Ocellus Lucanus On the Nature of the Universe (Taylor 1831)

world was not generated, and is imperishable, and indeed he proves it by most exquisite reasoning. Censorinus also, in De Die natali, chapter ii, says, ‘that the opinion that the human race is perpetual, has for its authors Pythagoras the Samian, Ocellus Lucanus, and Archytas of Tarentum.’ He is likewise mentioned by Jamblichus in his Life of Pythagoras; by Syrianus in his commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics; by Proclus in his Commentary on the Timæus of Plato, who, as we have shown in the Notes on Ocellus, demonstrates that he was wrong in ascribing two powers only instead of three to each of the elements; and in the last place, this tract is cited by Stobæus in Eclogae Physicae, book i, chapter 24: all which testimonies clearly prove that Chalmers is a man who cannot say with Socrates (in Plato’s Gorgias) ‘that he has bid farewell to the honours of the multitude, and has his eye solely directed to truth original: "that he has bid farewell to the honours of the multitude, and has his eye solely directed to truth.".’”

To the treatise of Ocellus I have subjoined a translation of a fragment of Taurus, a Platonic philosopher, On the Eternity of the World †;

* For nearly the whole of what is contained in the above three paragraphs, I am indebted to my excellent friend Mr. J. B. Inglis, who has also read Ocellus with great attention, and made notes upon it; another proof that the work is not neglected.

† This Taurus flourished under the emperor Marcus Antoninus, and the original of the above-mentioned fragment is only to be found in the treatise of Philoponus against Proclus, “On the Eternity of the World.”