Chalcidius's Commentary on Plato's Timaeus

coined by Cicero original: "bei Cicero geprägt sind", they will likely have passed into general usage since Cicero, so that a direct borrowing from Cicero's translation does not need to be assumed. Indeed, if Chalcidius had used Cicero's works, he would have been spared a great number of his errors and would have in any case adopted other peculiarities from Cicero that are not found in Chalcidius.

The translation is preceded by a prooemium preface/introduction, in which Chalcidius praises with exuberant words the power of friendship that moved him to undertake the difficult task of translating and interpreting the Timaeus. He intends to translate and explain the first part initially and promises, if this finds the approval of the addressee, to translate the rest.

The actual commentary begins with some introductory words in which the difficulty of the material treated in the Timaeus and the necessity of universal knowledge for the understanding of this work are emphasized (1–4), and then (5, 6) the

"By way of an image, since not even this itself, for which it has been generated, is of itself, but is always carried as a phantom of something else, for these reasons it is fitting for it to come into being in something else, clinging in some way to substance, or else it is nothing at all; but to that which truly is, the true reason acting through precision is a helper, so that as long as there is one thing and then another, neither having ever come to be in the other, both will become one and the same and two."
Chalcidius: "On account of which depravation and likewise other kindred things, we do not even pause in our mind during the contemplation and consideration of the truly existing and truly vigilant nature because of dreams of this kind, since we are not even able to imagine any species or form of this slippery thing. For it has no proper form and seems to have one when, within its bosom, forms are transfigured by conversion from one thing to another. And this same thing is found placed between some other and no substance, it has no substance of its own nor is it, however, nothing."

1. Hermann, in the same place, p. 6: "medietas" middleness/mean, "dividuum" divisible, "qualitas" quality, "visus" sight/vision (for phantasia).

2. Fabricius cites regarding the words of Chalcidius (c. 27) "substance, or as Cicero says, essence": a. Seneca, ep. 58. "I desire, if it is possible, with your ears propitious, to say 'essence'; if not, I will say it with them angry; I have Cicero as the authority for this word, I consider him wealthy." b. Sidonius, in the epistle added to the Epithalamium of Polemius: "You are about to read here a new word 'essence,' but know that Cicero himself said this."

3. Cf. 10, 1. — 4) He cites here: Isocrates, oration to Demonicus, v. 41 ed. Tauchnitz. Cf. Wrobel p. 3.