Planets and Time: A Timaean Puzzle

Karel Thein

Abstract

In the Timaeus, the issue of planets is revelatory of the twofold subject of the plausible
account of how our universe acquired its present shape. If Timaeus speaks about the
nature of the Whole and about human nature, the creation of the planets is where these
two parts of his account meet and intersect. To clarify this suggestion, the chapter starts
with the creation of time and with its role in Timaeus’ account (some more metaphysi-
cal remarks on the nature of time are relegated to the Postscript). The second part of
the chapter turns to the planets as a pivotal moment where Timaeus passes from the
immortal to the mortal species. This passage will play an important role in explaining
why Timaeus uses various temporal idioms without offering a unified theory of time.

Keywords

Plato – Timaeus – planets – time

In the overall framework of Timaeus’ plausible account of how our universe ac-
quired its present shape, the issue of planets is revelatory of the twofold nature
of Timaeus’ task: Timaeus is invited to speak about the nature of the Whole
and about human nature. The planets, I will suggest, are precisely where these
two parts of the story meet and intersect.
Before focusing on this intersection, in other words on planets and human
beings, I need to start with Timaeus’ rather entangled narrative of how—and
especially why—the planets were created in the first place. By the same token,
this first part of my contribution cannot avoid the issue that is at the heart of
this narrative, namely the creation of time. I will limit myself to the role of the
planets and time within Timaeus’ cosmic story and leave aside a more meta-
physical inquiry into time, which goes necessarily beyond the text of our dia-
logue. A taste of such an inquiry is given in the “Postscript,” which offers some
further remarks on how Timaeus speaks about time and what are some pos-
sible implications of his story for a more abstract treatment of it. In the second
part of my contribution, I will turn to the planets as a pivotal moment where
Timaeus’ story passes from the immortal to the mortal living species.

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Planets and Time: A Timaean Puzzle 93

The first part of my contribution starts naturally with line 37c6, where we
meet the Demiurge who pauses to take a look at his creation so far. This is actu-
ally the only time in the story that we observe him doing so, and this unusual
dramatic device has a reason: while contemplating the world consisting of a
soul and a body put together, the Demiurge conceives an idea, which he will
realize in the guise of planets, including the structure of their motions that we
call “time.” In order to properly evaluate this invention, we first need to assume
the posture of the demiurge so as to see what exactly it is that he contemplates
at this point of the story.
On the flatly descriptive level, we can observe the world’s body and its soul
woven intricately together in a way which implies that the soul is itself a tri-
dimensional structure that both encompasses and permeates the world as a
physical compound. Obviously, the soul is not visible as such, and the verb
Timaeus employs, noein, signals that we grasp much more than the observable
facts. What we understand is not only that the universe moves, but that its mo-
tion is internally animated. To which the Demiurge reacts as follows:

Now when the father who had begotten the universe observed it set in
motion and alive (κινηθὲν αὐτὸ καὶ ζῶν ἐνόησεν), a thing that had come to
be as a shrine for the everlasting gods (τῶν ἀιδίων θεῶν γεγονὸς ἄγαλμα),
he was well pleased, and in his delight he thought of making it more like
its model still (ἠγάσθη τε καὶ εὐφρανθεὶς ἔτι δὴ μᾶλλον ὅμοιον πρὸς τὸ παρά-
δειγμα ἐπενόησεν ἀπεργάσασθαι).
37c6–d11

Two things happen here: first, we have the thoughtful contemplation whose
joyful character is emphasized by the verbs agazō and euphrainō, but also by
the description of the object in question as tōn aidiōn theōn agalma, a kind
of charming sanctuary, a wonderful invitation for gods to be at home in the
universe—here we may notice a certain temporal oscillation of the narra-
tive which conflates what already is and what is yet to come.2 For now, we are
more interested in the second moment: the state of joyful contemplation (verb
noein) which mixes intellectual alertness with the father’s affection for his off-
spring. This state inspires a new idea, which will carry the project still further
forward (verb epinoein). In other words, looking at what is already wonderful,

1 Here as elsewhere the translation I use is Zeyl, Plato: Timaeus.

2 On agalma as joy-provoking image see Kerényi, “Agalma, eikon, eidolon.” Cf. Cohen,
“Etymology of Greek agalma, agallô, agallomai.” Agallomai means to exult, to rejoice greatly;
it designates the rapture of those who find themselves face to face with the divine.

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the Demiurge thinks about how to make it even more so. First, I will quote this
train of Demiurgic thought in Zeyl’s translation which reflects probably the
most common interpretation of the text:

So, as the model was itself an everlasting Living Thing (ζῷον ἀίδιον ὄν),
he set himself to bringing this universe to completion in such a way that
it, too, would have that character to the extent that was possible. Now it
was the Living Thing’s nature to be eternal (αἰώνιος), but it isn’t possible
to attach [the eternal nature] fully to anything that is begotten. And so
he began to think (ἐπενόει) of making a moving image of eternity (εἰκὼ
κινητόν τινα αἰῶνος ποιῆσαι): at the same time (ἅμα) as he brought order
to the heavens, he would make an eternal image (αἰώνιον εἰκόνα), mov-
ing according to number (κατ᾽ ἀριθμὸν ἰοῦσαν), of eternity remaining in
unity (μένοντος αἰῶνος ἐν ἑνί). This image (τοῦτον), of course, is what we
now call “time.”
37d1–7

