Chalcidius's Commentary on Plato's Timaeus

Inaccuracies and Errors.

The Chalcidian translation does not seem to be dependent on the Ciceronian translation at all.

To demonstrate this, a few parallel passages may be cited here:
I. Timaeus 29 B: (Greek text omitted in translation) "Now it is of the greatest importance to let the beginning of every thing proceed according to nature." Chalcidius: "And since it is not easy to explain the reason of origin..." Cicero: "It is most difficult, however, in every method of inquiry, to find the beginning."

II. Timaeus 30 C: (Greek text omitted in translation) "Of that which belongs to the class of parts we shall liken it to none. Rather, we shall assume that it is most similar to that of which all other living beings are parts, both individually and by species." Chalcidius (very obscure): "Similar to no one in particular—since perfection is in the genus, not in the species." Cicero: "Surely to none of those living beings known to us. For all are divided or begun into certain genera, perfect in no part."

III. More important is the arbitrary translation of Timaeus 35 A, which forms the basis for his explanation of the world soul: (Greek text omitted). Chalcidius: 1. "From the individual and ever-persisting substance in its own state, and also from the other which is considered to be the inseparable companion of bodies—splitting itself through the same bodies—he placed a third mixed genus of substance: a medium between both substances." 2. "And in the same way from a twin and biform nature: indeed, whose part is called 'same,' part 'different': he devised a third genus of nature, which he placed as a medium between the individual and the divisible substance. All these three he mixed into one species, that different nature resisting the concretion and union of the genera." 3. "Which, when mixed with substance..." Cicero: "From matter which is individual and which is always of one mode and similar to itself, and from that which is born divisible to bodies, he mixed a third genus of matter from two in the middle, which might be of the same nature and that of the other: and he placed it between the individual and that which would be divisible in the body... And when he had taken three, he tempered them into one species, and joined that nature which we said was of the other with the same, mixing the fleeing nature, foreign to that coupling, with matter..."

The main emphasis lies on the words: "of the same" and "of the other," over the interpretation of which scholars—such as Tennemann, Stallbaum, Boeckh, Martin, Überweg, and Zeller—are to this day not in agreement. Chalcidius, to my knowledge, is the only one of all the translators who separates them from the context and indicates that a new mixture is meant by them.

IV. Timaeus 37 A-B is also translated inaccurately: (Greek text omitted).