Commentary on the First and Second Chapters of the Thirtieth Book of the Natural History of Gaius Plinius Secundus

numbers. Time, without a doubt, consists of motion, and also action, and whatever is subject to time, action, and motion consists of number. Likewise, harmonies and voices have power through numbers and their proportions, and through lines and points they constitute characters and figures. Finally, the Arab philosophers assert that all generations, mutations, and species of natural things, and of those which are above nature, are distinguished by certain numbers: noticing this, Pythagoras said that number is that by which all things consist: and he distributed to each individual things their individual virtues, of which we must treat in detail. The schools of the Platonists assert that the soul of the world is in a certain way harmonized by numbers, and that no joining congruence can exist without numbers. Among these numbers, the Monad, that is, unity, is first numbered, not because it is a number: for the monad or unity is thought to be a point: for just as a point is not a body, but makes bodies from itself. Unity is not called a number, but the source of numbers: for the monad is the cause of odd and even number, because the ternary cannot be made without the monad: for the monad is indivisible, but it makes divisible numbers: for the monad is multiplied, not into parts, but into itself; it is the beginning and the end, and a certain perfect thing: wherefore theologians say that the monad pertains to God, the best and greatest, because He is the end and the first cause of all things. Furthermore, the binary, that is, the Dyad, is called by them the number of confusion, a number, I say, of misfortune and impurity: whence the divine Jerome says against Jovinian: "That on the second day of creation it was not said, 'And God saw,' etc." On account of this, the Mages report that God commanded all unclean animals to enter the ark of Noah. This number has been called most unhappy by the augurs: for it is believed by the Mages to bring the encounters of shades or manes spirits of the dead, and the terrors of ghosts and evil spirits. The ternary, however, is sacred and most perfect, and most absolute; it is celebrated not only by philosophers and Mages, but also by poets and theologians: for to this, for ceremonies, there