At first sight, this reasoning is more than a little bit strange: if it is eternity and
unity as such that are to be passed on, insofar as possible, to the universe, then
the introduction of time is not only of little help, but it would actually seem
to make the difference even bigger since it would enable us to count, thanks
to the distinctly observable motions, an increasing number of different states.
This probably means that the effect intended by the Demiurge is not one of
an undifferentiated eternality, but consists rather in conferring to the world a
still higher degree of nobility which is not entirely unlike the value of what is
aiōnios or aidios—in other words, the value proper to living beings alone. Here
it should be noted these two expressions (of which the first, aiōnios, may well
be Plato’s coinage) seem to be interchangeable; or, at least, the text of the dia-
logue offers no clue as to their possible difference. To which a caveat must be
added: the quoted passage contains a number of lexical problems and rather
peculiar constructions, and things will not get better in the next lines. I will
leave aside most of the textual issues, including the disconcerting presence
of various tenses,3 and focus only on what is crucial for our understanding of
what exactly it is that we “now call time.” And because this understanding can
only be gained if we clarify the function of time, we can start by emphasizing

3 On the textual problems in this part of the Timaeus see Brague, “Pour en finir avec ‘le temps,
image mobile de l’éternité’ (Platon, Timée, 37d).”

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Planets and Time: A Timaean Puzzle 95

the double use of aidios, which applies not only to what simply is eternal, but
also to what came to be but will not perish.4
Hence the peculiar expression “eternal image” (aiōnion eikōn) and the
much-discussed question of what exactly this image is and how it differs from
what it is an image of. As for the first part of this question, Zeyl’s translation
offers an apparently clear answer: the image in question is time, which implies
that the masculine accusative touton in the last quoted sentence refers to the
feminine noun eikōn in the previous sentence.5 The philosophical sense we
obtain from this reading follows in the steps of Philo of Alexandria who was
the first, as far as we know, to take the text to speak about time as the “the imi-
tation of eternity” (mimēma aiōnos).6 However, there are two other candidates
for the meaning of touton at 37d7, and they are both masculine nouns. The first
of them is the accusative ouranon at 37e6, which seems syntactically rather
disconnected from touton, and would yield a more direct identification of time
with the motion of the whole universe than both the whole sentence and its
wider context suggest. The second is the accusative arithmon, which seems
quite naturally placed to be referred back by the touton in the next clause.7 I
find the choice of arithmos as the referent of touton very appealing, and not
only for syntactical reasons. I believe that it does not at all contradict the

4 It is beyond the scope of my contribution to address the debates about Plato and the intro-
duction of “eternity” into philosophical discourse. My own view concerning the Timaeus is
that, simply put, this dialogue deals less with the metaphysics of eternity versus time than
with the premise of an everlasting divine life whose perfection is neither augmented nor
diminished by duration—such a life still echoes in Boethius’ definition of eternity as divine
life, which is also an exegesis of the Timaeus: “it is one thing to progress like the world in
Plato’s theory through everlasting life, and another thing to have embraced the whole of
everlasting life in one simultaneous present” (Consolation, V vi.9–11; translated by V. E. Watts,
London, Penguin, 1969). So even if eternity has no externally measurable duration, there is
still some sort of duration in eternity insofar as what is eternal is alive, hence somehow active
(here I agree with Stump and Kretzmann, “Eternity,” and Leftow, Time and Eternity). In any
case, the positing of two very different kinds of unceasing life is necessarily distinct from the
discussions which concern the (atemporal) status of Platonic Forms. On these discussions,
including a perceptive criticism of some earlier interpretations, see Mason, “Why Does Plato
Believe in a Timeless Eternity?”
5 This is grammatically sound. For different options of how to construe the whole quite en-
tangled sentence see Brague, “Pour en finir”, 66, and Johns, “On the translation of Timaeus
38b6–c3.”
6 Philon, Quis rerum divinarum heres sit (34) 165 (= III 38.15 Cohn-Wendland).
7 Some modern translations seem to reproduce the ambivalence of the original. See e.g.
Cornford’s rendering: “But he took thought to make, as it were, a moving likeness of eternity;
and, at the same time that he ordered the Heaven, he made, of eternity that abides in unity,
an everlasting likeness moving according to number—that to which we have given the name
Time.” What does “that” refer to? To “likeness” or to “number”?

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traditional reading, which makes time into the image of eternity; but it en-
ables us to refine this reading and to give it much more flesh by bringing into
focus the particular cosmic structures which serve to introduce time into the
divinely produced universe.
The first statement in favor of my attempt is simply the explicit characteriza-
tion of time offered already at 37d5–6: chronos is a number, arithmos, “accord-
ing to which” the eternal, yet produced, image (whatever it is) moves (cf. kat’
arithmon iousan). This is the second favorable statement: it would seem that,
here as elsewhere in Plato, to be a produced image (with the exception of speech
as image) means being something which is visibly and materially part of the
sensible world—but neither time nor number, if considered on the purely ab-
stract level, are of such a nature. What they require to fit the present context
of making things is a support which can actually move, “according to number,”
in the three-dimensional world. And it is the creation of such a support, or the
completion of such a creation, that Timaeus will go on to describe in the guise
of the making of planets. As Timaeus will state later on, “time really is [or, as
Archer-Hind has it, “arises from”] the wanderings of these bodies.” (39d1–2)
The planets, therefore, are what connects lines 37d1–7 with what follows in
the next four to five Stephanus pages. My aim is therefore to demonstrate that
these pages only confirm that time as such, taken abstractly, is not the image in
question, although time, defined as number, is embedded in what the image
in question—namely the celestial bodies—does or, more exactly, in how that
image moves. Here I assume that, throughout the Timaeus, the motion de-
scribed by the verb kinein implies physicality : only bodies are properly kinou-
mena.8 And if so, then the best candidate for the role of the moving yet eternal
image are the planets together with the structure of their various motions in-
cluding the relation between this structure and the sphere of the fixed stars.
Time as number—a mathematical structure—is not identical to this image,
but it enables the planets themselves, as living beings whose motions express
the appropriate number, to maintain the ordered regularity of their motion.
This, as we will see further on, is an important aspect of the created image: not
only it is visible, and therefore corporeal, but this “eternal image,” once created,
can be self-governing only in virtue of its being alive. This dimension of the
argument should not be forgotten: there is little doubt that aiōnios, like aiōn,
strongly implies an everlasting life and could hardly be predicated of either
something only abstract or something entirely inanimate. Taking into account

