God's Relation to the Cosmos (De Mundo, Chapter 6)

Gábor Betegh Pavel Gregorić God’s Relation to the World (Chapter 6) Introduction Chapter 5 provides an account of the persistence and eternity of the cosmos. The cosmos is eternal, beautiful and supremely ordered thanks to a ‘single power pervading all things’ (396b28). However, the account in Chapter 5 is incomplete, lacking one crucial detail: it does not explain where this harmony and power comes from. This is the task of Chapter 6. It is only by introducing God in Chapter 6, and by explaining his causal role in the cosmos, that the author can fulfil the promise given at the end of Chapter 1 (391b3–5) of ‘theologizing’ about the cosmos and its main features. And, as our author points out at the beginning of Chapter 6, not only would an account of the cosmos be incomplete without saying something about God, who holds it all together, but it would in fact be morally reprehensible: ‘For in giving an account of the cosmos, if not in detail, at least sufficiently to convey an outline, it would be outrageous (πλημμελές) to omit that which is supreme in the cosmos’ (397b11–13). Chapter 6, the longest and the most elaborate chapter in the treatise, thus duly supplements the overview of the cosmos with a discussion of God. More precisely, it tells us what God is like by explaining his relation to the cosmos. This is what ‘theologizing’ about the cosmos and its main features, announced in Chapter 1 (391b3–5), amounts to. Neither the cosmos nor God can be fully understood without grasping the relation between them. And that relation, as we shall see, is elucidated analogically. By proceeding in this manner, the author adheres to the traditional view that the first principle can only be explained by means of analogy. However, he takes this method to a new level by offering a sequence of no less than twelve analogies. As we shall argue, this proliferation of analogies is not an extravagant rhetorical profusion, but an elaborate explanatory device that affords the reader a fuller grasp of God: the sequence is composed in such a way that one analogy corrects or supplements another, thus building a complex conception of God in the mind of the reader. The bulk of the present contribution—Part 2—will consist of discussions of the individual analogies and their organization. 1 This will enable us, in Part 3, to discuss the conception of God that emerges from the analogies. The conception is a distinctly Aristotelian one, we shall argue, with some interesting elaborations and additions. Before all that, in Part 1, we shall say something about the passage that precedes the first analogy (397b9–398a2) and provides us with the philosophical background of the author’s conception of God. It is in this introductory passage that the motivation behind the elaborate sequence of analogies is found. In certain parts of this contribution we rely on the results of our 2014 study. There are extensive overlaps between Section 1 of that paper and Part 2 of our contribution to this volume. 1 139 Part 1: How (not) to Think About God The introductory passage contains a number of doctrinal and linguistic points which deserve closer scrutiny. The first sentence informs us that something will be said, if only summarily, about ‘the sustaining cause of the wholes’ (ἡ τῶν ὅλων συνεκτικὴ αἰτία). Two elements of this phrase require explanation, the plural τὰ ὅλα and the adjective συνεκτικός. First, the plural τὰ ὅλα can hardly straightforwardly refer to the singular ‘world’ (Furley) or ‘universe’ (Thom, Maguire).2 Nor is it likely that it refers to a plurality of universes. It may be that the plural refers to individual objects, as suggested by Forster’s translation, ‘the cause which holds all things together’. The talk of seasons as ‘the beautiful creators of the wholes’ at 397a12 indeed suggests that the ‘wholes’ include natural and animate objects.3 However, for our author the ‘wholes’ seem to include also the macro-structures of the universe, as suggested by the following sentence at 396b23–4: ‘The same applies also for the system of the wholes, I mean of the heaven, earth and the entire universe.’4 Admittedly, the two ‘wholes’ contrasted here are the supralunary sphere, made of ether, in which no generation and corruption occurs, and the sublunary sphere with its concentric elemental spheres of fire, air, water and earth, where things come into existence and perish. It seems, therefore, that the cause under discussion holds together not only the entire universe, but also its constituent stable macro-structures organized in concentric spheres, the supralunary and the sublunary spheres, as well as the concentric elemental spheres of the latter, down to the individual objects of limited stability that populate the lower spheres. Perhaps we can say that the generality connoted by the grammatical plural indicates the universality and ubiquity of the effects produced by the sustaining cause, whereas the noun ‘whole’ emphasizes that these are determinate structures that are maintained by the sustaining cause. Second, all four English translations—Thom’s, Furley’s, Maguire’s and Forster’s— render συνεκτικὴ αἰτία as ‘the cause that holds together’, which is prudently neutral, insofar as this rendering does not signal that the term was part of the later Stoic technical vocabulary. Put very briefly, the Stoics distinguished two basic types of causes, namely causes of states (σχέσεις) and causes of changes (κινήσεις). Causes of the former type are called ‘sustaining causes’ (τὰ συνεκτικὰ αἰτία). A sustaining cause is adduced as an explanation of why something keeps on being what it is or persists in the state that it is. An important characteristic of this type of cause is that it is concurrent with its effect (in contrast with being antecedent to its effect, as in the case of causes of changes). As long as the cause of a state is present, the effect is present; when the cause is gone, the effect is gone. The most prominent sort of ‘sustaining cause’—or the sustaining cause ‘in the principal sense’ (κυρίως)—is the cause of an object’s existence.5 It is the necessary and sufficient condition for the ongoing existence of an object. Furley 1955: 385, Thom 2014: 43, Maguire 1939: 148. Cf. SVF 1.467 and 499. 4 Our translations of expressions and sentences from De mundo are indebted to Thom’s and Furley’s translations, but we hardly ever reproduce them without any modification. 5 Cf. Galen, Synopsis librorum de pulsibus 9.458 (Kühn). 2 3 140 In Stoic theory, there is a material substance that pervades the whole universe, mixes with passive matter and accounts, among other things, for the coherence (ἕξις) of objects and their persistence over time. Chrysippus took the ‘primary god’ (or perhaps ‘god in the primary sense’) to be the ‘purest part of ether’ which passes through all things and which is perceptible in the coherence that it gives to things.6 Posidonius is reported to have defined God as ‘the intelligent pneuma which pervades the whole of substance, that is earth, water, air, and heaven’.7 As Kidd writes, ‘although Posidonius is the only Stoic who is expressly named for this phraseology, the dogma that god was pneuma pervading the whole of substance was later applied to Stoics in general’.8 This is supported by the doxographic report that ‘the Stoics made god out to be (…) the pneuma pervading the whole world, which takes on different names owing to the alterations of the matter through which it passes’.9 Clearly, the Stoics would readily subscribe to the view that ‘everything is from God and constituted for us through God, since nothing is self-sufficient if deprived from his preserving influence’ (397b13–17), presented by the author of De mundo as the traditional view shared by all human beings. The stress on the traditional and ubiquitous character of this view is no doubt intended to show that it has a good claim to truth.10 And it is precisely this view, our author believes, that inspired the ancients to claim that ‘all things of this world are full of gods, all that are presented to us through our eyes and hearing and all the senses’ (397b17–19).11 However, the ancients who made this claim confused God with his power, according to our author. True, God is the creator (γενέτωρ) and the preserver (σωτήρ) of all things in this cosmos,12 but our author insists that he does not create and preserve things by himself being present in or among them: ‘He does not take upon himself the toil of a creature that works and labours itself, but uses an untiring power by means of which he controls even things that seem to be far away’ (397b23–5). This point is crucial. For our author, anyone—be they ancient sages like Thales or the Stoics—who takes the view that the divine is present and causally efficient in things by itself being present in them is fundamentally mistaken.13 God himself occupies only the most dignified position, the author insists, at ‘the highest and primary place’ (ἀνωτάτω καὶ πρώτην ἕδραν, 397b25), 14 and it is only his power that SVF 2.634. Posidonius fr. 100 (Edelstein-Kidd); cf. fr. 21. 8 I. G. Kidd (ed.), Posidonius: Fragments, Vol. 2, 408-409, followed by references. 9 SVF 2.1027, trans. Long and Sedley in LS 46A, slightly modified; cf. SVF 2.634, 1021, 1035, 1037. It is quite clear from 4.394b9–10 that our author is familiar with the Stoic concept of pneuma, for he finds it necessary to interrupt his discussion of pneuma in the ordinary sense of ‘wind’, in order to distinguish it from ‘the ensouled and generating substance in plants and animals and pervading all things’. It is interesting that the author calls pneuma ‘ensouled’, and then mentions plants first. According to the Stoics, pneuma in plants is only φύσις, the principle of growth, not ψυχή, the principle of perception and locomotion which only animals have. This might be intended as a signal of an important doctrinal difference between the Stoics and the Peripatetics: whereas the former do not ascribe soul to plants, the latter do. 10 Cf. Plato, Leg. 10.886A4–6; Aristotle, Cael. 1.3.270b5–9; Cicero, Nat. D. 2.12–15 (= LS 54C); cf. Strohm 1970: 334 and Thom 2014: 113. 11 This is most probably a reference to Thales, since Aristotle attributes the view that ‘everything is full of gods’ to him in De an. 1.5.411a8 (= fr. 11A22 DK). 12 In Chapter 5, it was the cosmos that was said to be the ‘sire of all things’ (ὁ πάντων γενετήρ, 397a4). 13 We are inclined to believe that the view which the author takes issue with is in fact Stoic, as scholars have observed, e.g. Zeller 1923: 660–1, Pohlenz 1948: 361, Strohm 1952: 160, Moraux 1984: 37–8. 14 The connection between the divine and the upper regions of the cosmos is, of course, part of a long tradition going back to Homer. Our author reminds us of that fact by adding in the following part of 397b25 that ‘God is 6 7 141 pervades all things. And although this power does not pervade all things equally, since its efficacy is proportional to the spatial distance from its source, it nevertheless does reach all the way down to the centre of the universe. So the earth and the things on the earth, being at the greatest distance from the help of God, seem to be weak and discordant and full of confusion and diversity; but nevertheless, in as far as the divine naturally penetrates to everything, even the things around us occur in the same way as the things above us, each having a greater or smaller share of God’s help in proportion to its distance from him. (397b30–398a1)15 We shall say more about God’s power and the way it operates in the world, but at this point we wish to bring the reader’s attention to the following. The view that our author advocates is thought to suit the facts of the observable universe: things become increasingly irregular and disorderly on the way down from the sphere of the fixed stars. However, perhaps the greatest support for this description of the causal role of God is that it is θεοπρεπές—it is appropriate for God to be related to the world in this way, whereas the opposite view is flawed because that which it attributes to God is not fitting to a divine being.16 It is better to suppose, what is also fitting and most appropriate to God, that the power based in the heavens (ἡ ἐν οὐρανῷ δύναμις ἱδρυμένη) is the cause of preservation even of the most remote things, as we may say, and indeed of everything, rather than that it carries out its tasks on earth by itself, penetrating and being present where it is not honourable or dignified that it should. (398a2–6)17 By referring to what is fitting and most appropriate to God (πρέπον καὶ θεῷ μάλιστα ἁρμόζον), our author is applying a type of argument prominent in Greek philosophical theology since Xenophanes (fr. B26 DK). In the rest of Chapter 6, our author wishes to convince the reader that what is appropriate is also perfectly possible: God can be causally operative in the world without being in it, that is without himself permeating the ‘wholes’. The primary purpose of the analogies that make up the remainder of Chapter 6 is precisely to show that this type of causation is indeed possible. Part 2: The Analogies Following these introductory remarks, the author presents twelve analogies, occasionally interspersed with learned poetic quotations elucidating particular points. At first sight, the analogies may appear to be a rhetorical extravagance, as if the author mindlessly ‘heaps called “supreme” for this reason, since according to the poet it is on “the loftiest crest” of the whole heaven that he dwells’, quoting the Iliad 1.499. We shall return to the question of God’s location in Part 3. 