APOKRYPHA the pattern archive
← The reading room
Shelf entry · Greek

Plato, Timaeus 22-23

Standing
traditionGreek
cited by 1 connection
public domain yes
passages digitized: 1
From the source register

The priest of Saïs to Solon: 'O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are never anything but children'; there have been 'many destructions of mankind... the greatest... by the agencies of fire and water'; 'you remember a single deluge only, but there were many previous ones'; whatever noble happened 'has been written down by us of old, and preserved in our temples.'

Digitized passages

The lines the citing connections rest on, digitized from the public-domain edition named under each passage. Wording is the edition's own.

esoteric-5
  1. Thereupon one of the priests, who was of a very great age, said:
  2. O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are never anything but children, and there is not an old man among you.
  3. Solon in return asked him what he meant.
  4. I mean to say, he replied, that in mind you are all young;
  5. there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with age.
  6. And I will tell you why. There have been, and will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes;
  7. the greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water, and other lesser ones by innumerable other causes.
  8. […]
  9. And whatever happened either in your country or in ours, or in any other region of which we are informed—
  10. if there were any actions noble or great or in any other way remarkable,
  11. they have all been written down by us of old, and are preserved in our temples.
  12. Whereas just when you and other nations are beginning to be provided with letters and the other requisites of civilized life,
  13. after the usual interval, the stream from heaven, like a pestilence, comes pouring down,
  14. and leaves only those of you who are destitute of letters and education;
  15. and so you have to begin all over again like children, and know nothing of what happened in ancient times, either among us or among yourselves.
  16. In the first place you remember a single deluge only, but there were many previous ones.
Timaeus 22–23 · tr. Benjamin Jowett, 1871 The bracketed elision passes over the priest’s Phaethon digression; the closing line follows two sentences later in the speech.
Citations

Real editions and scans. Every link leaves this site.

Connections resting on this work
transmission · esoteric-5

Two rival imperial archives · the Saïte temple and the Nineveh library · make the same institutional boast in the same voice: OUR shelves hold writing from before the cataclysm; everyone else's memory has been reset to childhood. The claim of pre-flood custody is itself a recurring genre, wherever there is an archive to make it. This is the archive's own mirror: digitization node 3 is the latest institution making the oldest boast.

The priest of Saïs: 'you remember a single deluge only, but there were many previous ones'; mankind is repeatedly destroyed 'by the agencies of fire and water,' Greek letters are wiped each cycle, but everything great 'has been written down by us of old, and preserved in our temples.'

set against Ashurbanipal colophon, Nineveh…

The reading room shelves citations and short passages digitized from public-domain editions. Full texts enter through the digitization queue.