8 Correlatively, I doubt that the souls as described by Timaeus, including the world soul and
the souls of the stars, are simply “incorporeal” (while having spatial properties) without fur-
ther qualifications. For more on this issue see Thein, “Soul and incorporeality in Plato.”

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Planets and Time: A Timaean Puzzle 97

this last feature of the argument (which, in contrast to its commentators, is far
from distinguishing between various modalities of everlastingness, but has its
eye on the everlasting glory of what is either simply divine or divinely fabricat-
ed), I propose a modified translation of 37d1-7 with a freer rendering of aiōnios
and aiōn, and a differently construed last sentence:

So, as the model was itself an eternal Living Thing, he set himself to bring-
ing this universe to completion in such a way that it, too, would have that
character to the extent that was possible. Now it was the Living Thing’s
nature to be eternally alive, but it isn’t possible to attach [the eternal life]
fully to what is begotten. And so it occurred to him to make a moving
image of the eternal life; at the same time as he brought order to the uni-
verse, he would make an eternally living image of the eternal life that
remains in unity: [the image] moving according to that number (touton)
which we call “time.”9

Once Timaeus turns to the planets as such, the proposed reading will receive
further and quite explicit support. First, however, we are offered a supplemen-
tary explanation concerning the issue of time and tenses (37d1–38b5). Right
from the first sentence of this supplement, the presence of planets is presup-
posed insofar as the talk about days and nights, months and years would make
little sense without them:

For before the heavens came to be (πρὶν οὐρανὸν γενέσθαι), there were no
days or nights, no months or years. But now, at the same time (ἅμα) as he
framed the heavens, he devised their coming to be.
37e1–3

Here “heavens” refer to the state of the universe at the moment of the plan-
ets’ making which is as yet to be accounted for: when Timaeus will be done
with the more formal issues, the planets will enable the Demiurge to proj-
ect a new kind of time literally into the world. In the two quoted sentences
we also notice that Timaeus gets around the dilemma of “how could there
have been some ‘before and after’ if there was still no time.” He does not

9 My version of the last sentence concurs with Wilberding, “Eternity in Ancient Philosophy”:
“But he took thought to make a kind of moving image of eternity (αἰών), and simultaneous
with his ordering of the heavens he created of eternity that abides in unity (μένοντος αἰῶνος
ἐν ἑνί) an eternal (αἰώνιος) image moving according to number, and this number is what we
have labeled ‘time.’”

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repeat that the planets, as the next stage of creation, will only be produced
after the world soul and the world’s basic body, but prefers to point out that
there were no days, no nights, no months, and no years πρὶν οὐρανὸν γενέ-
σθαι, which is a general expression specified, in the next sentence, by ἅμα
which can mean “at the same time,” but also “together with.” Both meanings
take off the edge of sequentiality, and so does the parallel expression used by
Timaeus at 38b6, μετ᾽ οὐρανοῦ γέγονεν, which is said with reference to time.
Here Timaeus seems to imply a certain simultaneity of the heavens and time
despite the fact that his description of how the Demiurge produces the heav-
ens in its present shape proceeds in three neatly distinct steps, where three
very different procedures are employed: first, the world’s body is inscribed
within the structure of the world soul; then, the planets are added; finally,
the fixed stars are fashioned as the likeness of the first of the species that
compose the intelligible model of the universe. Sequential or not, these are
fundamentally different operations.
The cosmic structure which results from all these operations (of which
the second and the third one are still to be described in some detail) forms
an implicit background for the next part of the explanation where Timaeus
introduces two basic dimensions of time, one which is generically akin to
time as number and hence structure, and another one which follows from
the changes of particular bodies “within” this structure, including the pro-
cesses of generation and corruption. This explanation is clearly an aside to
the main storyline; it is designed so as to highlight the inescapable duali-
ty implied in our conception of time and, by consequence, in our ways of
speaking about it:

These [sc. days, nights, months, and years] all are parts of time (μέρη χρό-
νου), and was and will be are forms of time that have come to be (χρό-
νου γεγονότα εἴδη). Such notions we unthinkingly but incorrectly apply
to everlasting being (ἐπὶ τὴν ἀίδιον οὐσίαν). For we say that it was and is
and will be, but according to the true account only is is appropriately said
of it. Was and will be are properly said about the becoming that passes
in time, for these two are motions. But that which is always changeless
and motionless cannot become either older or younger in the course of
time (διὰ χρόνου)—it neither ever became so, nor is it now such that it
has become so, nor will it ever be so in the future. And all in all, none
of the characteristics that becoming has bestowed upon the things that
are borne about in the realm of perception are appropriate to it. These,
rather, are forms of time that have come to be—time that imitates eter-
nity and circles according to number (ἀλλὰ χρόνου ταῦτα αἰῶνα μιμουμένου

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Planets and Time: A Timaean Puzzle 99

