EXCERPTS BY STOB^US. Ill 



/ 



IX. 



OF HERMES FROM THE THINGS TO TAT. 

 (Stobaws, 319, ibid., i. ch. 10; Meineke, i. 84; Patrit., 51). 



FOR the Matter also, O Child ! hath been generated and 

 was. For Matter is receptacle (a) of generation, but gene- 

 ration mode of energy of The imbegotten and pre-existing 

 God. Receiving then the seed of the generation, it was 

 generated and became variable and received Ideas being 

 made into shapes (b). For there presided over it, being 

 varied, that (energy) fabricating the ideas of the variation (c). 

 The nongeneration (d) of the matter then was shapeless- 

 ness, but the generation the being energized. 1 



X. 



OF HERMES FROM THAT TO TAT. 

 (Stobceus, Physica, 699; Meineke, i. 190; Patrit., p. 4). 



Asclepius. I, O Child ! both because of the love of Men 

 and of the piety towards The God, first write this. For 

 there can be no piety more righteous than to understand 

 the Entities, and to proffer thanks to the Maker on account 

 of these, which I will never cease performing. 



(a) dyy&iov. (b) 



(c) T^O-JTJJJ. (d) 



1 Stobaeus (ibid.) remarks that Plato (Timseus, 30) affirmed The 

 Matter to be bodylike, shapeless, formless, figureless, without quality 

 as to its own nature ; but having received the Forms it became as it 

 were nurse, receptacle (cx^ayg/oy) and mother of them. Plato asserts 

 that The Matter simply, as to its entirety, does not change its state 

 (i|*Wra/), but receives all things entering it, but has no original 

 shape whatever. " Three kinds are to be distinguished, the thing 

 generated, that in which it is generated, and that whence, being 

 assimilated, the thing generated is produced." " "We may fittingly 

 compare the thing receiving to a mother, that from whence to a 

 father, and the nature between these to offspring." 