15 We follow Furley in omitting the second preposition ἐπί before τὰ καθ᾽ ἡμᾶς at b33 in Lorimer’s edition; cf. Bos 1991: 327. 16 This is also emphasized by Thom 2014: 114 with n. 33 and 119, and by Tzvetkova-Glaser 2014: 134, 136. 17 We agree with Furley ad loc. that ‘the power which is based on the heavens’ in this passage somewhat carelessly refers to God himself, not to the power from which he was emphatically distinguished in the preceding lines; cf. Thom 2014: 63 n. 94. 142 comparison on comparison’.18 However, he does far more. First of all, the analogies are clearly connected. They all illustrate the same fundamentally important fact concerning the cosmos, namely the way that God is causally efficient in the world. Since they all share this same goal, we can regard them as parts of a single multiple analogy. Second, this multiple analogy has a complex structure based on two types of relations among its parts. After the first analogy is introduced, each following one either emends a deficiency in the preceding one or expands upon it by adding ‘more of the same’, thus producing a cumulative effect. This requires some explanation. Suppose that phenomenon AB is explained analogically. In a multiple analogy, AB will be explained with at least two analogies, say CD and EF. Apart from being both related in a certain way to AB, CD and EF may or may not be significantly related to one another. For instance, the scales of fish (AB) can be compared to the feathers of birds (CD) and to the small armour plates of a medieval suit of scale armour (EF). In this example, CD and EF are not significantly related, since armour plates, in contrast with feathers, neither grow out of the knight’s body nor is their function to provide thermal protection. However, the last analogy with armour plates can thus be replaced with the fur of mammals, in which case CD and EF become closely related, since fur does grow out of the skin of mammals and provides thermal protection much as feathers do. In that case, EF can be called a ‘cumulative’ analogy, since it shares relevant features with CD in relation to AB. To elucidate the other relation which holds among the parts of the multiple analogy in Chapter 6, let us observe the following. In a multiple analogy in which AB is likened to CD and EF, EF can be introduced in order to rectify a deficiency in the relationship between CD and AB. There is no perfect analogy, of course, and a gap at a significant point in one analogy can be repaired extrinsically, by taking a step back from the analogy to explain the gap, but it can also be patched up intrinsically with another analogy. For instance, if one compares the scales of fish (AB) to the fur of mammals (CD), we may think that this analogy is imperfect in one crucial aspect, namely that the scales of fish are waterproof whereas fur is not. We may try to emend this by putting forward the analogy with roof shingles. In addition to being structurally similar to scales, roof shingles serve to protect the house from rain. The analogy with roof shingles, therefore, would be an ‘emendative’ analogy in this example. Cumulative analogies are useful because they make multiple analogies stronger. A larger number of analogies (e.g. the feathers of birds and the fur of mammals) with shared features relevant for illustrating the target phenomenon increase the inductive basis for inferences about the corresponding features in the target phenomenon (the scales of fish). Emendative analogies, on the other hand, are useful because they make a multiple analogy more refined and accurate. The cognitive force of analogies is so great that even if their imperfections are duly explained, they are nonetheless retained along with their misleading aspects, which often leads to oversimplification and misconception. 19 If, however, one uses a series of interlocking emendative analogies, the analogies are all retained together, preserving the way Van Nuffelen 2011: 136. As Dennett 2013: 4 puts it: ‘Mapping the features of one complex thing onto the features of another complex thing that you already (think you) understand is a famously powerful thinking tool, but it is so powerful that it often leads thinkers astray when their imaginations get captured by a treacherous analogy.’ 18 19 143 in which they complement one another, thus conveying a richer and more nuanced conception of the target domain they are introduced to explain.20 These introductory remarks should enable us to understand how the analogies in Chapter 6 are organized and to appreciate the author’s achievement. We shall now discuss each of the analogies in order of their appearance, indicating how it is related to the previous ones, and how it motivates, explicitly or implicitly, the following analogies. (i) The Great King of Persia The first and most elaborate analogy is that of the Great King of Persia.21 This analogy sets the stage for those that follow, captures the reader’s imagination, and invites him or her to draw the implicit parallels. More importantly, this analogy enables the author to convey quite forcefully the idea that God’s magnificence is incompatible with his direct presence in the world. Finally, the author will articulate a crucial gap in the analogy, and he will strengthen his case by introducing the next two analogies, which address precisely this gap. Things are said to be organized in Persia in such a way as to make the King appear supremely magnificent and exalted. The King resides in Susa or Ecbatana, invisible to all (παντὶ ἀόρατος, 398a14), in a splendid palace surrounded by walls shining with gold, electrum and ivory. Four points here deserve special attention. (a) Susa, and particularly Ecbatana, were places roughly in the geographic middle of the Persian Empire at its peak. This is notable because two other analogies will follow—(ix) the portrait of Phidias and (x) the keystone—in which the middle position of the item in the source domain will be contrasted with something in the target domain, namely God’s position at the periphery of the universe (400a5–19). (b) The Great King was invisible to all, just as God is invisible to all. In both cases invisibility seems to be a factor of magnificence. As Herodotus explains (1.99), the Persian King made himself invisible in order to create the impression of being distinguished from other people. The invisibility of God will come also figure in later parts of the text (cf. 399a31; 399b13; 399b22). (c) The King’s palace was said to be ‘surrounded by walls shining (ἀστράπτοντα) with gold, electrum and ivory’, which is clearly intended to evoke the heavenly sphere, not only For a more elaborate account, see Betegh and Gregorić 2014. Pender 2000, Chapter 4, draws attention to the way in which Plato uses multiple analogies in describing god or gods, and their relation to the world by providing detailed analyses of Criti. 109B–C, Plt. 269C–273E and Leg. 10.905B–907D. In our view, Pender rightly emphasises that in these cases the analogies neither replace each other nor simply have a cumulative effect, but help to build a complex conception of god, without any one of them becoming too dominant (see esp. p. 119). On the other hand, her general conclusion is that ‘[f]or the most part Plato uses these images not so much to gain or convey insight into the divine nature but to present more effectively various ideas and beliefs he already holds and has already stated about the gods’ (p. 148). This stands in contrast with the procedure of the author of De Mundo, who, as we shall try to show, uses the analogies precisely to convey an insight into the divine. This insight is not an addition to a view already conveyed by more abstract argumentative means, but one which paves the ground for philosophical elaboration. 21 This analogy was influential in post-Hellenistic times, see e.g. Philo of Alexandria, Somn. 1.140–1; Aelius Aristides, Rom. §§15–39, Maximus of Tyre, Or. 4.9 and 9.12 (the last is reproduced in Thom 2014: 201). For an extensive analysis of the uses and interpretations of analogies in the Post-Hellenistic period, see Van Nuffelen 2011, Chapters 5 and 6; the latter includes an analysis of the analogy in De mundo (pp. 133–8). See also Smith 2014: 122–3, 125. 20 144 visually, by conjuring up the twinkling of stars of slightly different colours, 22 but also etymologically and phonetically, as the Greek participle ἀστράπτοντα at 398a16 is likely to bring up the noun ἄστρα in the reader’s mind. (d) Herodotus 1.98 reports that Ecbatana had seven concentric circular walls, each interior one higher than the preceding one and painted in a different colour. No doubt these were originally meant to represent the orbits of the seven planets, much like the famed ‘Temple of the Seven Spheres’ in Borsippa (modern Birs Nimrud), represented in Figure 1. Figure 1: The Temple of the Seven Spheres in Borsippa After the description of the King’s palace comes a description of the socio-political organization of Persia. Of the most important and trusted persons, some were appointed as the King’s bodyguards and attendants, others as guardians of the city walls,23 which were called πυλωροί (‘gate-watchers’) and ὠτακουσταί (‘eavesdroppers’). This is probably a version of the report given in Herodotus 1.100 that the Great King had his spies—κατάσκοποι and κατήκοοι— everywhere in the Empire. With this in mind, we can understand the author’s conclusion at 398a23: ‘So that the King himself, who was called master and god, might see everything and hear everything.’ Moreover, there were people appointed as revenue officials, generals of war, captains of the hunt, receivers of gifts to the King, ‘and others, each responsible for administering a particular task, as need may be’ (398a25–6). The Empire was divided into nations under generals, satraps and kings—all of whom were slaves to the Great King—with couriers, spies, messengers and signal-officers. The author was particularly impressed by the signal-officers Compare the names and epithets of the planets in 2.392a23–9. It is not clear whether this refers to each of the seven walls of the King’s palace or to each city wall in the Empire. The latter seems to fit the intended conclusion better. 