Recapitulation of the role of the prologue: 205.4–206.26

The prelude of the Timaeus records two main subjects, a summary of Socrates’ constitution and a concise narration of the battle of the Athenians against the Atlantines and of the victory that occurred over them. Each of these accounts makes a very large contribution to the entire investigation of the cosmos. The ideal form of the constitution, though object of knowledge in and for itself, has also harmonized at the primary level with the ordering of the heaven, while the account of the war and the victory has symbolized for us the opposition that is fundamental to the cosmos. The former revealed the essence of the encosmic kinds, the latter revealed their powers from which the activities advance into the universe. The former gave a sketch of the first creation in images, the latter of the second creation, or, if you wish, the former presented the formal cause, the latter the material cause. Indeed, all the philosophers of nature put forward the opposites as principles and establish the cosmos as resulting from the harmonization of the opposites. But harmony and order derive from the ideal form, which, starting from the constitution, [Socrates’] account has revealed as common to and extending to all multiplicity that proceeds in order. For that constitution is transmitted in different forms, whether in the soul, or in human beings, or at the cosmic level. Socrates’ recapitulation, which gave a sketch of the actual ideal form of the constitution wholly separated from matter, reveals to us at the primary level the constitution in the universe, and it is to the same form that it is eager to relate the parts absolutely as well.

In addition there is, if you wish, another way in which one should rank the constitution analogously to the heaven and the war analogously to genesis. The constitution in fact penetrates to the ultimate parts, since all things have been ranked in accordance with the appropriate series extending from the Demiurge right down to the bottom level of the encosmic beings. In a way the opposition was already established in the heavens beforehand, whether through the double revolution – rightward and leftward – of the [heavenly] bodies, or through the double circles – of the same and of the different – of the souls, or through the kinds of being – rest and motion – or through the properties of the gods – male and female – or through any other such division.