POEMANDRES. VIII. 49 



being both itself immortal and having the material eternal. 

 But full of the Ideas (a) The Father having sown in the qua- 

 lities, 1 inclosed them in the sphere as if in a cave, 2 willing 

 for every quality to adorn that of quality with itself; but 

 with this immortality having encompassed the whole body, 

 lest the matter having wished to secede from the consti- 

 tution thereof, should be dissolved into its own disorder (>). 

 For when the matter was unincorporate, Child ! it was 

 without order ; but it has even here that revolution (c) 3 in 

 respect of the other small qualities, that of the increase 

 and that of the diminution, which men call death. 



4. But this the want of order exists (d) around earthly ani- 

 mals ; for the bodies of the heavenly have one order, which 

 they have allotted from the Father at the beginning; and this 

 is maintained, by the restoration (e) of each, 4 indissoluble ; 



(a) iofuv. (6) rqv setvTvj$ oira^ixv. (e) r^v tfaovftsvyt. 



(d) yiviToti. (e) ctKox.otTOKJTtx.atus. 



the extremities." " So all the heaven being spherelike, and the World 

 thus brought into being every part being equidistant from the centre, to 

 speak of above or below is neither just nor accurate. If any one were 

 to go round this in a circle, often, standing at the antipodes, he would 

 speak of the same part of it as above and below. As I said, to talk of 

 the spherical as having one part above and another below, is not wise." 



1 Referring to the "Ideas" or " Forms n which Plato held to be 

 the originals of all things, Plutarch defined the " Idea" thus (quoted 

 byStobaeuSjPhysica, ch. xii. 6a; Meineke,i. 87) : "Idea is Incorporeal 

 Essence, cause of such like beings as itself is, and pattern (^xpec^siy^oc) 

 of the subsistence (tmordtfffas) of the objects of sense (afofaray) having 

 themselves (s^ovrav) according to nature ; it indeed sustained of itself, 

 and imaging (evmcovi^ovyet) shapeless materials, an,d becoming cause 

 of the arrangement QiaTei%eas) of these, applying order of a father to , 

 the objects of sense." 



Plato, in " Parmenides," says: " It appears to me that the matter 

 stands thus : that these Forms (l/S>j) stand in the Nature as if patterns, 

 and that other things resemble these, and are likenesses, and the 

 participation of the Forms with the others, becomes nothing else than 

 the being assimilated to them." 



2 This simile of the cave is borrowed from Plato's Republic, lib. v. 

 28, 517, et seq.; Hermann, iv. 202. 



3 Parthey suggests " confusion/' p. 38. 



4 Referring to the return of each to its own place in the heavens. 

 See ante, ch. iii. and note 3 there. 



D 