22 23 145 (φρυκτωριῶν ἐποπτῆρες, 398a31) who looked after a network of fire signals by means of which messages from the far ends of the Empire could quickly reach Susa or Ecbatana, ‘so that the King could learn the same day about all new events in Asia’ (398a34–5), and take action accordingly. With this elaborate organization of the Empire, explicitly called κόσμος at 398a32, the Great King was able to rule the Empire without appearing to supervise or execute any of the tasks. In other words, the Empire was set up in such a way that the Great King received all the important information and issued all the important commands without being seen by anyone, save perhaps his closest attendants. Before drawing a conclusion, the author pauses to reflect on a limitation presented by this analogy and to remind us that the source and the target of the analogy are in fact on very different scales. We must suppose, he says, that the Great King of Persia falls short of the magnificence of the God of the cosmos in the same way that the humblest and weakest creature in the Empire falls short of the magnificence of the Great King (398b3–4). Note that a deficiency in the initial analogy is here repaired by another analogy: in order to prevent the reader from associating God’s magnificence too closely with that of the Great King, the author says that the Great King—the paragon of dignity among mortal beings—is as far removed in magnificence from God as a humble creature (say a worm or a slug) is removed from the Great King himself. Having repaired the gap in the initial analogy, the author concludes: if it is undignified for the Great King to be seen as the actual supervisor and executor of the relevant tasks, this would be so much more unbecoming of God. ‘It is more dignified and more becoming for God to be based in the highest region and for his power, pervading the whole cosmos, to move the Sun and Moon and to turn the whole of the heavens, and to be the cause of preservation of things on earth’ (398b7–11). The main point of the first analogy, then, is to explain two things. First, that God can be causally operative in the world without himself pervading it—he can make things happen without himself being where they happen. Second, that this sort of causal efficiency is a true mark of divine nature and supreme magnificence. A possible origin of the first analogy is Aristotle’s comparison of an animal with a city well-governed by law in De motu animalium 10.703a29–b2. The main point Aristotle makes is that just as such a city does not need to have a monarch running around and attending to every affair, so does the animal not need a soul in every part of its body for that part’s function to be performed.24 Of course, there are two very different political orders in the background of the two analogies. Aristotle would find the political order of the Persian Empire repugnant, and there are reasons to think that the same holds for the author of De mundo. We shall suggest that the last analogy in the series, the one with the law of a city, may plausibly be interpreted as the author’s attempt to replace, in the reader’s mind, the oriental despotism of the first analogy with the rule of law, so that the very last analogy can be considered an emendation of the first analogy on the political level. And, needless to say, politics is not unimportant in this treatise, given that 24 For a detailed analysis of the analogy in De motu an. 10, see Gregorić 2020. See also Adamson 2015: 81–3. 146 it purports to be directed to an aspiring king, most likely to the person considered the greatest of all ancient kings, Alexander the Great.25 Be that as it may, the author articulates another important point at which the analogy between the Great King and God breaks down. What God does not require, in contrast with the Great King, is ‘contraption and support from others, as rulers on earth require a plurality of hands due to their weakness’ (398b10–12). The Great King’s rule relies on the proper functioning of his contraptions, e.g. on each link in the chain of his fire signals, and on a number of subjects who perform their tasks promptly and reliably. In particular, the Great King needs the aforementioned complex system of bodyguards, attendants, guardians, spies, signal officers, revenue officials, generals, captains of the hunt, receivers of gifts, and others in order to rule his Empire—and that is a mark of his weakness. God, by contrast, propagates his power in the universe with a single stroke, and that is a clear indication of his power. The most distinguished mark of the divine (τὸ θειότατον), so the author tells us, is to be able to produce very diverse effects ‘with ease and with a simple motion’ (μετὰ ῥᾳστώνης καὶ ἁπλῆς κινήσεως, 398b13). To illustrate this, the author introduces two further analogies: one with engineers, who set their gadgets in motion with a single release mechanism, and the other with puppeteers, who effect the harmonized motions of the various parts of their puppets by pulling on a single string. Hence, the following two analogies are clearly emendative in relation to the first. (ii) Engineers and (iii) Puppeteers Both of these analogies had often been put to philosophical use. Aristotle repeatedly refers to engineered automata to explain physiological processes, and puppets have been a philosophical commonplace at least from Plato onwards.26 What is common to these two types of device is that in both cases one simple movement by the operator is transformed into a set of complex motions. In the first case, once a triggering system is activated—for instance by opening a trap door and letting a weight fall which puts the mechanism in motion—the initial impetus is transmitted from axle to axle in a complex internal gear system. In the case of mechanical puppets, pulling on a single string causes the coordinated, complex movements of the puppet’s body parts.27 These two analogies are cumulative, then. They are closely related to one another in that they both describe mechanical devices which share the feature relevant for their role in the multiple analogy. One simple movement by the operator of these devices illustrates how God can operate the cosmos in an uncomplicated manner, by giving it a simple initial impetus— and without all the complications and contingencies that are involved in governing the Persian Empire. For possible political hints in De mundo, see the preceding contribution by P. Gregorić, p. 000 and 000. Plato: Resp. 514B and Leg. 644D, 804B. Aristotle: De motu an. 7.701b2–10, Gen. an. 2.1.734b9–18; cf. Ps.Aristotle, Mech. 848a34–7. For an informative discussion of the way in which these devices are used in analogies, see Berryman 2003: 344–69, Henry 2005, Gregorić and Kuhar 2014. 27 The mechanical puppets in question should not be confused with marionettes, in the case of which different body parts are moved by different strings. Furley 1955: 390–1 n. a and Thom 2014: 117 think that the author here speaks of the catapults, but Strohm 1970: 340 gives a convincing argument against this view, endorsed by Reale and Bos 1995: 330–1; cf. Lorimer 1925: 61–3. 25 26 147 Of course, one is likely to wonder how such a simple operation, which triggers a mechanical chain reaction, can result in the enormous variety of things in this world manifesting such hugely different patterns of behaviour. The author wants to show that this is so because each thing moves in accordance with its own constitution, and their trajectories are not the same but different, and in some cases even opposite, because of the differences in their character. This is why they all react differently to the same triggering cause.28 To illustrate this point, the author introduces yet another pair of emendative analogies. (iv) Thrown Geometric Solids and (v) Released Animals The first is the analogy of geometric solids: if one puts a sphere, a cube, a cone, and a cylinder into a pitcher29 and casts them all out at once, each one moves in accordance with its particular shape. Hence, a single act of throwing can produce motions of different magnitude and direction determined by the characteristic shapes of the objects. This analogy is reminiscent of Chrysippus’ famous example of the distinction between a proximate and a primary cause with reference to a cylinder and a cone.30 The cylinder needs a push to set it rolling in a straight line, and that is the proximate and antecedent cause; but what then keeps it rolling is its shape or nature, which is the perfect and primary cause of its rolling. By contrast, the cone rolls in a circle due to its characteristic shape or nature. The second analogy in this pair involves animals: if one puts a fish, a land animal and a bird in one’s cloak, and then throws them all out at the same time, each one will move differently in the direction of its natural habitat; ‘a single first cause gave them all the ability to move with ease in their proper ways’ (398b35–399a1). There are discussions about the source of this particular analogy, about whether it originates from the same source as the preceding one.31 Not wishing to speculate on this point, we can say that the two analogies are cumulative, for they share the effective feature: in both cases it is the nature of the moving thing that determines the path of its motion. Following the initial impulse, a diversity of natures produce a variety of effects. And both are emendative analogies in relation to the former pair, since (iv) and (v) elucidate precisely what (ii) and (iii) could not—the variety of effects that follow from an initial impetus. So the purpose of (iv) and (v) is to show that a single motion at the beginning of a causal chain may well produce a great variety of effects—depending on the specific nature of the things put into motion. ‘Likewise with the universe,’—our author spells it out— ‘by means of a simple revolution of the whole heaven completed in a day and a night, the different paths of all are produced’ (399a1–4). We take it that the ‘simple revolution of the whole heaven’ refers to the apparent diurnal revolution of the celestial sphere. Also, we take it that the ‘different paths of all’ produced by the simple revolution of the whole heaven are the apparent motions of the planets, primarily along the ecliptic, though the mention of lunar phases suggests that more than the annual motion along the ecliptic is meant. The single triggering cause is likened, en passant, to the opening keynote (ἔνδοσις) at 398b26–7, which gives a signal and the pitch for the orchestra. This may be a subtle foreshadowing of the analogy of the chorus leader (vi). 29 ἄγγους codd. Lor. Bekk.: ὄρους Z: αἴπους Furley. 30 In Cicero’s Fat. 41–3 (= SVF 2.974, LS 62C) and Gellius’ NA 7.2.6–13 (= SVF 2.1000, LS 62D). 31 Lorimer 1925: 63–5; cf. Maguire 1939: 151–2 and Duhot 1990: 207–11. 28 148 Although they are all embraced by a single sphere—the sphere of the fixed stars—some planets move faster, others slower, ‘according to the size of their distances and their proper constitutions’ (παρά τε τὰ τῶν διαστημάτων μήκη καὶ τὰς ἰδίας ἑκάστων κατασκευάς, 399a5).32 The Moon completes its orbit in a month, waxing, waning, and finally disappearing during the phase we call a ‘new moon’. Since the period of the Moon is shortest, it is the fastest of the planets. Also, the fact that it undergoes phases suggests a particular constitution (κατασκευή). The Sun completes its orbit in a year, and so do its ‘co-runners’ (ἰσόδρομοι), Venus and Mercury. Mars completes its orbit in two years (= ‘twice that of the Sun and its co-runners’), Jupiter in twelve years (= ‘six times that of Mars’), and Saturn in thirty years (= ‘two and a half times that of Jupiter’).33 The mention of heavenly motions, however, immediately indicates a deficiency in the last pair of analogies, that is in analogies (iv) and (v). No doubt various geometrical solids and different animals move differently when thrown out of a vessel or freed from a cloak; yet there is nothing coordinated or harmonious in the resulting motions. Celestial bodies, on the other hand, move in a supremely orderly and well-orchestrated way. The diverse motions of the planets are not only dictated by the single motion of the sphere of the fixed stars, but they are attuned so as to create harmony—another sense in which this world is a κόσμος. The next analogy, that of the chorus leader, throws into sharp relief this aspect of divine causation, hence we consider it to be another emendative analogy, although the author himself does not introduce it as such. That is, he does not introduce it following a formulation of the disanalogy contained in (iv) and (v), but rather presents it as a cumulative analogy following his observation at 399a12–14 that ‘the single harmony that is produced by all these <viz. celestial bodies> as they sing and dance in a chorus round the heavens springs from one and ends in one, giving the whole in a true sense the name of order (κόσμος)’. (vi) The Chorus Leader The chorus analogy in reference to the cosmos, known from as early as Plato’s Timaeus, had already made its appearance at the very first mention of the celestial gods and their movements in Chapter 2 (391b17–18), and it may have been subtly hinted at by the earlier comparison with an opening keynote at 398b26–7.34 However, this time the chorus leader is in the spotlight. Moreover, whereas in Chapter 2 one would think that only the coordinated movements of the dancers create the basis for the analogy, here the other, the auditory, aspect is developed as well: the members of the chorus not only move, but sing, too. The text strongly suggests that the It is not entirely Aristotelian to speak of the ‘proper constitution’ (ἡ ἰδία κατασκευή) of the heavenly bodies, since Aristotle assumes that all heavenly bodies have the same uniform constitution. One might suggest that the author has in mind the arrangement of the concentric spheres peculiar for each planet, which would be then in line with Aristotle’s doctrine, but there is no evidence of that doctrine in De mundo. Besides, the word κατασκευή is used two more times in this Chapter (398b24 and 399a30) and elsewhere specifically in the sense of the internal constitution of individual things. 