AS EXHIBITED IN THE TENTH BOOK OF "THE REPUBLIC," 309 



tending to be a scholar ought to be unacquainted with the brief but lucid description of the 

 use of the colus and fusua in the "Peleus and Thetis" of Catullus, lxii. [lxiv], 311 — 317: 



Leera eoUim molli lana retinebat araictum; 

 Dextora turn leviter deducens fila supinis 

 Formabat digitis : turn prono in pollice torquens 

 Libratum tereti versabat turbine fusum: 

 Atque ita decerpens sequabat semper opus deru, 

 Laneaque aridulis heerebant morsa labellis. 



Although the passage before us refers, like Catullus, to the three Parcce, there is no express 

 mention of spinning, unless we may presume that the Fates spin threads of light from 

 the girders of the sphere. Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos merely turn the wheel of the spindle, 

 and the ayKtarpov, the dens of Catullus, that is the hook or tooth, in which the thread was 

 fixed so that its prolongation by the process of spinning allowed the spindle to descend till it 

 touched the ground, is in Plato's description merely the fastening, the Kparepol aSd/xavTos 

 aXot, as Pindar says {Pyth. iv. 71, cf. 234, and ^sch. Ag. 211), which belong to the idea of 

 dvdyKT], and of course the spindle of Necessity is not supposed to descend by a lengthening 

 thread. The only apparent difficulty in the Greek of the passage is that the word j/Xa/car?;, 

 which generally means the distaff, is here used to denote the shaft of the spindle. It is a well- 

 known fact, however, that while arpaKTos is used to designate " an arrow," j/Xa/carj; may 

 signify any long tapering shaft, such as the top-mast of a ship (Athen. 475 a), the shafts of 

 reeds between the knots (Theophrastus, Hist. Plant, ii. 2, S 1), or a reed generally, (Hesychius: 

 ^\aKdT^=^6va^,) whence jEschylus spoke {^sch. Fr. ap, Schol. Horn. p. 448) of ttotuhoI 

 irdKvtjXdKaToi or " rivers with reedy banks." Although therefore the specific use of ^XaKctrj; 

 and of the neuter plural j^Xa/rara, and the etymology of these words, according to Butt- 

 mann's instructive analysis (ilber das Elektron, Mytholog. ii. pp. 337 sqq. translated in my 

 notes on the Antigone, pp. 213 sqq.), refer to the distaff on which the wool or flax was fixed 

 for spinning, there was nothing to prevent Plato, who had no occasion to mention that part of 

 the spinning apparatus,- from using the word ^XaKdrtj to denote the long axis of his imaginary 

 spindle, which regulated the movement of the heavenly bodies. 



The description of the wheel or ring has been misunderstood by more than one commen- 

 tator. The Greek words are; kvkXovs dvwQev Tct yeiKtj (paivovTai, vioTov cri/i/ej^es ecos 

 a(povcv\ov direpyaXofxevov^ irepl t»)i' jjXaKaT^ji'. These words can have no 

 meaning except that which I have given to them. For kvkXovs must be a 

 secondary predicate, and the vwtov crvwej^es, like the vwtov OaXdcTCTt]^, must 

 denote a horizontal surface, unless something is specifically stated to the con- 

 trary. Besides, the wheel of the ancient spindle is known to have had a hori- 

 zontal surface on the upper side, and it was always at the lower end of the 

 spindle, something like a teetotum with a long shaft. In spite of this, 

 Schleiermacher, and, after him, Cousih, understand the wheel as a spherical or 



globular body about the middle of the spindle. We shall see that this could ^ g--- ,,^^ 



not have been what Plato intended. The rims represent the surfaces tra- L J 



versed by the different Sirens, and while each planet imparts its colour to ir 



the path of its rotation, the outer region, or that of the fixed stars, is said 



