PREFACE.

THE present appears to be the first English edition of the Timaeus. Indeed since the sixteenth century, during which this dialogue was published separately no less than four times, it had not, so far as I am aware, been issued apart from the rest of Plato's works until the appearance of Lindau's edition, accompanied by a Latin translation, in 1828. Lindau's commentary, though here and there suggestive, does not afford much real help in grappling with the main difficulties of the dialogue; and sometimes displays a fundamental misapprehension of its significance. Ten years later came Stallbaum's edition; concerning which it were unbecoming to speak with less than the respect due to the zeal and industry of a scholar who has essayed the gigantic enterprise of editing with elaborate prolegomena preliminary formal remarks or introductory treatises and commentary the entire works of Plato, and it would be unfair to disparage the learning which the notes display: none the less it cannot be denied that in dealing with this dialogue the editor seems hardly to have realised the nature of the task he has undertaken. Stallbaum was followed in 1841 by Th. H. Martin, whose work, published under the modest title of ‘Studies on the Timaeus of Plato,’ original: "Études sur le Timée de Platon" is far and away the ablest and completest edition of the Timaeus which exists. As an exposition of the philosophical import of the dialogue I should not be disposed to rate it so very highly; but so far as it deals with the physical and other scientific questions discussed and with the numerous grave difficulties of detail, it is invaluable: the acuteness and in-