33 The planets are listed in reverse order to that in 2.392a19–31. In both cases, the author reproduces the ‘Pythagorean’ order that we find in Plato, Eudoxus, Aristotle and Eratosthenes, as opposed to the so-called ‘Chaldean’ order in which Venus and Mercury are found between the Moon and the Sun. The periods listed are those of Eudoxus; cf. Appendix B in Lorimer 1925 and Cumont 1935. 34 See n. 28 above. The analogy with the chorus leader is found also in Onatas, De deo 139.8 (reproduced in Thom 2014: 202–3). 32 149 author subscribes to the doctrine of the harmony of the heavenly spheres.35 In this way, the focus on the singing of the chorus members is not a mere illicit accretion from the analogy. Rather, it is an example of the way in which analogies can reveal ever newer facets of the phenomena they are meant to describe. The more precise the analogy, the more rhetorically powerful it is, but also the more philosophically penetrating it becomes. Furthermore, in accordance with what we have learnt in Chapter 5 (and parts of Chapter 6) about opposites and the coordinated functioning of different natures, we now come to appreciate also the characteristic differences among the members of the chorus, in terms of their vocal range and, sometimes, gender. Harmony, as the author explained in great detail in the previous chapter, is created out of opposites. In accordance with this view, the heavenly diapason is now explained as emerging from the variety of individual and generic natures possessing contrasting acoustic characteristics. These generic natures or individual constitutions,36 coupled with the differences in distances from the centre of the universe, result in differences in angular speed and pitch. Although there is surprisingly little ancient evidence about the chorus leader’s role, the gestures and other methods by means of which he or she conducted the chorus,37 there is one aspect of the figure of the coryphaeus that is certainly worth noting in the present context. The role of the chorus leader is very often taken by God: it is God himself who leads the choreutai in the dance and hymn in his praise.38 Conversely, the human chorus leader is sometimes taken to represent God. 39 Moreover, the dance lead by God could sometimes take on cosmic dimensions. Indeed, Sophocles, in the fifth stasimon of the Antigone, comes very close to the image we find in De mundo when he represents Dionysus as the chorus leader of the firebreathing stars (ἰὼ πῦρ πνεόντων | χοράγ᾽ ἄστρων, 1146–7). According to the description given by the author of De mundo, the heavenly bodies, each in its own way, directly heed the signs given by the divine chorus leader, whereas the lower-level meteorological and geological phenomena are the mechanical effects of the movements of the heavenly bodies. Night and day and the seasons are defined and delimited by the movement of the sun, and the flooding of rivers and the growth and decay of organisms ‘follow upon’ (ἕπονται, 399a29) these meteorological phenomena. Thus, when the author says at 399a26 that all these things occur ‘of the first and original cause’ (διὰ τὴν πρώτην καὶ ἀρχέγονον40 αἰτίαν), we must understand this to mean that divine signalling is the proximate cause of the motions of the heavenly bodies, and the ultimate, non-proximate cause of the lower level phenomena. If this interpretation is correct, it seems at first sight that the author used the older eight-note celestial harmony scheme (7 planets + the sphere of the fixed stars) that is attributed to the Pythagoreans in Aristotle’s De caelo 2.12.290b12ff and in Eratosthenes’ Hermes. This scheme is to be distinguished from the later versions of the doctrine, which use only 7 tones (cf. Burkert 1972: 351–2). On the other hand, our text does not discuss the harmony of the spheres per se, but rather of the celestial bodies. Such a view would create obvious difficulties in the case of the fixed stars—we would simply have too many notes. Perhaps the fixed stars collectively emit a single note. 36 See below p. 000 and n. 32 above. 37 For an overview and analysis of the evidence, see Wilson 2000, especially at 134. 38 Cf. also Plato, Leg. 665A, 653D–654A: Apollo, the Muses and Dionysus as συγχορευτάς τε καὶ χορηγούς. 39 Cf., e.g., Xenophon of Ephesus, Ephesian Tale 1.2.2 on Anthia, the fourteen-year-old beauty who lead the chorus at the local festival in Ephesus and who was revered by locals as Artemis herself (cf. Wilson 2000: 349 n. 23). 40 Retaining the emendation of Wendland and Wilamowitz, followed by Lorimer and Furley. 35 150 The specifics of this causal chain can, moreover, give some further indication regarding the more general problem of the causal role of the divine dunamis in the natural world. It seems that when the author says at 397b30ff that the efficiency of the divine dunamis is inversely proportional to the distance from the heaven (see above p. 000), he does not simply mean physical distance. Hence, it is not so much that this dunamis gradually diminishes in the same way as physical waves do the further they travel; distance from the source refers also, or even primarily, to the number and nature of intermediaries in the causal chain. Observe that the same applies to the power of the Great King as well. As the hierarchy of power descends through ever more subjects, who are in turn in charge of lower subjects, the power of the Great King diminishes. The subjects at the bottom of the hierarchy, remote from the Great King, are more likely to forget their place and go astray, than the subjects closer to the Great King. Having spelled out the analogy with the chorus leader—identifying him with God, and the chorus with the regular motions of the heavenly bodies and the synchronized changes in the sublunary sphere—the author indicates a gap: ‘When the leader and generator of all things, invisible except by reason, gives the sign to every moving thing between heaven and earth…’ The point at which the analogy breaks down is that the chorus leader is very much present and visible to both the members of the chorus as well as the audience, which is contrasted with the invisibility of God. This is what the next analogy is meant to emend. (vii) The Army Alarm Much like the divine chorus leader who ‘gives the sign (σημήνῃ) to every moving thing between heaven and earth’ (399a32), the trumpet ‘gives a sign (σημήνῃ) to the army’ (399b3). In both cases the sign has to be understood by those to whom it is directed in order to produce the intended effect. Unless the sound of the trumpet is interpreted by the troops as an alarm signal, it is not going to set them into motion. What makes this an emendative analogy in relation to the preceding one is that the army alarm—the sound of the trumpet—is a purely auditory signal, and the trumpeter remains invisible for the majority of troops.41 Though invisible, the army alarm creates a large number of diverse motions: as soldiers hear the sound, ‘one picks up his shield, another puts on his breast-plate, and still another attaches his greaves or helmet or belt; one harnesses his horse, one mounts his chariot, one passes on the password...’ (399b4–7). The remark at 399a31 that God is ‘invisible except by reason’ (ἀόρατος ὢν ἄλλῳ πλὴν λογισμῷ) reminds us of Chapter 1, where the method and proper subject matter of philosophy was defined as observing divine things not with the body, but ‘with the divine eye of the soul’ (θείῳ ψυχῆς ὄμματι, 391a15). With this remark in mind, we can push the army alarm analogy further to arrive at a completely different image of signalling than what either the chorus leader or the army alarm analogy could convey. The divine signalling, expressed by the verb σημαίνειν, can only be received by intellectually focusing on the source of the signal. Perhaps there is even no active emission of any particular signal—indeed we shall shortly read that the divine does not admit of any change—but the recipient grasps the message simply by intellectually focusing on God; it is by Remember that invisibility was a distinguishing mark also of the Great King, who was said to be ‘invisible to all’ (παντὶ ἀόρατος, 398a14). 41 151 this means that God governs the recipient’s behaviour. This image will then be reinforced by the very last analogy in which the causal role of God is likened to the way a city is governed by law. If the main idea of this admittedly strong interpretation is correct, then we are getting very close to the Aristotelian description of the way the Unmoved Mover moves the celestial intellects. At any rate, all of this strongly suggests, even if the author does not make it explicit, that the heavenly bodies, or their spheres, i.e. the primary recipients of divine signs, are intelligent. Needless to say, Aristotle himself is less than explicit on the question of whether the heavenly bodies are ensouled and have intellects, as is the author of De mundo. The analogy can also be pushed in a different direction as well. The army alarm can be interpreted as an execution of the general’s intention or plan. From this perspective, the army alarm analogy is a means of conveying the author’s ideas regarding the manner in which God exerts his influence on physical processes in the cosmos. We can say that the trumpeter corresponds to the outer sphere, the general to God, 42 and the sound of the trumpet to the physical influence of the outer sphere on all the lower celestial movements. It is not entirely obvious, however, in which direction or how far the interpretation of the army alarm analogy should in fact be pushed. Strictly speaking, the formulation does not go further than demonstrating that something invisible (though audible)—if understood correctly—can produce a variety of visible, far-reaching, and momentous effects. In doing so, it is clearly an emendative analogy in relation to the preceding chorus leader analogy. Although the alarm signal analogy does patch up the problem presented by the visibility of the chorus leader rather nicely, it remains far from perfect. One deficiency is that the alarm signal remains audible, whereas God is entirely imperceptible. Another deficiency is that the alarm signal occurs on occasion, as needed, and it serves only to set troops in motion, ceasing well before they take their battle stations. By contrast, God’s causal efficiency is continuous. We think that both of these deficiencies are emended by the next analogy, though it is not explicitly presented as such, but as a further confirmation of the army alarm analogy. ‘This is how one should think also about the cosmos,’ the author concludes his elaboration on the army alarm analogy, ‘by a single impulse all things are stirred to action and perform their proper functions, though this impulse is invisible and imperceptible (ἀόρατος καὶ ἀφανής)’ (399b10– 13). (viii) The Soul The soul is an excellent example of an entity which is entirely imperceptible yet whose causal efficiency is beyond doubt. The author points out that it is ultimately due to our soul, invisible in itself (ἀόρατος οὖσα), that we produce visible and tangible constructions such as whole cities. Both the army alarm and the soul are ‘invisible’ things which cause a variety of visible effects, but only the soul is entirely imperceptible, and in that respect closer to God, whom it is supposed to illuminate. This is one reason to consider the soul analogy an emendative one. It is implicit in the army alarm analogy that the various motions stirred up by the sound of the trumpet are orderly, since things need to be done according to a well-defined plan, involving a great deal of coordination and teamwork, in order to have the entire army ready 42 Of course, this is a well-known comparison from Aristotle’s Metaph. 12.10.1075a12–15. 