Page:Works of Plato his first fifty-five dialogues (Taylor 1804) (Vol 2 of 5) (IA Vol2worksofplato00plat).pdf/443

 INTRODUCTION TO THE TIM^EUS.

433

multitude, bound and infinity, ſameneſs and difference, motion and perma¬ nency, from which all things, the firft caufe being excepted, are compofed. Likewile, being has either an effential or accidental fubfiftence, and is either incorporeal or corporeal: and if incorporeal, it either verges or does not verge to body.

But bodies are either fimple and immaterial, as the celeftial

bodies, or fimple and material, as thofe of an aerial nature, or compofite and material, as thofe of earth.

So that the oppofition of all thefe is occultly

fignified by that antient war ; the higher and more excellent natures being every where implied by the Athenians, and thofe of a contrary order by the inhabitants of the Atlantic ifland. That the reader, however, may be convinced that Plato’s account of the Atlantic ifland is not a fiction of his own deviling, let him attend to the fol¬ lowing relation of one Marcellus, who wrote an hiflory of ^Ethiopian affairs, according to Proclus 1 :—“ That fuch, and fo great, an ifland once exifted, is evinced by thofe who have compofed hiftories of things relative to the ex¬ ternal fea.

For they relate that in their times there were feven illands in

the Atlantic fea, facred to Proferpine : and befides thefe, three others of an immenfe magnitude ; one of which was facred to Pluto, another to Ammon, and another, which is the middle of thefe, and is of a thoufand ftadia, to Neptune.

And befides this, that the inhabitants of this laft ifland preferved

the memory of the prodigious magnitude of the Atlantic ifland, as related by their anceftors; and of its governing for many periods all the iflands in the Atlantic fea. And fuch is the relation of Marcellus in his AEthiopic hiflory.” 'On ysv sysvsTO toiocvT'/j Tig vrpcg xou TyXrxuvTYi, ^Xovti Tivzg rwv lo-ropouvruiv roc or;p: rrjg SxXxTTYig.

zivou yap xa: sv roig avrwv %povoig sorra y.sv v/i]v sot: TroXXocg orsptcdcug $WtX3~TSV(rx: oruvwv rwv sv AtXxvtikw T.sXuyzi v/jcrwv*

Txvtcc ysv ovv 0

MapxsXXog sv ro:g A:9:couxoig ysypatysv.

Indeed it is not at all wonderful that fo large an ifland fhould once have exifted, nor improbable that many more fuch exift at prefent, though to us unknown, if we only conlider the Platonic theory concerning the earth, of which the reader will find an account in the Introdudlion to the Phiedo, and 1 In Tim. p. 55. vol. 11.

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