καὶ κατ᾽ ἀριθμὸν κυκλουμένου γέγονεν εἴδη). And what is more, we also say
things like these : that what has come to be is what has come to be, that
what is coming to be is what is coming to be, and also that what will come
to be is what will come to be, and that what is not is what is not. None of
these expressions of ours is accurate. But I don’t suppose this is a good
time right now to be too meticulous about these matters.
37e3–38b5

The initial division is clear: there are “parts of time” that belong to (and express
for us) its numerical structure. There are also “forms of time,” namely the past
and the future, which are connected to generation and corruption or, more
generally, to the changes of material states of affairs. It is to the forms of time
that Timaeus turns at some length, mostly in order to clarify our misuses of the
linguistic idioms concerning time and tenses. This oft-commented upon clari-
fication, which concerns less the issue of the planets than the metaphysical
theory of time, I will leave for the “Postscript” to my contribution (see below;
it is worth keeping in mind that Timaeus says more about how we speak about
time than about time as such). Here I only wish to emphasize the basic dis-
tinction between the parts of time and the forms of time, a distinction which
follows from the fact that only the forms of time, but not the parts of time,
are connected to the flow of time or to “time’s arrow” in the sense of things
coming one after another in the unidirectional “before” and “after.” In contrast,
there will once again be a day after a night, and after this November there will
once again be November next year. This, in and of itself, does not imply the
irreducible difference of the content of what happens this November and the
next November: it is me, not November that will grow older. November is, per
se, entirely indifferent to what was, is, and will be. That it is so is imperative in
order for us to have time as arithmos, not in the sense of counting, endlessly,
months and years one after another, but in the sense of there being a structure
which enables us to differentiate between the temporal units which are days
and months and years.
This much being clear, the translation quoted above still contains a sentence
which would seem to threaten my suggestion that the proper image of eternity
or eternal life (aiōn) is not time in the abstract, but planets as ensouled celestial
bodies whose motions express time and make it intelligible for us. The sentence
in question is rather tangled and follows from a general summarizing claim that
the characteristics or features caused in the sensible things by generation do not
belong to what is always changeless and motionless. To which Timaeus adds that
“tauta are instead forms of time (χρόνου εἴδη) imitating aiōn and circling accord-
ing to number.” It is obvious that tauta are the characteristics of generated and

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100 Thein

perishable things, which have a past and a future different from their present
state. The quoted sentence is therefore a general statement, which is not a direct
part of the narrative sequence of events: at this point of the story, no such gener-
ated and changing (yet particular) things are in existence.
Moreover, the sentence fits badly its present context as well since the evoked
activity of imitating the eternal life should belong, at best, to the parts of time
(time as structure), not to its forms (time as time’s arrow).10 We should stress
“activity” here since activity is what the verb mimeisthai implies. This is its first
occurrence in Timaeus’ speech but, throughout the dialogue, this verb usually
describes an activity of a living being, whether this activity is exercised in its
mind or its body.11 That the forms of time (in contrast to the parts of time con-
nected to the planets) could be active in this way appears quite implausible.
In the same vein, the mention of a cyclical revolution suits much better the
constantly revolving parts of time than the past, present and future tenses. All
these things considered, it seems that the quoted sentence presents us with a
rather relaxed inclusive statement and, as such, it prepares the almost immedi-
ately following (and even more general) summary at 38b6–c3. Before continu-
ing to this summary, Timaeus himself concludes his digression on the parts
and the forms of time by admitting that he will not try to be entirely rigorous
in applying his own temporal distinctions. At this point, the distinction be-
tween the two views on time (“parts of time” versus “before and after”) seems
to already have receded into the background. This does not, of course, mean
that this important and logical distinction loses something of its philosophical
value. Nothing in the dialogue contradicts the basic assumption that time is
not reducible to “the forms of time” (or the “before and after”) since these are
logically contingent on motion and change (starting perhaps with the elemen-
tal motion on which they would not be apparent phenomenally; but this is only
relevant for the question of whether there is a directional time at the level of
the elemental transformations—this question eludes our present context and
will only be mentioned in the “Postscript,” note 19).

10 I therefore do not think that Timaeus alludes here to the as yet uncreated chain of gen-
erations of perishable animals. On such a chain see, in contrast, Symposium 207d; it is
reforged in Aristotle, De anima II 4, 415a26–b7.
11 Timaeus uses mimeisthai three times about the lesser gods imitating the Demiurge while
creating mortal bodies, and then about our intellectual imitation of the regular celes-
tial motions (46c7–47c4). At 81b1–2 it is used to describe how the blood particles in our
bodies “of necessity imitate the universe’s motion” (τὴν τοῦ παντὸς ἀναγκάζεται μιμεῖσθαι
φοράν). On our bodily parts as “an imitation of the structure of the universe” see also
88c7–d1. This “imitation” follows of course from divine intention that governs the making
of our bodies.

