefore speak in the latter way. Let it resemble the combined power of a winged team and a charioteer, grown together as one.¹³⁰⁹

12 · Herodotus: the soul’s circuit

Herodotus, Histories, Book II.

The Egyptians were also the first to state this account: that the human soul is immortal, and when the body perishes it enters another living creature as each comes into being; and when it has passed through all the creatures of land, sea, and air, it enters again a human body that has come into being. The soul completes this circuit in three thousand years. Certain Greeks adopted this account, some earlier and others later.¹³¹⁰

13.1 · Plato: recollection reconsidered

Plato, from the Phaedo.

“Then,” he said, “do you reject all the preceding arguments, or accept some and reject others?”

“Some we accept,” they both said, “and others we reject.”

“What, then,” he said, “do you say about the argument in which we said that learning is recollection, and that, if this is so, our soul must surely have existed earlier, before being placed in the body?”

“For my part,” said Cebes, “I was wonderfully persuaded by it then, and now I stand by it as by no other argument.”

“I feel the same myself,” said Simmias, “and I would be very surprised if I ever came to think differently about this.”¹³¹¹

13.2 · Harmony requires its constituents

And Socrates said: “But, my Theban friend, you must think differently if this opinion remains: that harmony is a composite thing, and soul is a kind of harmony composed of the things held in tension throughout the body. Surely you will not accept your own assertion that a harmony was already composed before there existed that from which it had to be composed. Or will you?”

“By no means, Socrates,” he said.¹³¹²

13.3 · The lyre comes before its harmony

“Do you realize, then,” he said, “that you are saying just this when you say that soul exists before even arriving in human form and body, yet is composed of things that do not yet exist? For harmony is not like the thing to which you compare it. The lyre, the strings, and the notes, still unattuned, come into being first; harmony is formed last of all and perishes first. How, then, will this argument of yours agree with the other?”

“In no way,” said Simmias.¹³¹³

13.4 · An argument that must be in tune

“Yet surely,” he said, “if any argument ought to be in tune, the argument about harmony ought to be so too.”

“It certainly ought,” said Simmias.

“But this argument of yours is out of tune,” he said. “Consider which account you choose: that learning is recollection, or that soul is a harmony.”

“By far the former, Socrates,” he said. “The latter came to me without demonstration, with a certain plausibility and attractive appearance; that is also why most people accept it. But I know that arguments which base their demonstrations on probabilities are impostors. Unless one is on guard against them, they deceive one thoroughly, in geometry and in everything else.”¹³¹⁴

13.5 · Recollection and what is

“But the argument about recollection and learning was stated on the basis of a premise worthy of acceptance. For our soul was said to exist even before entering a body, just as its reality exists, the reality bearing the designation ‘what it is.’ And I have, as I convince myself, established this adequately and correctly. For these reasons, then, it seems I must accept neither my own assertion nor anyone else’s that soul is a harmony.”¹³¹⁵

13.6 · Harmony must follow its parts

“What about this way of looking at it, Simmias?” he said. “Do you think a harmony, or any other composition, can be in a condition different from that of the things of which it is composed?”

“Not at all.”

“Nor, I suppose, can it do or undergo anything other than what those things do or undergo.” He agreed.

“Then harmony cannot lead the things of which it is composed; it must follow them.” He agreed.

“Then a harmony is very far from being able to move or sound contrary to its own parts, or oppose them in any other way.”

“Very far indeed,” he said.¹³¹⁶

13.7 · Degrees of harmony and of soul

“What, then? Is not each harmony naturally a harmony according to the way it is attuned?”

“I do not understand,” he said.

“If it is attuned more fully and to a greater degree,” he said, “assuming this can happen, would it not be more of a harmony and a greater one; and if less fully and to a smaller degree, less of a harmony and a smaller one?”

“Certainly.”

“Does this also apply to soul: can one soul be, even in the slightest degree, more or less than another in this very respect, being a soul?”

“Not in any way,” he said.¹³¹⁷

13.8 · Virtue as a second harmony?

“Come now, by Zeus,” he said. “Is one soul said to possess understanding and virtue and to be good, while another possesses folly and wickedness and is bad? And is this said truly?”

“Certainly it is true.”

