Timaeus
by Plato · Τίμαιος
Assigned by 4 of the 9 reading lists, catalogue entry only
- Written
- c. 360 BCE
- Language
- Greek
- Length
- Short · 100 ppunder 120 pages
- Difficulty
- Difficult4 of 5 for a first-year reader
We recommendTimaeus, translated by Donald J. ZeylHackett, 2000A careful translation with a long introduction that explains the cosmology.
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After a brief exchange with Socrates and the first telling of the Atlantis story, the Pythagorean Timaeus delivers a long account of how the cosmos was made. A divine craftsman, the Demiurge, shaped a disorderly receptacle into an ordered world after an eternal model, giving it a soul, a spherical body and the circling heavens as a moving image of eternity. Timaeus goes on to derive the four elements from triangles and to explain the human body, sensation and disease.
No reading guide yet
The catalogue entry above is complete: the dates, the form, the themes and every program that assigns Timaeus are verified against each program's published list.
What is missing is the part that takes real work: the summary, the key passages, and a recommended translation. The edition named below is the one most programs assign, so the buy links are useful already.