152 within minutes. Interestingly, in his explication of the army alarm analogy the author does not draw attention to this. He does not do this, we suggest, precisely because that is the job relegated to the explication of the soul analogy. The wording ὁ τοῦ βίου διάκοσμος at 399b16 is an evident indication that the ordering function of the soul, and not merely its causal efficacy, is regarded as parallel with the properly diacosmic function of God. It is by stressing this ordering, structuring, diacosmic function of both God and the soul that we arrive at a full-blown microcosmos-macrocosmos analogy.43 Drawing the analogy between the individual soul and the ultimate causal principle of the cosmos has a long tradition, of course. If Anaximenes’ fragment B2 is authentic—if not in its wording then at least in its tenor—this image is present already at the very beginning of the tradition.44 The familiar analogy between the World Soul and the individual rational souls in the Timaeus is chronologically closer to our text, with an obvious difference: the World Soul in the Platonic formulation is not the ultimate causal source of order in the cosmos. There is a point, however, where the analogies employed by Anaximenes and Plato go further, stating that the essence or ‘stuff’ of the individual soul and the governing principle of the cosmos are the same, i.e., air in the case of Anaximenes, and the mixture of Being, Same, and Different in the Timaeus. It is remarkable that the author of De mundo remains at the functional level of the microcosmos-macrocosmos analogy. He only states that God functions at the cosmic level by producing purposeful actions as the soul does in, and for, the individual organism and the community to which the individual belongs, without suggesting that in essence or substance God is like the soul or the intellect. The orderly structure of human life (βίου διάκοσμος) is said to be ‘discovered, arranged and sustained’ (εὕρηται καὶ διατέτακται καὶ συνέχεται, 399b17) by the soul. ‘The ploughing and sowing of land, the inventions of art, the use of laws, the order of a city’s government, the activities of people in their own country, and war and peace with foreign nations’—all depend on the soul. Unlike the army alarm, whose function is only to initiate a complex series of motions according to a well-defined plan, the range of the soul’s causal efficacy is evidently much wider. The soul is responsible not only for initiating individual and collective human projects, but also for their execution and much more besides: for discovering the means necessary to make effective plans, for considering, comparing and finalizing them, for overseeing and modifying them in the course of their implementation, etc. This is another reason for considering the soul analogy emendative in relation to the army alarm analogy: the soul does not only initiate activities, but keeps them going, directs them, plans them, organizes them, etc. (ix) The Keystone and (x) the Portrait of Phidias As we have noted earlier, the army alarm analogy has certain advantages over the chorus leader analogy concerning the perceptual properties of the causal source, but it does have one obvious drawback: it implies temporal discontinuity. The sound of the trumpet bursts out in a sudden, momentary act, and it triggers a rapid succession of activities. As such, it may correspond to Cf. Lloyd 1966: 252–3. Aetius 1.3.4 = fr. 13B2 DK: οἶον ἡ ψυχή, φησίν, ἡ ἡμετέρα ἀὴρ οὖσα συγκρατεῖ ἡμᾶς, καὶ ὅλον τὸν κόσμον πνεῦμα καὶ ἀὴρ περιέχει. 43 44 153 the description of God as a γενέτωρ (397b21, 399a31), but not as a σωτήρ (397b20, 401a24), or in more technical language, as the συνεκτικὴ αἰτία (397b9). That is, God is not only responsible for initiating many different motions, but also for the continued maintenance of a stable world order. The analogy of the soul, as we have seen, repairs that oversight. The role of the sustaining cause is clearly present in the soul analogy,45 yet the author does not isolate it from the other roles of the soul. The soul’s role as the sustaining cause is firmly established only with the next two analogies. This may be because the perceptible effects of the soul, various and continuous though they are, are relatively short-lived, dependent on the soul’s connection with the body, and thus limited to the lifespan of an individual.46 It is for this reason, we suggest, that the author moves on from the analogy of the soul and introduces analogies with things whose sustaining role is as evident as their duration in that role is lasting. Hence, we would be inclined to regard the next two analogies as emendative in relation to the soul analogy. The first of these two is the analogy of the keystone (399b29–33). As long as the keystone is in place, the structure remains stable; once the keystone is removed, the whole structure collapses. The second analogy which stresses the function of God as a maintaining principle is that of Phidias’ portrait (399b33–400a3). Phidias built the statue of Athena holding a shield on the Acropolis. One of the figures on the shield allegedly bore his face, and Phidias made it a part of a mechanism that functioned in such a way that any damage inflicted on this figure would cause the whole statue to collapse. These two analogies are mutually related to one another as cumulative analogies, since they both feature inanimate things which, due to their special position in larger structures, exert a mechanical influence without which the whole construction would immediately crumble. Again, the author hastens to identify gaps in the analogies. As opposed to Phidias’ portrait, which was said to be in the middle of the statue,47 and indeed also in opposition to a keystone that occupies the centre of an arch (οἱ μέσοι κείμενοι 399b30–1), God is not in the middle, but—as the author now emphasizes—at the extremity of the spherical universe; the centre is occupied by the turbulent region of the earth (400a5ff). The salient feature shared by these last two analogies—i.e. the stability of the cause—and their common misleading aspect— Observe that the soul was explicitly said at 399b17 to be the means by which the structure of human life is ‘sustained’ (συνέχεται). The fact that the author speaks of the soul in connection with human life does not imply, of course, that other living beings have no soul; cf. 4.394b9–10 and n. 9 above. 46 This may be an indication that the author adhered to the Aristotelian view that the soul is mortal. It should be noted, however, that the perceptible effects of the soul having a limited lifespan does not necessarily imply that the soul itself has a limited lifespan. 47 This position of Phidias’ portrait is contradicted by other ancient descriptions of Athena’s shield. Some of the surviving accounts of the ornaments and scenes on the shield contain important details about the depiction of the fight between Greeks and the Amazons (e.g. Pliny HN 36.18 and Pausanias 1.17.2.). Some other sources, most notably Plutarch (Pericles 31), mention also that, among the Greeks portrayed fighting the Amazons, a bald ageing figure lifting a stone with both hands is the depiction of Phidias himself, and a man raising a spear is supposed to portray Pericles. Yet—and this is the most interesting part—it seems fairly certain from these accounts that the middle of the shield was occupied by the head of a Gorgon, and the two fighters purportedly representing Phidias and Pericles were located at the upper or more likely lower extremity of the shield. Indeed, this is what we see on the so-called ‘Strangford shield’, which is customarily taken to be a copy of Athena’s shield. Incidentally, Mansfeld 1991: 541–4 points out that the apparently mistaken position of Phidias’ portrait is a further argument against attributing De mundo to Aristotle. It is highly unlikely, says Mansfeld, that Aristotle, having spent so many years in Athens, could be so gravely mistaken about the position of the portrait and forget the Gorgon head. For a response, see Reale and Bos 1995: 170–1. 45 154 i.e. the spatial localization of the cause—turn out to be connected. It is not appropriate for a changeless god to dwell in the tumultuous centre of the cosmos, but in the pure and changeless heavenly region at the periphery of the cosmos. The point about God’s location is further supported by the beliefs and practices shared between the Greeks and other peoples; all agree that God is to be found in the highest, most distant regions. This passage, by the way, finds a close parallel in Aristotle’s De caelo 1.3, where God’s location at the periphery of the cosmos, which is unalterable, is brought into conjunction with (and supported by an appeal to) traditional wisdom and common religious practices.48 Another gap is that the keystone and the portrait are inanimate things that maintain the stability of lifeless and inactive objects through mere mechanical influence. They do not bring about complex, coordinated actions as the Great King, the chorus leader or the army general do, but they simply hold together, or prevent the destruction of, static, non-dynamic structures. Indeed, at 399b29 the author explicitly states the limitation of the key stone analogy by excusing himself for the humble comparison of God with something inanimate. Having duly noted this limitation of analogies that make use of inanimate items, the author immediately reverts to analogies with human agents: ‘In a word, then, as the helmsman in a ship, as the charioteer in a chariot, as the leader in a chorus, as the lawgiver in a city,49 as the commander in an army, so is God in the cosmos…’ (400b6–9). (xi) The Group of Animate Analogues To emend the problem resulting from the inanimate nature of the items used in the two preceding analogies, the author provides a group of five analogies, each featuring a living human being that govern other creatures or things: the helmsman, the charioteer, the chorus leader, the lawgiver, and the military commander. Here we once again meet several figures from the earlier analogies, such as the chorus leader and the military commander. It may also be suggested that the lawgiver is meant to take the place of the Great King from the first analogy, thus indicating not only the author’s preference of the rule of law over oriental despotism, but also paving the way for the final analogy—the analogy of the law. In any case, the helmsman in his ship and the charioteer in his chariot are new images. Obviously, both of these have a distinguished history in the philosophical tradition as paradigms of agents who are, and who ought to be, in command.50 At this point we wish to call attention to three things. 48 As Lloyd 1966: 258–9 observes: ‘The connection between the heavenly regions and divinity is a constant feature of Aristotle’s theology. He often refers to religious beliefs shared, he says, by Greeks and barbarians alike, according to which the heavenly bodies are gods and the heaven itself (the ‘uppermost region’) is divine.’ 49 All the mss. have ἐν πόλει δὲ νόμος, which is emended to νομοθέτης by Lorimer, followed by Furley and Strohm. Lorimer 1925: 114–19 convincingly defends his emendation. Briefly, the emendation is justified because the author will continue by drawing a contrast between this group of analogies and the analogy of the law of a city. This would obviously not work had the law of a city already been included in this set of analogies. The point of contrast, i.e. that the act of commanding in the first group is wearisome, would just as obviously be inapplicable to the law. Also, the corruption is easy to explain in view of the prominence of the law analogy at the end of Chapter 6. Besides, the analogy of the lawgiver (νομοθέτης) is found also in Maximus of Tyre, Or. 4.9. 50 Helmsman: Plato, Plt. 272E4, 273C3, E1, Symp. 187A1, 197B2, E1, Ti. 42E3, Criti. 109C1–4, Leg. 4.709B8– C2, 10.905E8, 906E1; Aristotle, De an. 2.1.413a8–9. Charioteer: Plato, Leg. 10.905E7. Commander: Plato, Leg. 10.905E9. Chorus: Plato, Phdr. 246E–247A. Law-giver: Plato, Ti. 42E2–5, Criti. 121B7–8. For further references, see Lorimer 1925: 115–17. 