“Then what will someone who maintains that soul is harmony say these things in souls are, virtue and vice? Another harmony and a lack of attunement? Will the good soul be attuned and, itself being a harmony, contain another harmony within itself, while the other is itself unattuned and has no further harmony within it?”

“I cannot say,” says Simmias, “but clearly someone who made that assumption would say something of the kind.”¹³¹⁸

1306.Archē means a beginning or originating principle. “It would not come from a beginning” follows the difficult printed ex archēs; the apparatus records the alternative archē, which gives the more familiar “it would no longer be a beginning.” The translation preserves the base text rather than repairing its reasoning. “Comes from nothing” means it has no source from which it originates, not that it is created out of nothing.

1307.The argument now connects the persistence of self-motion with the possibility of motion throughout the cosmos. Genesis, “becoming,” includes the coming into being of things, not merely human birth. The alternative introduced by “otherwise” is the consequence the argument treats as unacceptable.

1308.Ousia and logos identify what soul is and the account defining it. Apsychon and empsychon are rendered “soulless” and “ensouled” to retain the explicit reference to psychē. The printed auto in the clause about inward motion is retained and understood with motion. The passage states a philosophical criterion of life; its conclusion depends on identifying soul with self-motion.

1309.The passage explicitly distinguishes an account of what soul is from an image of what it resembles. The team is a pair of horses, governed by a charioteer; the excerpt ends before the image is developed. Symphytos, “grown together,” describes their united power. Idea is rendered “form” here without treating it automatically as a separately existing Platonic Form.

1310.Histories II.123. The claim of Egyptian priority and the three-thousand-year circuit belong to Herodotus’s report; they are not presented as independently verified history. The excerpt names none of the Greeks who adopted the account. The Greek retains Ionic forms and the printed shift from a finite verb (“enters”) to an infinitive in reported speech; the English keeps that report continuous.

1311.Phaedo 91e-95a. The dual ephatēn identifies the answer as shared by Cebes and Simmias. The question recalls a prior argument, rather than reproducing its proof. Wachsmuth prints the separate words allo ti, rendered “surely,” where his apparatus records allothi, “elsewhere,” in Plato. Entethēnai means being placed in the body; the alternative endethēnai, being bound in it, is not substituted.

1312.Harmonia is the fitting together or attunement of constituents, illustrated below by a lyre and its strings. The proposal under examination makes soul dependent on the bodily elements whose tension produces it. The unusual singular ekeino before the plural “from which” is retained in Greek and represented by the collective “that” in English.

1313.The contradiction is between pre-existence and dependence on a later bodily composition. The temporal order of lyre, strings, notes, and harmony is essential: harmony cannot precede its constituents. Xynainesetai, the printed verb, asks whether the two accounts will agree; musical language becomes more explicit in the next exchange.

1314.Xynōidos, “in tune,” plays on the doctrine being discussed. Simmias contrasts a demonstrative argument with an account accepted because it looks persuasive. Eikos can mean likelihood or plausibility; “probabilities” here does not imply a numerical calculation. The assessment is Simmias’s reason for withdrawing his proposal.

1315.This compressed sentence connects the soul’s prior existence with ousia, reality, designated “what it is.” The printed autēs is genitive, “its”; the apparatus proposes hautē, “this,” instead. The English retains the genitive. Wachsmuth also prints apodedeigmai, here “I have established,” where he records Plato’s apodedegmai, “I have accepted.” These difficult readings are not silently replaced.

1316.The conclusion concerns the dependence of a composition on its components: harmony follows their condition and cannot act against them. “Do or undergo” preserves the paired active and passive verbs poiein and paschein. This prepares the later contrast with soul’s resistance to bodily desires.

1317.The qualification “assuming this can happen” is retained: degrees of attunement are proposed conditionally. Simmias denies degrees of being a soul, which is distinct from the possibility that souls differ in goodness or understanding. Those differences become the next test of his account.

1318.The proposed distinction introduces harmony within something already defined as harmony. Anarmostia is lack of attunement, contrasted with aretē, virtue, under the hypothesis. Simmias’s answer remains tentative: he reports what the theory’s defender would have to say, rather than endorsing the added account. The Greek present phēsin is retained as “says.”