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Planets and Time: A Timaean Puzzle 101

The already mentioned more general summary following on it confirms the

independent role of “the parts of time” by first sketching an analogy between
the eternal life of the model and the life of the universe, and then by finally
passing—almost in the same breath—to the fabrication of planets as a means
of making this analogy not only notional, but real:

Time, then, came to be together with the universe (μετ᾽ οὐρανοῦ) so that
just as they were begotten together (ἅμα), they might also be undone to-
gether (ἅμα), should there ever be an undoing of them. And it came to
be after the model of that which is sempiternal (τῆς διαιωνίας φύσεως), so
that it might be as much like its model as possible. For the model is some-
thing that has being for all eternity (πάντα αἰῶνά ἐστιν ὄν), while it, on the
other hand, has been, is, and shall be for all time (διὰ τέλους τὸν ἅπαντα
χρόνον γεγονώς τε καὶ ὢν καὶ ἐσόμενος). Such was the reason, then, such the
god’s design for the coming to be of time (πρὸς χρόνου γένεσιν), that he
brought into being the Sun, the Moon and five other stars, for the beget-
ting of time. These are called “wanderers,” and they came to be in order
to set limits to and stand guard over the numbers of time (εἰς διορισμὸν καὶ
φυλακὴν ἀριθμῶν χρόνου).
38b6–c6

We certainly do not need seven planets in order to make time pass from the
future to the past; by contrast, we need them in order to express time as num-
ber in an organized and, in all its complexity, beautiful way. By the same token,
time as number does not explain what we call the flow of time (even the world
soul, once produced, simply starts to live its unceasing and intelligent life
“for all time” [πρὸς τὸν σύμπαντα χρόνον], 36e4–5).12 But once the planets are
there, the universe becomes analogical to its model in virtue of being a well-
structured unity which perseveres through “all time” (διὰ τὸν ἅπαντα χρόνον),
past, present and future alike.13
Here we should take a step back, just like the Demiurge did a moment ago, and
take a panoramic look at where we are. First, it should be said that, until the in-
vention of planets, the universe—or what will soon become a complex world—
is not really measured by the degree of direct resemblance to its eternal model.

12 Cf. Goldin, “A Plato and the Arrow of Time,” 133–134. And see the “Postscript” below.
13 A full-blown version of the resulting analogy appears in Calcidius’ commentary, ch. CV:
the mundus sensibilis relates to the parts of time in the same way as the mundus intelligi-
bilis relates to eternity. See Bakhouche, ed., Calcidius: Commentaire au Timée de Platon,
338, and Magee, ed., Calcidius, On Plato’s Timaeus, 297.

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102 Thein

This is because the model does not contain the blueprint of the world’s body
(although it arguably contains the geometrical blueprints of the elements), and
it does not seem to encompass a soul which would be a blueprint for the world
soul. The latter, much like the structure of the world’s body, is produced by the
Demiurge in his effort to make the world as good as possible. In this respect, we
must not forget that the primary motivation of the good Demiurge is to make
the world like himself (see 29e–30a). Hence the choice of the perfect model, but
also a certain double bind since “to make the world in my image” and “to make
the world resemble an unchanging intelligible model” is not entirely the same
thing. Those ancient interpreters who solved this tension by transplanting the
model right into the mind of the Demiurge therefore proceeded logically, but
they made a huge step beyond the letter of the dialogue which leaves the model
metaphysically quite indeterminate except for a few general and mostly nega-
tive characteristics (absence of generation, absence of all change). It lacks all
determinate properties that could directly guide an effort at its imitation. The
expression noēta zōia (31a5), which describes what the model contains, is not
a solution to this difficulty since it is hopelessly ambivalent: it can describe an
entirely unknown and metaphysically original form of life, but it can just as well
be the label for an intelligible Form of what the known life forms are like (this
is the ambivalence between “the model is a living being” and “the model is of
living beings”).
In this situation, the decision to create the planets is both contingent upon
the already established structure of the world soul (it makes use of the divi-
sions within the circle of the Different) and largely independent of Timaeus’
introductory and quite general description of the likeness between a generated
entity and its eternal model. Even the world soul’s structure is independent in
the same sense: although it acquires a life of its own, it is first and foremost a
means to guarantee the stability of the resulting overall likeness. The Demiurge
will continue to be creative and resourceful concerning various ways of estab-
lishing the complex likeness in question: for instance, to take the most obvi-
ous case, the idea of producing the likenesses of the last two intelligible living
beings by letting humans degenerate into them is not exactly how we usually
imagine the relation between things and Platonic forms.
Having summarized the genetic coordination of heavens and time, Timaeus
proceeds to describe the more technical aspects of how the planets came into
being and of how they move according to their assigned numbers. This part of
his discourse about planets was one already most discussed by the Ancients
who—just like present-day commentators—try to make sense of the more
technical or astronomical aspects of what Timaeus ventures about the “danc-
ing motions” of the planets and “their juxtapositions and back-circling” (40c).

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Planets and Time: A Timaean Puzzle 103

I have nothing original to say on this count,14 and I am also not able to determine
how exactly the planetary trajectories relate to the rotation of the correspond-
ing circles of the world soul.15 So I will instead point out two simpler things.
First, planets are living creatures composed of a body and a soul, and it is
apparently in virtue of their soul’s activity that they do not deviate from their
pre-determined orbits. This follows from their guardian role, specified as “co-
operation in producing time” for which their bodies were “bound by bonds of
soul”: it is the latter that had “learned (ἔμαθεν) their assigned tasks” (38e5–6).
Hence the notion of planets as “instruments of time” (42d5) or “instruments of
times” (41e5). This equivocation follows from the fact that each planet’s motion
must have its own numerical pattern whose expression is “what we call time.”16
Timaeus confirms this clearly at 39d1–2: “time really is the wanderings of these
bodies, which are both bewilderingly numerous (πλήθει μὲν ἀμηχάνῳ χρωμέ-
νας) and astonishingly variegated (πεποικιλμένας δὲ θαυμαστῶς).” This rather
unusual praise of visible complexity and variety anticipates upon Timaeus’
final summary of why the planets are good for the universe: the purpose of
their making “was to make this living thing [sc. this universe] as like as pos-
sible to that perfect and intelligible Living Thing, by way of imitating its eternal
nature” (39d8–e2).
In other words, the planets, precisely in virtue of increasing the organized
complexity of the universe, make the latter more like its model which consists
of the intelligible living things. What the Demiurge achieves by construing the
planets is the indirect imitation of the life present in the model’s noetic com-
position: the model contains exactly four intelligible species of living being;
the planets have no such noetic blueprints but are the newly conceived life-
forms whose motions exhibit regular complexity. This is strikingly different
from what immediately follows in Timaeus’ story, which is the creation of the
fixed stars as the first step in completing the likeness of this universe to its
model by a direct imitation of the exactly four species contained in the model.