155 First, some analogies in this group appear together in Plato. The charioteer, the military commander, and the chorus leader are mentioned together in a memorable passage from Plato’s Phaedrus (246E–247A) as illustrations for Zeus, the chief god. Similarly, gods are compared to charioteers, helmsmen and military commanders, among other things, in a single passage in Plato’s Laws 10.905E.51 Second, these analogies are of the same kind as the analogy of the Great King; they depict individuals who command other human beings, or at any rate, in the case of the charioteer, other living beings. Third, this group of analogies seems open-ended in the sense that there might be other instances of the same sort of commanding or guiding function of authority, e.g. doctor, farmer and herdsman, as in Plato’s Laws 10.905E. We would be inclined, therefore, to regard this group as a list of slightly different animate source domains thrown in without much elaboration, primarily for rhetorical effect, with the aim of emending the identified gap in the preceding two analogies with inanimate items. The author’s choice of analogies was probably inspired by Plato and may have been intended as a learned reference to Plato. (xii) The Law of the City As opposed to the inanimate analogues, but in line with the animate analogues, the law governs the behaviour of human beings, i.e. it coordinates the goal-directed activities of all members of a political community. On the other hand, in line with the inanimate analogues, but as opposed to the animate analogues, the law—like God—achieves all this without any internal change, activity, and possibly tiresome care and effort. Although the analogy of the law is less widespread, it is worth noting that it was one of the main devices by which Themistius in his paraphrase of Aristotle’s Metaphysics Book 12 explains how God causes motion in the cosmos.52 The aponia of God is of course a bona fide Aristotelian doctrine, shared by Epicureans and some Platonists as well. We find an emphatic mention of it in the closing page of Aristotle’s Physics (8.10.267b2–3): ‘Thus we have a mover that has no need to change along with that which it moves but will be able to cause motion always; for the causing motion under these conditions involves no effort.’53 Providing a possibly even closer parallel, the aponia of the divine is mentioned in De caelo 2.1, where it is also connected with the location of the divine and supported by traditional views. Considering the dialectical position of De mundo, it should be observed that in later Peripatetic tradition, claims about the trouble-free existence of the cosmic god are often connected with a direct criticism of the immanence of the Stoic god. For instance, according to Alexander of Aphrodisias, it is surely unworthy (anaxia) of our conception of God that by pervading the whole cosmos God also directly occupies himself with the creation and maintenance of the all kinds of petty creatures.54 On this set of analogies, see Pender 2000: 140–7. According to the Latin version: Deus enim res movet ut lex (34.33–4 Landauer). Cf. 24.1–13, 29.11–28, and Sharples 2001: 11 n. 48. Interestingly, Themistius goes on to compare the causal role of God to the king’s commands. 53 Translation by Hardie and Gaye, revised by Barnes in The Complete Works of Aristotle, Vol. 1 (Princeton, 1984), 446. 54 Alexander, De mixtione 11, 226.24–30 with Mantissa 113.13–14 (Bruns); cf. also Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus 5.66.3–4. On the aponia arguments, see the careful analysis in Bénatouïl 2009. 51 52 156 Furthermore, although it may be carved in stone, the law itself is imperceptible. As our author says, it is established ‘in the souls of those who observe it’ (ἐν ταῖς τῶν χρωμένων ψυχαῖς, 400b14). The analogy of the law thus incorporates the intelligible, non-perceptible nature of God that the author referred to earlier in the chapter (ἀόρατος ὢν ἄλλῳ πλὴν λογισμῷ, 399a31, with our remarks above, p. 000), first in the case of the army signal and later, the soul (399b11– 19). The invisible law affects our lives by being present in our invisible souls which govern and sustain the structure of human lives (ὁ τοῦ βίου διάκοσμος, 399b16). With the final analogy, the author also returns to the same theme he used to introduce the account of the dynamic interplay of opposites at the beginning of the previous chapter: in response to those who wonder how such a beautifully ordered, stable, and well-functioning cosmos can be constituted of opposites, he cited the example of the city. As he explained there, the most wonderful feature of a city is precisely that it is composed of people with opposing moral characters, physical endowments, social status, genders, and age differences (5.396b1– 4). At that point, however, the author evoked the image of a city merely in order to show that such a functional and stable structure can be achieved despite being constituted of opposites— it however remains unexplained what brings about such a marvellous unity in the city, just as it remains unexplained what brings about the consent and equality of opposites in the cosmos. The explanation is presented with the final analogy. It is the law that guarantees that all have a well-defined function and carry out that function in an orderly way, thereby creating a genuine community and a stable functional unity out of the different and opposing characters of the city. And with this, the author can now drive the point home: ‘So we must suppose about that greater city, the cosmos: God is an evenly-balanced law to us’ (400b27–9). If we try to extract the cosmo-theological doctrine that is supposed to be conveyed by this part of the analogy, the resulting idea is that God governs the behaviour of those who mind him by being in their souls. This makes perfect sense in an Aristotelian context: God determines the conduct of the heavenly bodies by being contemplated and desired by the heavenly intellects. This contemplation and desire are manifested in the eternal circular motion which causes meteorological phenomena and periodic changes in the sublunary sphere, thus ‘all things come into being and grow strong and perish, obedient to the laws of God’ (401a9–10). The final analogy, therefore, seems to point to a new type of causation. Namely, all the analogies involving human agents were examples of efficient causation; or, to use a different causal taxonomy, the human agents acted as triggering causes. Then, in the analogy of the soul and, more importantly, in the analogies of the keystone and Phidias’ portrait, we were presented with examples of sustaining causes. No doubt the law operates as a sustaining cause of the city,55 but the fact that it is said to be ‘in the souls of those who observe it’, as an intentional object of thought, clearly points in the direction of the Aristotelian doctrine of God as a final cause.56 Insofar as the law analogy implies final causation, but also insofar as it contrasts the rule of law with the oriental despotism incorporated in the opening analogy with the Great King Cf. Stobaeus 4.1.144: ‘The orator Demosthenes said that the laws were the soul of the state: “Just as the body dies when bereft of the soul, so too the city perishes when there are no laws.”’ 56 Although final causation is certainly not prominent in this treatise, we would not agree with Moraux 1984: 47 and Duhot 1990: 215 and 224 that the author of this treatise is ignorant of final causation, or for that matter, that ‘the noetic nature of God is equally absent from the treatise’, as Duhot puts it. See also Smith 2014: 129. 55 157 of Persia, it is clearly an emendative analogy. However, the law analogy is also cumulative in that it reinforces the relevant aspects of the source domains of all the preceding analogies, namely invisibility and imperceptibility (i, vii, viii), having varied effects (iv, v, vi, vii), yet effects which are coordinated (vi, vii), being an object of intellectual focus (vi, vii), and perhaps also being a single thing (ii, iii). Thus the final analogy masterfully wraps up the whole multiple analogy in Chapter 6: just as the law is related to a city, so is God related to ‘that greater city, the cosmos’ (400b28).57 Instead of a summary, here is a diagram of this large multiple analogy, listing its parts in their order of appearance and specifying the relationships among them.58 The reader can learn more about the analogy between the city and the cosmos, in conjunction with the soul and the household, in Adamson 2015. These four terms, Adamson claims (2015: 79), form ‘one of the most widespread and persistent metaphors of philosophical antiquity’. 58 One might object that we have read more into the text than the author had intended, since in most cases he does not make an explicit connection between one analogy and the next. It is true that explicit remarks to that effect are few, but it is reasonable to suppose that the author refrained from adding more of them for stylistic reasons, since such remarks tend to be disruptive and tedious for the reader. We believe that two or three such remarks provide sufficient clues to the author’s general strategy. 57 158 Figure 2: Synopsis of analogies in De mundo 6 159 Part 3: God and his Power With this one elaborate multiple analogy, the author has gradually built a complex conception of God which will remain in the mind of his readers. This complex conception no doubt features some central peripatetic ideas about God and the universe: that God is imperceptible, immaterial, unchanging and eternal, that he is an object of thought, that he is at the periphery of the spherical and eternal universe, that he is a final as well as an efficient cause whose simple input to the first heaven is mediated down to the centre of the universe with increasing variation and irregularity. This conception, constructed by means of the multiple analogy, shows not only that it is possible for God to have these features, but also that it is appropriate for him to have them, as these features secure God’s superiority and dignity. With this conception planted firmly in their minds, the more talented among the text’s readers should have the resources to deal with more advanced philosophical texts. It is customary to call the God of De mundo ‘transcendent’.59 This characterisation may or may not be apt, depending on what one means by ‘transcendent’. If it suffices for this qualification that something is of ‘a higher order’ and ‘incomparably superior to other things’,60 then this description surely applies to the God of De mundo. Not only is God incomparably more powerful and magnificent than the most powerful and magnificent of human beings, the Great King, God is also far superior to the heavenly bodies, the celestial gods, as he is also the cause of their existence and the guarantor of their eternal motions. It seems, however, that the commentators oftentimes mean something more when they ascribe transcendence to the God of De mundo. For, in contrasting the author’s conception with Stoic immanentism, they tend to assimilate it to Aristotle’s characterisation of the (first) Unmoved Mover. This, however, might be unwarranted. In some passages Aristotle suggests that the divine and ultimate causal origin of the world is not a spatiotemporal entity, nor is it part of the physical cosmos. In De caelo 1.9.279a16–22, he states that there is neither place, nor void, nor again time outside (ἔξω) the heavens, and therefore those that are beyond the heavens are neither in place nor in time, neither are they subject to any kind of change and thus live the best and most self-sufficient lives, not subject to any alteration. Similarly, in De motu animalium 4.699b32–700a2, Aristotle considers that the ultimate origin of motion should be outside (ἔξω) and not part of what is moved. In Metaphysics 12.7.1073a3–5, he emphasises that it is separate from perceptible things (κεχωρισμένη τῶν αἰσθητῶν), and the analogy with the army and its general in 12.10.1075a11–15 stresses the fact that God is ‘something which is itself separate by itself’ (κεχωρισμένον τι καὶ αὐτὸ καθ’ αὑτό). If these are the features that make the Aristotelian Unmoved Mover transcendent, the same, it seems, cannot be said of the God of De mundo. The text does not contain any statement to the effect that God is separate from, or outside of, the cosmos. To be sure, God is not subject to any kind of gloom, disorderly motion, or bodily weakness (παντὸς ζόφου καὶ ἀτάκτου 59 Capelle 1907: 34, Moraux 1984: 40, Reale and Bos 1995: 71, Festugière 1949: 477, Bodéüs 2000: 33, Thom 2014: 107 with n. 2. 60 Cf. R. Audi, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1999), s.v. ‘transcendence’: ‘in philosophy, the property of being, in some way, of a higher order. A being, such as God, may be said to be transcendent in the sense of being not merely superior, but incomparably superior, to other things, in any sort of perfection.’ 