Timaeus
Book by PlatoWikipedia
224
MENTIONS
76
EPISODES
51
PODCASTS
Search complete. 224 mentions across 76 episodes found for "Timaeus".
Sep 12, 2026
speaker_5HOST
We really do.
speaker_4HOST
First, we're looking at the foundational texts, right? The original writings of the Greek philosopher Plato, specifically his dialogues Timaeus and Critias.
speaker_5HOST
Written around 360 BC.
speaker_4HOST
Yep, 360 BC.
speaker_7ADVERTISER
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John BurlinsonNARRATOR
Timaeus, of less repute than himself, it is true, but of great sagacity and daring.
John BurlinsonNARRATOR
This man persuaded Andocides to turn state's evidence against himself and a few others.
John BurlinsonNARRATOR
If he confessed, so the man argued, he would have immunity from punishment by decree of the people; whereas the result of the trial, while uncertain in all cases, was most to be dreaded in that of influential men like himself.
John BurlinsonNARRATOR
It was better to save his life by a false confession of crime than to die a shameful death under a false charge of that crime.
John BurlinsonNARRATOR
One who had an eye to the general welfare of the community might well abandon to their fate a few dubious characters, if he could thereby save a multitude of good men from the wrath of the people.
John BurlinsonNARRATOR
By such arguments of Timaeus, Andocides was at last persuaded to bear witness against himself and others.
John BurlinsonNARRATOR
He himself received the immunity from punishment which had been decreed; but all those whom he named, excepting such as took to flight, were put to death; and Andocides added to their number some of his own household servants, that he might the better be believed.
Kevin JohnsonNARRATOR
It was designed to be the second part of a trilogy which, like the other great platonic trilogy of the sophist, statesman, philosopher, was never completed.
Kevin JohnsonNARRATOR
Timaeus had brought down the origin of the world to the creation of man, and the dawn of history was now to succeed the philosophy of nature.
Kevin JohnsonNARRATOR
The Critias is also connected with the Republic.
Kevin JohnsonNARRATOR
Plato, as he has already told us, intended to represent the ideal state engaged in a patriotic conflict.
Kevin JohnsonNARRATOR
This mythical conflict is prophetic or symbolic.
Kevin JohnsonNARRATOR
of the struggle of athens and persia perhaps in some degree also of the wars of the greeks and carthaginians in the same way that the persian is prefigured by the trojan war to the mind of herodotus or as the narrative of the first part of the ennead is intended by virgil to foreshadow the wars of carthage and rome the small number of the primitive athenian citizens which is about their present number is evidently designed to contrast with the myriads and barbaric array of the atlantic hosts the passing remark in the timaeus that athens was left alone in the struggle in which she conquered and became the liberator of greece is also an allusion to the later history hence we may safely conclude that the entire narrative is due to the imagination of plato who has used the name of solon and introduced the egyptian priests to give verisimilitude to his story to the greek such a tale like that of the earth-born men would have seemed perfectly accordant with the character of his mythology and not more marvellous than the wonders of the east narrated by herodotus and others he might have been deceived into believing it but it appears strange that later ages should have been imposed upon by the fiction as many attempts have been made to find the great island of atlantis as to discover the country of the lost tribes without regard to the description of plato and without a suspicion that the whole narrative is a fabrication interpreters have looked for the spot in every part of the globe America, Arabia Felix, Ceylon, Palestine, Sardinia, Sweden.
Kevin JohnsonNARRATOR
Timaeus concludes with a prayer that his words may be acceptable to the God whom he has revealed, and Critias, whose turn follows, begs that a larger measure of indulgence may be conceded to him, because he has to speak of men whom we know and not of gods whom we do not know.
Kevin JohnsonNARRATOR
Socrates readily grants his request, and, anticipating that Hermocrates will make a similar petition, extends by anticipation a like indulgence to him.
speaker_2ADVERTISER
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LeniNARRATOR
Opening Remarks from the Introduction to Timaeus.
LeniNARRATOR
This is a LibriVox recording.
LeniNARRATOR
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
LeniNARRATOR
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Timaeus by Plato, translated by Benjamin Jowett.
LeniNARRATOR
Introduction and Analysis, Opening Remarks.
LeniNARRATOR
Of all the writings of Plato, the Timaeus is the most obscure and repulsive to the modern reader, and has nevertheless had the greatest influence over the ancient and medieval world.
LeniNARRATOR
The obscurity arises in the infancy of physical science, out of the confusion of theological, mathematical, and physiological notions, out of the desire to conceive the whole of nature without any adequate knowledge of the parts, and from a greater perception of similarities which lie on the surface than of differences which are hidden from view.
speaker_0NARRATOR
He also sailed into the Yuxin Sea with a large and splendidly equipped armament, There he effected what the Greek cities desired, and dealt with them humanely, while to the neighboring nations of barbarians with their kings and dynasts he displayed the magnitude of his forces, and the fearless courage with which they sailed whithersoever they pleased, and brought the whole sea under their own control.
speaker_0NARRATOR
He also left with the banished Sinopians thirteen ships of war and soldiers under command of Lamachus, to aid them against Timaeus.
speaker_0NARRATOR
When the tyrant and all his adherents had been driven from the city, Pericles got a bill passed providing that six hundred volunteers of the Athenians should sail to Sinope, and settle down there with the Sinopians, dividing up among themselves the houses and lands which the tyrant and his followers had formerly occupied.
speaker_0NARRATOR
But in other matters he did not accede to the vain impulses of the citizens, nor was he swept along with the tide when they were eager, from a sense of their great power and good fortune, to lay hands again upon Egypt and molest the realms of the king which lay along the sea.