14 On this issue, I tend to concur with Bowen, “Simplicius and the Early History of Greek
Planetary Theory,” 158, on Timaeus 38c7–d6 and the image of planets as runners: “All the
image requires is a sense of the overall eastward direction of the race, and this itself may
have been inferred from the fact that the planets rise later and later in relation to the fixed
stars over the course of time. In any case, the image is no warrant for talk of planetary sta-
tions and retrogradations.”
15 Nor, as far as I can tell, is anybody else; were they exactly the same, there would be no
need for the planets to possess their own calculating souls: to firmly fix their bodies would
be enough. On this usually overlooked problem see Mason, “The Nous Doctrine in Plato’s
Thought,” 216–217.
16 See Brague, “Pour en finir,” 62–63. For Proclus, this plurality is unified in the higher, intel-
lectual time.

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Of these four species, which are implicitly attuned to the four elements, fixed
stars, composed mainly of fire, are the first. Their creation thus marks a new
stage in the whole story: until now, the Demiurge was creating the setting for
the four species that will correspond to the equally four intelligible living be-
ings. At the same time, this setting is not a neutral container and its function
is not only to be beautiful and ordered in its motions. This order has its own
value and its complex unity already does imitate, albeit indirectly, the intel-
ligible character of the model, although it does not yet directly imitate the four
intelligible living beings.17 Importantly—and this is the second thing I wish
to point out—planets will play a role even in the completion of this new and
direct imitation.
In this respect, the planets play a pivotal role in Timaeus’ story in that they
prepare the shift from the immortal visible species (fixed stars) to the mortal
ones. The construction of the planets starts to make further sense once human
beings are created as observers of cosmic complexity. At that moment, planets
acquire a second, and then a third function which relate to human practical
well-being and human intellectual progress respectively.
Concerning human well-being, Timaeus leaves no doubt that, on his ac-
count, there is a teleological connection between planets and the good things
in human life. In order to better measure the slowness and quickness of all ce-
lestial motions, the Demiurge lights up the sun which helps all those who can
be taught to “participate in number” (39b5–c1). At 47a–b, it is confirmed that
both planets and fixed stars are, together with the gift of sight, mankind’s help-
ers in acquiring “the art of number” and “the notion of time.” Apparently, this
is not why the celestial bodies were created in the first place; but it is how the
Demiurge deliberately uses them beyond their first purpose. And he will make
further, more cunning use of the celestial bodies in orchestrating the condi-
tions for the coming to be of the lower animal species, more exactly of those
generated species that will be described as “lower” compared to other created
species even if all created species are equal as likenesses of their respective
intelligible models, and are therefore equally necessary for the universe to be
complete (see 41b–c).
It is at this point of the story that planetary motions will themselves become
a model or a paradigm. This role will be part of their quite complicated—and
not entirely clarified—relation to the immortal part of human soul fashioned
by the Demiurge. The latter is said to have produced human intellects in the

17 For a succinct summary of this level of imitation (where complex construction takes
place of simplicity) see Sattler, “A time for learning and for counting—Egyptians, Greeks
and empirical processes in Plato’s Timaeus,” 253.

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Planets and Time: A Timaean Puzzle 105

same number as he had just produced the fixed stars, and then placed one
intellect on each star in order to parade them all around the universe—and
showing them the complex dance of the planets—while revealing to them the
laws of their incarnation and announcing to them that “he would sow each
of the souls into that instrument of time suitable to it” (εἰς τὰ προσήκοντα ἑκά-
σταις ἕκαστα ὄργανα χρόνων, 41e5). This “suitability” is left unexplained, but it
should imply that there are human beings on all the planets, and that the intel-
lects, once detached from bodies, return from these planets to those fixed stars
where they were placed before their first reincarnation on the planets. All in
all, there is a lot of soul-travelling in between the circles of the Same and the
Different.
These travels, however, belong to the souls’ preordained place in the uni-
verse and this place is entirely different from the souls’ epistemic relation to
the planets and the fixed stars: the incarnate intellects should construe such
a relation, by their own effort, in the guise of a homology between their own
original structure and, apparently, the global structure of celestial motions.
This last point follows from Timaeus’ statement that to subdue irrational mass
of our bodies means to handle ourselves in “conformity with the revolution
of the Same and uniform” within us (42d1–2), a statement to be read together
with the often quoted claim that more or less closes the first part of Timaeus’
speech:

the god invented sight and gave it to us so that we might observe the
orbits of the intellect in the heavens (τὰς ἐν οὐρανῷ τοῦ νοῦ κατιδόντες
περιόδους) while applying them (χρησαίμεθα) to the revolutions of our
own understanding (ἐπὶ τὰς περιφορὰς τὰς τῆς παρ᾽ ἡμῖν διανοήσεως). For
there is a kinship between them, even though our revolutions are dis-
turbed, whereas the universal orbits are undisturbed. So once we have
come to know them and to share in the ability to make correct calcu-
lations according to nature, we should stabilize the straying revolutions
in ourselves (τὰς ἐν ἡμῖν πεπλανημένας καταστησαίμεθα) by imitating the
revolutions of the god which are completely unstraying (μιμούμενοι τὰς
τοῦ θεοῦ πάντως ἀπλανεῖς οὔσας).
47b6–c4