160 κινήματος κεχωρισμένον, 400a8–9; καὶ πάσης κεχωρισμένον σωματικῆς ἀσθενείας, 400b11– 12). These characterisations, however, do not amount to the more complete separation we find in Aristotle, since they can be fully satisfied by God’s simply not being part of the sublunary world. Consistent with this, the author of De mundo explicitly places God in the heavens. Indications to this effect abound. He says that God is to be found ‘dwelling at the uppermost place’ (τήν μὲν οὖν ἀνωτάτω καὶ πρώτην ἕδραν αὐτὸς ἔλαχεν, 397b24–30; ἐπὶ τῆς ἀνωτάτω χώρας ἱδρῦσθαι, 398b7–10), and identifies this place with the heavens and Mount Olympus (400a3–10). More importantly, he explicitly points out that God is at the same place where the heavenly bodies are (διὸ καὶ τῶν αἰσθητῶν τὰ τιμιώτατα τὸν αὐτὸν ἐπέχει τόπον, ἄστρα τε καὶ ἥλιος καὶ σελήνη, 400a20–1)—indeed the heavenly bodies can retain their orderliness and unchanging nature precisely because they share their location with God.61 It appears, therefore, that although the author vehemently argues against the Stoic conception that God is present in the whole of the cosmos, he does not want to commit himself to the more radical view that God is completely outside of the cosmos.62 The author is also at pains to show that his view on the location of God is fully consistent with traditional ideas. To this effect, he evokes Homeric verses in which Gods are said to dwell on Mount Olympus, untroubled by meteorological disturbances (Od. 6.42–5 at 400a12–14), and Zeus is allotted the heavens and the sphere of ether (Il. 15.192 at 400a18). Similarly, he refers to the alleged fact that all peoples raise their hands towards the sky in prayer (400a16–17). This insistence would make little sense had his conception departed from these traditional ideas by placing God outside of the heavens. At one point, however, the author makes a further claim about the location of God. God, he says, is the causal origin of every motion and of the revolution of the heavens by himself being ‘located in the unmoved’ (ἐν ἀκινήτῳ γὰρ ἱδρυμένος πάντα κινεῖ καὶ περιάγει, 400b12– 13). By this, the author appears to agree with Aristotle’s contention that the Unmoved Mover is not moved even accidentally, i.e. in the way the soul is moved accidentally when the animal which it is the form of moves.63 This localisation of God, however, seems to be in contrast with the passages we have just considered in so far as the heavens are indeed moving in a uniform, eternal revolution. This difficulty admits of different solutions. Perhaps the most straightforward one is that ἀκίνητος simply refers to the eternal immutability of the heavens. This is supported by the second part of the sentence, which draws a comparison with the immobility of the law of the city, implanted in the souls of the citizens (ὁ τῆς πόλεως νόμος ἀκίνητος ὢν ἐν ταῖς τῶν χρωμένων ψυχαῖς κτλ.). Another solution would consist in finding an immobile position within the cosmos, drawing on an earlier part of the text: While the whole heaven and cosmos are spherical and moving continuously, as I have said, there are necessarily two unmoved points (ἀκίνητα σημεῖα) opposite one another, just as in the case of In a similar vein, the author states at 398b20–3 that God sets into motion that which is closest to him (εἰς τὰ συνεχῆ), once again implying a definite spatial location of God. He also states that even though his power penetrates every part of the world, the closer something is to God, the more it profits from his beneficial effects (397b34–398a1). 62 Cf. Besnier 2003: 479, who writes: ‘Contrary to what has sometimes been claimed, the sublimity of divine causality and the distinction between its power, which penetrates all parts of the universe, and its essence, by virtue of which it is spared of the vicissitudes of the universe (397b13–20), does not mean that the author thereby wanted to oppose the “purely immanent” Stoic conception of the cosmological activity of the divine with a view that could be described exactly as “transcendent”’. 63 Cf. Aristotle, Ph. 8.6.259b22ff. 61 161 a sphere being turned in a lathe; they remain fixed, holding the sphere together, and the whole mass revolves in a circle around them; these are called poles. (2.391b19–25) Admittedly, the idea that God is positioned at one of the immobile poles must remain highly speculative—even if such a solution would be in line with Aristotle’s contention that the Unmoved Mover is not extended. The author’s own remark that the stable poles hold the sphere of the cosmos together (συνέχοντα τὴν σφαῖραν) would offer an appropriate location for a god, the συνεκτικὴ αἰτία, and could make this solution even more intriguing.64 Let us now turn to the relation between God and his dunamis. Some commentators suppose that this relationship should be fleshed out in terms of some more complex metaphysical doctrine, even if the author fails to make that doctrine explicit. 65 There is, however, no need to assume any such deeper metaphysical view. It is entirely conceivable that the divine dunamis is nothing over and above the vast and uninterrupted causal chain by means of which God’s primary impetus is transmitted from the sphere of the fixed stars down through all the cosmos, down to the earthly realm. God is directly responsible for maintaining the constant, regular motion of the first heaven. Then, as the author explains at 399a18–30, the motion of the first heaven causes the motion of the other planets, including the Sun, while the motion of the Sun defines the alternation of day and night as well as the cycles of seasons. These cause atmospheric phenomena such as wind and rain, which in turn cause geological phenomena such as earthquakes, the emergence of rivers and tides, followed by biological phenomena such as the growth of trees and the birth of animals.66 There seems to be nothing more to ‘the divine power pervading all things’ than this transmission of motion and change throughout a well-ordered universe. Returning to the analogy of the Great King, one may conclude that his power is nothing other than the special social and political organization that maintains the interrupted chain of command from the Great King himself to a very small number of his most trusted advisers and then further on to the gradually expanding circles of officers and administrators, supported by a special infrastructure, notably the network of firesignals which enables the quick transmission of vital information from every corner of the empire to the Great King himself. Yet, if God is operative in the sublunary sphere in only such an indirect, mediated way, can he be legitimately be called the sustaining cause and preserver (σωτήρ, 397b20) of all? By providing an unceasing impetus to the first heaven, and by guaranteeing that the heavenly bodies maintain their orderly arrangement and are exempt from any alteration and decay (400a22–4), he keeps the lower spheres turning, which in turn enables individual things in the There is some evidence that Eudemus might have placed the Unmoved Mover at the poles. According to Simplicius, Eudemus erred when he claimed that ‘of the sphere the place around the poles moves swiftest’ (In Phys. 1355.35f. = fr. 122b Wehrli), probably responding to Aristotle’s claim that the Unmoved Mover is located where the motion caused by it is swiftest (Phys. 8.10.267b7–9). For a discussion, see Bodnár 2002: 183–6. Aristotle argues against the view that the sphere should be moved by the two poles in De motu an. 5, on the basis that a single motion cannot be caused by two poles. The localisation of the Unmoved Mover was widely discussed in the Peripatetic tradition. Some authors, such as Alexander (Simpl., In Phys. 1354.20, 1355.18–22) put the unmoved mover at the outer surface of the celestial sphere. 65 Cf. e.g. the disparaging remarks by Moraux: ‘Whether the δύναμις somehow emanates from the οὐσία or represents some sort of a subordinate hypostasis, whether it is different from the real οὐσία or identical with it, while it is only from a human point of view that it can be regarded as a special aspect of god’s being, the author of De mundo does not tell and obviously has not given it any thought.’ 66 Cf. also our remarks pp. 000 above and the preceding contribution on Chapter 5 by Gregorić, pp. 000. 64 162 sublunary sphere to come into existence, to act, and then to perish. If he ceased to provide the impetus to the first heaven and to maintain its immutability, everything would stop, individual things would perish, and no new thing would be generated. This is what it means that nothing is self-sufficient (αὐτάρκης, 397b16) by itself, without God. But, once again, if God is operative in the world only in such an indirect way, can he legitimately be called ‘sire’ or ‘generator’ (γενετήρ, 397b21; γενέτωρ 399a31)? Of course, he can be the generator only of those things that are generated, that is of the transient things in the sublunary sphere. And he can be legitimately called the generator of such things precisely because he is the ultimate cause of their generation. This, however, does not mean that God would be the generator of the whole universe and every large-scale structure in it. He cannot be the creator of the five elements and their organization in the successive concentric spheres; the elements and these structures must be as eternal as God himself. After all, the author claims that all phenomena in the air, on the earth or in the water are produced by God (399b23–5)—but not that the air, the earth, or the water were themselves produced by God. There is, however, one curious passage that might suggest a somewhat different image. At 400b1–6, the author relates an anecdote which is supposed to show that the race of the pious is especially honoured by the divinity. When Etna erupted and the flow of lava almost reached Amphion and his brother carrying their ageing parents on their shoulders, the hot stream of magma forked around them, thus saving the good brothers and their parents. In its tone and character, this anecdote appears somewhat unrelated to the text. To be sure, various parts of the treatise have emphasized the teleological arrangement and functioning of the entire cosmos, down to the sphere of apparently random and catastrophic meteorological and geological events. This story, however, seems to go further and appears to suggest that God is not merely aware of the deeds and dealings of individual humans, but that he sometimes also providentially intervenes in their lives directly, by reaching down and interfering with the natural course of events. This interpretation of the anecdote should nonetheless be resisted. The splitting of the lava should not be considered a disruption of the natural chain of causes and effects, a ‘miracle’ effected by God.67 Rather, it should be seen as a further striking example of the general rule that natural events, fully explainable in terms of antecedent mechanical causes and ultimately going back to the revolution of the first heavens, may result in beneficial and providential outcomes. The stream of lava did not fork and diverge because of the direct action of God’s invisible hand, but because of the elevations and depressions in the mountainside, previously caused by natural geological processes. Yet, it is noteworthy that, even on the basis of this interpretation, the author seems to attribute some kind of providential care and attention to God in the sublunary sphere as well. This conception stands in contrast to a distinguished tradition within Peripatetic philosophy which attributes to Aristotle the view that God’s providence is restricted to the heavenly sphere.68 It might be that the author of De Mundo is in this instance Note, incidentally, that this is the only place in the text where God is called τὸ δαιμόνιον. For a succinct statement of the view, see Epiphanius, De fide 9.35–9 (GCS vol. 3 p. 508.6–8 Holl and Dummer = DG 592.9–20 = Critolaus fr. 15 Wehrli.: ‘He said that there are two principles, god and matter, and that the things above the moon are objects of divine providence, but the things below the moon exist without providence and are borne along in some irrational way as chance has it’ (trans. Sharples). On the ‘No Sublunary Providence’ tradition in Peripatetic philosophy, see Sharples 2001: 22. On De mundo’s attempt to introduce sublunary providence into a basically Peripatetic framework, see Gottschalk 1987: 1139. 