BOOK I CH. Ix § 21, 93

them is that the Demiurgus is pure spirit and exists apart from the world which he creates, while Pronoea is strictly an attribute of the fiery soul which animates the world, and from which the world grows as a plant from a seed. [This again shows that vestra cannot be predicative, for there is no place for agents and instruments (ministros, machinas) in this natural and necessary growth.] The Stoic Providence therefore is not eadem, but alia, and Vell. asks why, if the universe thus contains in itself its own principle of life, it should fail to be eternal; for the Stoics thought (1. D. 11 118) that it was destined to be destroyed by fire. The answer is that this destruction is merely the cyclical re-absorption of the universe, as it grows old, into its original form of fire, from which it issues forth in renovated strength and beauty.
designationem atque apparatum: ‘the planning-and arrangement’.
fecerit: indirect question after reqguiro.
mortalem non sempiternum: adversative asyndeton answering to Gk. adda, Zumpt § 781.
Ch. 1x. § 21. aedificatores exstiterint: ‘(Dem. and Pron.) rose up to build’, ‘appeared as builders’, cf. Rose. Am. 2, ego huie causae patronus exstiti.
exstiterint—dormierint: adversative asyndeton answering to pev and dé. For the argument see Plut. Plac. Phil. 17, Lucr. v 168 guidve novi potuit tanto post ante quietos | inlicere ut cuperent vitam mutare priorem ? Mansel endeavouring to show that reason cannot judge of the contents of religion, admits the justice of this objection against a creation at any par- ticular moment of time, and quotes an interesting passage from Neander in reference to Origen’s opinion on the subject: ‘supposing that to create is agreeable to the divine essence, how is it conceivable that what is thus conformable to God’s nature should at any time have been wanting? Why should not those attributes which belong to the very essence of the Deity, his almighty power and goodness, be always active? a transition from the state of non-creating to the act of creation is inconceivable without a change, which is incompatible with the being of God’, Bampton Lect. 11 n. 23. The difficulty seems to arise from a failure to recognize that God is omnipresent in time as in space. We go back in thought to the commence- ment of finite existence, and imagine a boundless solitude anterior to this, but all past, present and future events are at every moment equally before the eye of God, in the same way that all points of space are at all moments equally near to him. Cf. A. Butler Ane. Phil. 1 185, Cudworth mt 490 foll.
saecla: acc. of time. The word means originally ‘generation’ (sero), then the greatest extent of a life-time, 100 years according to Varro JL, L. vi 11, cf. Mayor’s Juvenal x11 28 n.
quae dierum—conficiuntur: ‘which are made up of a number of days and nights by means of the annual revolutions’.
fateor—potuisse. So Celsus ap. Or. vi 60 sneers at the mention in Genesis of the Ist, the 2nd and the 8rd day before the creation of
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94 BOOK I CH. Ix § 21.
the lights to which the division of night and day is owing. Plato would not have allowed that time existed even as indefinite duration before the universe came into being. ‘With the rotation of the Kosmos began the course of time, days, months and years: anterior to the Kosmos there was no time, no past, present or future, no numerable or measurable motion or change’. Grote’s Plato m1 256. In Plato’s own words 7 pev obv rov (dou vats (the ideal) ervyxavey otca aidvos* Kai roiTo pev 5) TO yevvnto@ (the material copy of the ideal world) ravrekds mpooarrew ov qv Suvatov’ ¢ika & emwoet Kiwntov twa aidvos Toca, Kat diakoopay dpa ovpaviy moet pevovtos aiavos ev évt kar apiOpov lovcav aidmoy eixova, rovtov ov Oy xpovoy [email protected] TOT nv TOT €oTal, xpovou ‘yeyovora cid, pépovtes AavOavopev emt tv Cidioy ovoiavy ovK opOas, Tim. 37 D, cf. 39 c translated by Cic. 9 nesciunt hos siderum errores id ipsum esse quod rite dicitur tempus, cf. Varro L. L. vi 3 tempus esse dicunt intervallum mundi motus; td divisum in partes aliquot maxime ab solis et lunae cursu. So also Arist. De Caclo 19 7 ‘there is neither place nor time outside the circle of the heavens (for time is but the measure of motion) but only a divine unchanging eternity’.
mundi: here used in the narrower sense ‘the heavens’.
spatio tamen—tempus esset. I have followed Davies in omitting non before potest with all the best mss, and followed Heidt. p. 36 in regarding the words guod ne—esset as a gloss. The meaning of the passage is then simple and consistent, ‘what was the creator doing during all the ages which preceded the making of the world? For though time was not then portioned out by the movements of the heavenly bodies, yet there must have been a boundless eternity which we can conceive as extended. Well, I ask why was your Pronoea idle in all that vast extent of time?’ But with the ordinary reading (defended by Sch. in his note and also in Opuse. 111 299) we have a thought introduced which is not only out of place, but totally inconsistent with the argument. It is not for Vell. to dwell upon the difficulty of conceiving the existence of time prior to creation: that is a point for his opponents to press. According to the reading which I have adopted he merely alludes to it to show that it does not invalidate his argument, and proceeds with an igitur which would be very ill-suited to the other reading. The particle tamen just above would be equally in- appropriate after quam nulla—metiebatur: there is no opposition between the clauses if we read intellegt non potest, and it is harsh to carry back the opposition to the previous sed fuit quaedam. Independently of the in- appropriateness of the proposition in the mouth of Vell. the language is too verbose for the short staccato style of the rest of his speech. Yet again, the sentiments in themselves are non-Epicurean. Infinite time and infinite space are not unintelligible to an Epicurean. Lucretius has no hesitation in telling us what was the state of things before the atoms hap- pened on the existing cosmos with its sun and moon and stars. Sch.’s references to Aristotle and Sext. Emp., as proving the inconceivability