This, just like the preceding lines about, again, days and nights and the art of
number, is less about the revolution of the Same than about the complex or-
bits of the planets (Timaeus speaks about “orbits” in the plural). Still, since the
“god” mentioned at 47c4 is clearly the universe, Timaeus brings all celestial
bodies together again, regardless of their different origin. Here, as elsewhere,

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106 Thein

Timaeus sticks to his premise of a complete structural homology of the world

soul on the one hand and the human intellect on the other hand (cf. 44d3–5 on
“the two divine orbits”—θείας περιόδους δύο—packed into “a ball-shaped body”
which is our head; see also 90c6–d5).
Now the question is what to make, philosophically, of this homology, where-
in the planets play a role which is epistemologically more complex than the
role of the fixed stars in the circle of the Same. Apparently, it is the planets that
give humans the initial nudge to search for the regularity beyond the constant-
ly changing phenomenal variety for which the fixed stars offer a slow-moving
background canvas—and the richness of this variety presents us with puzzles
left unsolved by both Timaeus and the ancient commentators on his speech.
This only underscores the difference between the two kinds of celestial beings
and their relation to human beings. The fixed stars truly are like us in being the
created likeness of the intelligible living model: they are like us from the per-
spective of similarly created artefacts. The planets, in contrast, only seem to be
like us in virtue of their apparent disorder which, however, should remind us of
something which is different from—and better than—our own disorganized
state caused by the shock of our seemingly contingent birth.
To sum up, Timaeus describes the planets from two strikingly different
angles: first as a brilliant invention of a true creator, but thereafter as a key
element in the providential arrangement of the visible universe in view of
the good terrestrial life. It is easy to find this second perspective congenial to
Aristotelian teleology (at least as seen by commentators such as Alexander;
cf. Simplicius In Aristotelis de cael. 421.7–33). But it is equally important to ac-
knowledge the first perspective as a rare instance where Plato positively evalu-
ates the phenomenal variety or poikilia and praises invention as such. In other
dialogues, the latter is usually reserved for politics as a realm of second best
options (the Republic, the Laws, and certainly the Statesman could all furnish
us with examples). At the same time, something similar happens here too:
the Demiurge deliberates while coping with various constraints and, in this
respect, the Timaeus exhibits obvious connections to practical philosophy.
This is why I gladly subscribe to the conclusions of Myles Burnyeat’s article on
eikōs mythos.18 But I also believe that the resulting universe is perhaps more
of a patchwork than Burnyeat’s reading implies and that it is difficult to see
Timaeus’ speech as a mirror of the discourse that establishes the best city in
the Republic. This is because the latter may actually have less to do with practi-
cal philosophy while the Timaeus may retain a stronger connection to natural
science than Burnyeat suggests. Timaeus’ speech needs to account for what is

18 Burnyeat, “Εἰκὼς μῦθος.” Cf. Betegh, “What Makes a Myth Εἰκώς?”

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Planets and Time: A Timaean Puzzle 107

experientially there, including planets that seem hard to tackle without bring-
ing in some reference to a human presence in the universe. About the planets,
Timaeus would then speak “plausibly” in much the same sense as Aristotle
does in De caelo II 12, when he imagines their different orbits analogically to
human activities. Both accounts are plausible in giving sense to a puzzling di-
versity, yet neither has the means to undo the puzzle by referring to an inde-
pendent observational verification.

1 Postscript: Timaeus’ Speech and Time

Timaeus unhesitatingly evokes the flow of time even before the celestial time
is there (or, in any case, as independent on the celestial time): see 36e4–5 on
the life of the world soul as continuing, unceasingly, “for all time” (πρὸς τὸν
σύμπαντα χρόνον). Here I wish to offer a few remarks on the implication of this
“all time” as expressing the flow of time; I will raise this issue concerning both
the world soul together with the created universe, and the latter’s unchanging,
everlasting model.
Timaeus’ “all time” seems to be essentially tenseless even if:
(1) It allows for the distinction between “before” and “after” (see 37a–c on
the world soul as pronouncing what it experiences in a clearly sequential
manner: this soul’s states cannot be simply interchangeable in respect of
the direction of time, if only because Timaeus describes them in proposi-
tional terms, i.e. as a veridical internal speech about the composite states
of affairs).
(2) It is time’s flow—rather than “time as number”—that gets divided into
the past, the present, and the future, with corresponding verbal tenses.
The expression pros ton sympanta chronon is therefore synonymous with dia
ton hapanta chronon which is predicated, at 38c2, of the universe, together
with the explanation that the latter “has been, is, and shall be for all time” (διὰ
τέλους τὸν ἅπαντα χρόνον γεγονώς τε καὶ ὢν καὶ ἐσόμενος, 38c2–3). It is therefore
legitimate to speak about the duration of the universe in time, whether it is
predicated of the world soul or of the universe as such. Note that this does
not answer the question of whether there is time in the sense of either dura-
tion or the flow of time in respect of what “is always changeless and motion-
less.” Regarding the latter, Timaeus says that it “cannot become either older or
younger in the course of time (διὰ χρόνου)” (38a3–4). But does he mean that
time may flow among eternal things but without them ageing (as they have no
date of birth), or does he mean that, among eternal things, time does not flow
at all? This ambiguity is left unexplained.