67 68 163 making an attempt to mitigate the force of the criticism levelled against Aristotle and the Peripatetics on account of their denial of divine providence either generally or more specifically in the sublunary realm. For according to some, such as the 2nd-century CE Platonist Atticus, if the Aristotelians claim that God has no concern for earthly affairs, then divine providence makes no difference for us—hence, as far as we are concerned, the Aristotelian god is just like the Epicurean gods. 69 According to the interpretation that we are proposing, albeit very tentatively, the author of the De Mundo is suggesting that God can, and does, have an effect on our lives, even without his direct presence and involvement. The causal chain reaches down to the earthly level, and can, even without ‘special treatment’, lead to outcomes favouring the worthy. Admittedly, the anecdote is still not easy to fit into the general framework put forth in the previous sections, and one that does not find close analogues in the Peripatetic tradition. Notwithstanding the story of the splitting stream of lava, the conception of God developed in De mundo, taken at face value, is recognizably Aristotelian. It is developed without the heavy-duty Aristotelian theoretical machinery (e.g. the doctrine of the four causes, potential and actual being, the types of motion, substance, etc.), which means that this conception of God is not restricted to the Aristotelian paradigm and available only to dyed-inthe-wool Peripatetics. Not only is this conception available to any thinking person, then, but the author of De mundo has shown it to be, by way of exquisite analogical reasoning, plausible and eminently pious. The fact that this conception makes God so much more magnificent and dignified is what ultimately recommends it over the Stoic conception of a God mixed in with the world.70 A Note on the Quotations in Chapter 6 De mundo is written in very ornate and learned prose. Its literary character reaches its peak in Chapters 6 and 7, appropriate to the topic of these chapters, where a high number of allusions and quotations display the author’s erudition.71 In the previous pages, we referenced a variety of literary and historical allusions, and now we should say a few words about the author’s use of quotations in Chapter 6. There are a total of twelve quotations in De mundo. Only three of these are found outside of Chapter 6: in Chapter 5 we find a quotation from Heraclitus (fr. B10 DK [396b20–2]), and in Chapter 7 we find the Orphic Hymn to Zeus (fr. 31 Bernabé = fr. 21 Kern [401a27–b7]) and a passage patched together from Plato’s Laws at the very end (715E-716A, 730C [401b24–9]). While the other parts of the treatise do not contain any quotations from Homer, six of them are found scattered in this single chapter (1.499=5.754=7.3 [397b26]; 15.192 [400a19]; Od. 5.64 [401a4]; 6.42–5 [400a10–14]; 7.115=11.589 [401a7]; 7.116=11.590 [401a1–2]). In addition, the author cites two verses from the beginning of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex (verses 4–5 [400b25– 69 Atticus fr. 3, 52–7, 71–4 and 81–5 (des Places). Cf. Happ 1968: 79–80. Cf., once again, Sharples 2001. Sharples discusses the place of the De Mundo in the Peripatetic tradition, and in particular in relation to the ‘No Sublunary Providence’ principle, but he does not mention the lava anecdote. 70 For possible influence of De mundo, with its portrayal of God, on St. Paul, in particular on Romans 1:16–32, see Thom 2012, Thom 2015 and du Toit 2015. These two papers by Thom are also interesting for discussing De mundo in the context of popular philosophy in the Hellenistic period. 71 Helpful analyses of the language and style of De mundo are provided by Schenkeveld 1991 and Chandler 2014. 164 6]), three verses from Empedocles (fr. B21 DK, verses 9–11 [399b25–8]), and an otherwise unattested saying from Heraclitus (fr. B11 DK [401a10–11]). Whereas all the cited philosophers are named, the verses quoted from Homer and Sophocles are introduced by the formulaic construction ‘as the poet says’ (κατὰ τὸν ποιητήν; τὸ τοῦ ποιήσαντος; καὶ ὁ ποιητής; ὥς φησιν ὁ ποιητής), in which the noun ὁ ποιητής is reserved for Homer.72 The quotations, moreover, become especially dense towards the end of Chapter 6, thus marking the crescendo of the text by this means as well, leading up to the final chapter. The specific verses picked by the author are fairly well-known,73 but are not simple stock illustrations. With one exception, the quotations are used in a straightforward manner, insofar as the literary meaning of the poetic text is adduced in order to illustrate a point directly. For instance, the joint quotations from Od. 7.115=11.589, 7.116=11.590 and Od 5.64 contain enumerations of plants and fruits, emphasising their abundance and pleasantness. In the epics, these verses describe especially enviable circumstances, such as on the land of the Phaeacians, or the immensely desirable, but unattainable, fruits surrounding Tantalus. In De mundo, they do not refer to some mythic land of exceptional abundance, but serve rather as cumulative examples of the tremendous richness and plentifulness of living beings in the world surrounding us, issuing from, and under the command, of God. Although they turn up at different sections of the chapter, the two remaining clusters of quotations from Homer refer to the dwelling place of God. As we suggested in Part 3 of our contribution, these literary references are adduced in order to show that the author’s conception of God is fully in accord with traditional and widely accepted wisdom. The only non-straightforward use of Homeric verses comes at 400a7–11, prefacing Od. 6.42–5, a passage that speaks about the undisturbed stability and fastness of Mount Olympus. In this context, the author seems to identify the heavens (οὐρανός) and Olympus, and advances a pair of (para)etymologies in which he analyzes ‘ouranos’ as the uppermost boundary (οὐρανὸν μὲν ἀπὸ τοῦ ὅρον εἶναι τὸν ἄνω) and derives ‘Olympus’ from the rare adjective ὁλολαμπής, ‘shining all over’. It is unclear whether these etymologies are the author’s own. At any rate, Schol. D ad Il. 1.18; Schol. D ad Il. 1.353, 3–6 show familiarity with the latter one, and it receives a more extensive treatment by Eustathius (ad Hom. Il. 1.44, 25–33).74 There are a few remarkable features of the quotation from Empedocles. In line with the (near) consensus of the previous editors of Empedocles, the quotation was identified as verses 9–11 of fr. B21, quoted more fully by Simplicius (In Phys. 159.13–26). More precisely, the author of De mundo was supposed to follow Aristotle’s textual variant. Aristotle quotes four verses of Empedocles in Metaphysics 3.4.1000a29–32, the last three of which are identical to verses 10–12 as we have them in Simplicius, whereas there is a slight variation between the first verse in Aristotle and verse 9 in Simplicius. In Aristotle, the text reads as ἐξ ὧν πάνθ’ ὅσα Sanz Morales 1993: 44–7 argues that the authors of the classical period, including Aristotle in his genuine works, used the noun ὁ ποιητής to refer to any poet, whereas in the Hellenistic age it came to be used specifically for Homer. Another argument added by Sanz Morales for the inauthenticity of De mundo on account of a later date of its composition (pp. 43–4) is that the quoted Homeric verses show no divergence from the vulgate text of Homer established in Alexandria in the Hellenistic period. Of 102 Homeric quotations in Aristotle’s genuine works, by contrast, 35 show divergence. 73 With one exception, they are discussed in Ps.Plutarch’s essay De Homero, dated with some plausibility to the end of the 2nd century C.E. by Lamberton in Keaney and Lamberton 1996. 74 Cf. Piano 2013. 72 165 τ’ ἦν ὅσα τ’ ἔστ’ ὅσα τ’ ἔσται ὀπίσσω, as compared to Simplicius’ ἐκ τούτων γὰρ πάνθ’ ὅσα τ’ ἦν ὅσα τ’ ἐστὶ καὶ ἔσται. In view of the identity of the last three verses, and the very close correspondence in the first verse, previous editors of Empedocles agreed that Aristotle and Simplicius were quoting from the same part of Empedocles’s poem, and accordingly tried to establish Empedocles’ text by deciding between the two versions of the first verse or by coming up with a combination of the two. In these circumstances, the fact that the quotation in De mundo is identical to Aristotle’s version at the point where it departs from Simplicius’ could be granted special significance. For if one accepted that Aristotle had an irregular variant of the text, and De mundo had a quote from the same variant, one could easily draw the conclusion that De mundo was directly or indirectly relying on Aristotle’s own text in Metaphysics 3.4. This already complicated situation has become subject to a further twist with the publication of the Strasbourg Empedocles papyrus. The fragments preserved in lines a(i)8a(i)9-a(ii)1-a(ii)2 of the papyrus, identified now as verses 269–72 of Empedocles’ poem by Oliver Primavesi,75 have not only confirmed Aristotle’s version, including the disputed ending of the first verse, but have shown that, despite the correspondences, the more extensive quotation of Simplicius comes from a different part of Empedocles’ original.76 This turn of events has loosened the connection between Aristotle’s text and De mundo. Given that both of them quote Empedocles’ original version, it is fully conceivable that the author of De mundo does not rely on Aristotle, but takes his material either directly from Empedocles or from some intermediate source. There are nonetheless some considerations that make it probable that the author of De mundo was indeed using Aristotle. First, there is a textual point. At the end of line a(i)8, the papyrus has ἔσσετ᾽, most probably preserving Empedocles’ original, whereas both Aristotle and De mundo quote ἔσται. It is just as important to note that both Aristotle and De mundo shift, it seems, the original focus of these verses. For, in all likelihood, the ἐξ ὧν at the beginning of the first verse refers to the four roots,77 expressing the view that all the diverse plant and animal species are composed of the limited set of the four elements. In opposition to this, both Aristotle and the author of De mundo wants to use these verses not quite in line with the Empedoclean context, that is, to show that there is still a single generative principle that has created all this splendid variety. In this part of his text, Aristotle objects to Empedocles’ inconsistency by pointing out that Strife is not only a principle of destruction, but it is that same Strife which creates all the things out of the four roots with the sole exception of Sphairos: ἅπαντα γὰρ ἐκ τούτου τἆλλά ἐστι πλὴν ὁ θεός (1000a28–9).78 The author of De mundo uses the quotation in a similar manner, once again not quite in line with the Empedoclean context, to illustrate the variety of living beings stemming from the single cosmic God. He even leaves out the reference to the four elements from the beginning of the first verse (ἐξ ὧν) and prefaces his quotation with the same preposition and with a singular pronoun: ‘from whom (ἐξ οὗ), according to Empedocles the natural philosopher’. The context we actually find in Empedocles would hardly Primavesi 2008. Cf. Martin and Primavesi 1999: 175–8; 77 See also the discussion in Primavesi 2008: 16–17. 78 For a detailed analysis of the discussion of Empedocles, see Wildberg 2009: 168–72. 75 76 166 encourage these verses to be used in such a manner.79 On the other hand, the way Aristotle quotes the same verses could very much pave the way for such an interpretation. The passage thus does suggest familiarity with Aristotle’s text after all. The series of aporiai in Metaphysics Book 3 where the Empedocles quotation occurs might appear an unlikely source text for our author, especially according to the view of those interpreters who think that he lacks any philosophical sophistication or deeper metaphysical interest. However, on closer consideration, this series of aporiai, with their focus on the unity of the principle, whether numerical or generic (e.g. aporia 9), and with their ways of mapping the philosophical elaboration of this question onto the discussion of the poets’ myths about the multiplicity of gods as sources of beings (aporia 10, containing the Empedocles quotation), is perfectly germane to the author’s topic. Indeed, it could be a sign, however faint, that the author was indeed interested in the subtleties of Aristotelian metaphysics and a theory of principles. Similarly, the author disregards the original context of the verses from Sophocles’ OT quoted at 400b25–6. Galzerano 2019 argues that the quotation in fact ‘subverts the original context in such a disruptive way’ that Aristotle, who knew the play very well, would never have used it in such a manner. It is more likely, Galzerano concludes, that the author took the verses ‘from a collection of maxims (or considered them as a proverb) without knowing their original context’. 79 167