1 HR 50 MINS LATER
speaker_1NARRATOR
Fabius Maximus I think that Nikeus is a suitable parallel to Crassus.
speaker_0NARRATOR
and the Sicilian to the Parthian disaster.
speaker_0NARRATOR
I must therefore at once, and in all modesty, entreat my readers not to imagine for an instant that, in my narration of what Thucydides has inimitably set forth, surpassing even himself in pathos, vividness, and variety, I am so disposed as was Timaeus.
speaker_0NARRATOR
He, confidently hoping to excel Thucydides in skill, and make Philistus seem altogether tedious and clumsy, pushes his history along through the conflicts and sea-fights and harangues which those writers had already handled with the greatest success, showing himself in rivalry with them, not even so much as by Lydian Carr a footman slowly plotting, to use Pinder's comparison, nay, rather, a perfect example of senile learning and youthful conceit, and, in the words of Dophilus, obese, stuffed to the full with Sicilian grease.
M.B.NARRATOR
Their importance consists in the evidence they yield of cultivated thought about nature before it had been forced into a uniform mold by the long tradition of scientific philosophy.
M.B.NARRATOR
For example, in the Timaeus, there is a presupposition, somewhat vaguely expressed, of a distinction between the general becoming of nature and the measurable time of nature.
M.B.NARRATOR
In a later lecture, I have to distinguish between what I call the passage of nature and particular time systems which exhibit certain characteristics of that passage.
M.B.NARRATOR
I will not go so far as to claim Plato in direct support of this doctrine, but I do think that the sections of the Timaeus which deal with time become clearer if my distinction is admitted.
M.B.NARRATOR
This is, however, a digression.
M.B.NARRATOR
I am now concerned with the origin of the scientific doctrine of matter in Greek thought.
M.B.NARRATOR
In the Timaeus, Plato asserts that nature is made of fire and earth with air and water as intermediate between them, so that as fire is to air, so air is to water, and as air is to water, so is water to earth.
M.B.NARRATOR
He also suggests a molecular hypothesis for these four elements.
Jesse MichaelsSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Atlantis is a placeholder term that comes from Solon relaying this myth to Plato.
Jesse MichaelsSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
I think a lot of people discount that because it was told at this mythos festival of Timaeus and Crataeus, when in fact, I think a lot of Plato's stuff was probably actually ontologically true and real, and Troy was supposedly fictional, and Heinrich von Schleiman, this kind of amateur German businessman, found it.
Jesse MichaelsSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Pre the 90s, if anyone were to say that the civilization was as old as Quebecly tepee, think you're crazy this is the history of archaeology is the history of things getting older
Tyler KiwalaHOST
yeah very interesting and you know I just bring this up because we're taking over these bodies of water and then he claims that Atlantis or wherever this is is in an undisclosed region of the Atlantic potentially Bermuda Triangle I've heard people say that before who knows something could even be in the Gulf of America as well did you have any thoughts on this and why you think Atlantis is coming back into the headlines
speaker_5NARRATOR
The story comes from the Greek philosopher Plato, writing around 360 BCE.
speaker_5NARRATOR
It appears in two dialogues called Timaeus and Critias.
speaker_5NARRATOR
In them, Plato describes an island kingdom beyond the Pillars of Hercules, the ancient name for the Strait of Gibraltar.
speaker_5NARRATOR
Atlantis, he says, was large, wealthy and powerful.
Jesse MichelsSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Atlantis is a placeholder term that comes from Solon relaying this myth to Plato.
Jesse MichelsSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
I think a lot of people discount that because it was told at this mythos festival of Timaeus and Crataeus, when in fact, I think a lot of Plato's stuff was probably actually ontologically true and real, and Troy was supposedly fictional, and Heinrich von Schleiman, this kind of amateur German businessman, found it.
Jesse MichelsSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Pre the 90s, if anyone were to say that the civilization was as old as Quebecly Tepe, think they were crazy.
Jesse MichelsSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
The history of archaeology is the history of things getting older.
Nathaniel LloydHOST
After all, if one were to credit Plato's story as historical, he explicitly states that the Greek statesman Solon learned about Atlantis from Egyptian priests.
Nathaniel LloydHOST
As we saw in the last episode, some have even tried to claim, relying on mistranslations, that the later commenter on Timaeus, Krantor of Soli, also visited Egypt and independently confirmed the Atlantis account.
Nathaniel LloydHOST
We know that Plato was writing an allegory and that there's no sound reason to believe Krantor ever claimed to have found corroborative evidence of the tale.
Nathaniel LloydHOST
But it does stand to reason that if evidence exists that Plato wasn't making the whole thing up, it would be in Egypt, one of the longest-lasting human civilizations and one that kept detailed historical records and chronologies.
10 MINS LATER
Nathaniel LloydHOST
This detail would seem to rule out any and all locations within the Mediterranean or eastward of that sea.
Nathaniel LloydHOST
However, in their eternal efforts to pick apart Plato's words, to simultaneously portray them as precisely literal but also open to general interpretation, they've put forth some reasons for doubting this geographical marker.
Nathaniel LloydHOST
First, they say, actually, many translations of Timaeus don't say beyond the pillars but rather in front of them.
Nathaniel LloydHOST
Certainly, this phrasing, taken out of context, could be interpreted as indicating that Atlantis was an island just within the Strait of Gibraltar.
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