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108 Thein

By contrast, Timaeus clearly explains, at 38c3–6, that time as the number

expressed by the planets was created precisely as an instrument that enables
us to date events. Time as number therefore serves to impose some struc-
ture upon the flow of “all time”; it is not, however, constitutive of the latter.
Moreover, time as number cannot explain the language of the tenses analyzed
by Timaeus, no matter how loosely, at 38a8–b5. Briefly put, time as number
(imposed upon the flow of time) and the tensed language used about time
are not mutually explanatory. One of the results is that we do not know where
time’s directionality, which we observe on bodies and their behavior, and also
in our soul, comes from. In this respect, there would seem to be a lot more to
say than Timaeus actually says about the relation between time, the direction-
ality of time, and soul.19
The situation where time as number and the tensed language are not
conceptually unified but simply express different perspectives assumed by
Timaeus in his speech, is similar to the problem of how to translate the sequen-
tial idiom of “before” / “after” into the past, the present and the future tenses:
this is the problem associated nowadays with McTaggart.
McTaggart’s article “The Unreality of Time” (Mind n. s. 17, 1908, 457–74) deals
with two ways of conceptualizing time (which he finds incompatible):
A-series: employs past, present, and future as implying the changing sta-
tus of the states of affairs (so that the future states will become present and
then past).
B-series: an ordered and unchangeable sequence of the states of affairs (what
is “before” relatively to some “after” will always remain so and vice-versa).
Timaeus’ way of speaking would confirm the impossibility of an exact trans-
lation between these two idioms; moreover, neither is an exact expression of
“time as number” nor lets itself be translated into the latter’s structure.20
This limitation concerns the time of the world and in the world. There is,
however, yet another problem, related to the above-mentioned ambiguity con-
cerning the time’s flow outside the universe: the problem of the present as a

19 Indeed, Timaeus speaks about the flow of “all time” or about “all eternity” only there
where some thinking soul is present. Perhaps Timaeus comes close to the assumption,
pondered by Aristotle, that time requires soul. This, then, would take the mutual trans-
formations of elements (and thus the receptacle) out of time—or, at least, out of any
directional time. Whether it is truly so would depend on a detailed analysis of Timaean
account of the genesis of the four elements. For a suggestive analysis of this sort (without
a thematic focus on time) see Broadie, Nature and Divinity in Plato’s Timaeus, 173–242.
20 This is indirectly supported by the fact that the later Neoplatonic discussions of time,
which bring in the Parmenides, focus on the issue of temporal series including the (divi-
sive) status of the present and proceed quite independently of the structure of planetary
motions.

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Planets and Time: A Timaean Puzzle 109

tense, and also as the “eternal present.” On Timaeus’ account, there are things
about which only “is” can be legitimately predicated and this tense should only
be used about what (metaphysically) “is” in the eternal present.
Timaeus therefore uses “is” in a way which takes it away from the temporal
A-series, but still without implying that “is” should only refer to a truly time-
less present. This is because he describes the unchanging Forms outside the
universe as “intelligible living beings.” Speaking of these as a “paradigm which
has an eternal nature” (τὸ παράδειγμα τῆς διαιωνίας φύσεως, 38b8), Timaeus
comes indeed close to indicating some ongoing process. The peculiar adjective
diaiōnios (38b8 and 39e2) can be understood as “through all aiōn”: it designates
the same kind of ongoing activity which is implied in the description of aiōn as
staying/remaining (menontos) in unity (37d6).
There seems therefore to be an “eternal present” only in the sense of a spe-
cific temporality proper to something which actively sustains itself without
any local motion or change.
Hence probably Iamblichus’ idea that the unified and unmeasured aiōn is
a measure (metron) for the noetic realm (In Tim. fr. 64): the latter, while mo-
tionless, cannot lack some sort of activity (aiōn as not timelessness but an on-
going uninterrupted activity; this connects to fr. 62 and the rejection of the
Aristotelian connection between time and motion).21
In a similar vein, Proclus can claim that time in the sense of an unmeasured
unity (“monadic” time) is better and more divine than soul (see In Tim. III 3.29–
4.6; III 27.18–21), and is the same everywhere (III 57.15–27); Iamblichus and
Proclus elaborate upon Timaeus’ way of speaking about aiōn as itself diaiōnios
or stretching in its own time.
This way of speaking might seem to resemble what McTaggart introduces as
the C-series, of which he says that “it is not temporal, for it involves no change,
but only an order,” this order itself being not changeable (462). But the celes-
tial time as number could correspond to this C-series even better: indeed, for
McTaggart, only C-series in conjunction with change describable in terms of
“before” and “after” generates the B-series in the sense of both regular and tem-
poral pattern.
In Timaeus’ speech, this conjunction is realized through the making of plan-
ets and the numerical prescription of their orbits. But, again, there is no “num-
ber” that could connect this cosmic clock to the eternal now. Moreover, on

21 Cf. Simplicius, Corollaries on Place and Time 789.16–18: “Is time the number of the ear-
lier and later in motion rather than in rest? For likewise in the latter there is the earlier
and later.” See already Theophrastus’ objection to Aristotle’s account of the spheres: rest
would seem to be a better way of imitating eternity than motion (Metaphysics 5a23–28).

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110 Thein

both McTaggart’s and Timaeus’ account, this is still not enough to explain the
unchanging direction of the temporal flow (“time’s arrow”), which thus appears
to be an independent constant.
To sum up: Timaeus offers no instructions for how to map various tempo-
ral idioms on each other; an independent ontology (the Neoplatonic one, the
Hegelian one, etc.) will be needed to posit, more or less artificially, the transi-
tions between various senses of “time.”22

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