Page:The works of Plato, A new and literal version, (vol 6) (Burges, 1854).djvu/157



Of this short treatise, relating to a Cosmogony according to the Pythagorean theory, the authorship used to be attributed to Timæus the Locrian, until Meiners adduced arguments to show that the work was the production of a more modern writer. The genuine writings of the Locrian philosopher had so completely disappeared before the time of Aristotle, that he seems to have known nothing about them, as may be inferred from what he says in Metaphysic. i. 6, p. 649, B.

In confirmation of this decision, which has been adopted by nearly all subsequent writers on the subject, De Gelder has been led to express his belief that the work was written by some philosopher, who lived in the second century of the Christian era, and amused himself with drawing up an abridgment of the Timæus of Plato, adopting what he conceived to be the Doric dialect, with the view of enabling him to palm it off as a genuine production of the Locrian philosopher. But though we know that similar deceptions have been practised at different times, yet even De Gelder himself confesses his inability to discover the motives that could lead the unknown author to commit the forgery. Hence we may fairly imagine that it was done at an earlier period, when the Ptolemies were collecting the works of older writers to adorn their library at Alexandria. And this deception the writer was enabled to carry on with the greater success, as he has been careful to introduce, doubtless from the work of a Pythagorean, some marked discrepancies, duly noticed by De Gelder in Præf. p. xi., from the Timæus of Plato, of whose treatise his own is in other respects little more than an abridgment.

At the present day the treatise is held in so little honour, that