implication of the Timaeus that “man is himself a universe” and that cosmic order is reflected in human life.112
Figure 5. MS Bodleian Digby 23(1), fo. 5r (with permission of the Bodleian Library).
One of the central concerns for the masters commenting on the Timaeus was its use of myth, a problem that the reader first encounters when Critias begins his account of what his grandfather, Critias the elder, heard from Solon about Atlantis. While in Egypt, Solon discussed the earliest times with the priests, and told them how Deucalion and Pyrrha survived the flood. But the priests were not impressed, and one said, “O Solo, Graeci pueri semper estis nec quisquam e graecia senex” (O Solon, you Greeks are all children and none of you is old, fol. IIV).113 Then the priest went on to explain that the Greek story of Phaethon, the child of the sun, who harnessed his father’s chariot and then burned the earth when he could not control it, insisting that “fabulosa quidem putatur, sed est vera” (it is considered by some to be a fable, but is true). The priest explains that the story refers to long-term variations in the climate that produce floods or droughts. It is a passage carefully noted by William of Conches as an integumentum with a moral truth:
Huius rei talis est veritas. Pheton interpretatur ardor. Qui filius solis esse dictur quia ex sole calor procedit. Qui filius Climenes esse dicitur id est humoris quia sine humore fervor esse non potest. Hic currus solis ducit. Sol dicitur habere currum propter circuitionem circa terram. Hunc quatuor equi trahunt quia quatuor sunt diei proprietates: in mane enim rubet, deinde splendet, postea calet, ad ultimum descendit et tepet. Quibus nomina equorum conveniunt. Primus enim dicitur Eritheus id est rubens, secundus Acteon id est splendens, tercius Lampos id est ardens, quartus Philogeus id est amans terram.114
The truth of this matter is as follows. Phaethon means heat, and he is said to be the son of the sun since heat comes from the sun. He is said to be the son of Climene, that is, of moisture, since without moisture there can be no heat. Phaethon guides the chariot of the sun. The sun is said to have a chariot because it goes around the earth. Four horses draw this chariot since the day has four properties: it is red in the morning, then it shines brightly, then it provides clear light, and then at the last it fades. The names of the four horses match these four stages: the first is called Eritheus, that is, ruddy; the second Acteon, that is, shining; the third Lampos, that is burning, and the fourth Philogeus, that is, loving the land.
On folio 12r, the pothook glossator offers a long gloss on this passage, and as far as I am able to read it, he echoes William point for point, as he describes the etymology of the four horses of the sun and the four climatic zones they govern.
The priest then tells Solon that before the great flood Athens excelled all others in her morals and valor. Solon begs to hear more, and the priest says he is happy to continue, chiefly because of his gratitude to that goddess (Pallas Athena) who has founded and supported both states, Athens and, eight thousand years later, Egypt. She founded Athens first, “annis fere mille, ex indigete agro et uulcanio semine” (almost a thousand years after the time of the god-born or god-bearing field and seed of Vulcan, fol. 13V). Well versed in Greek mythology, the twelfth-century commentators recognized the deeper significance that lies behind the flowery but apparently innocuous reference to the date Athens was founded, for Vulcan spills his seed on the field when he attempts to rape Venus, and this gives birth to Ericthonius. The field, or the man from it, is “a diis genito” (from the gods born) as one of the later glossators helpfully explains in a supplementary gloss in the right margin. Here, too, Bernard provides the basic information,115 while William delves deeper:
Legitur in fabulis Vulcanum se Palladi voluisse commiscere. Qua repugnante, cecidit semen in terram ex quo natus est Erictonius habens draguntinos pedes. Unde ad celandam turpitudinem pedum usum curruum invenit.… Huius integumenti talis est veritas. Vulcanus aliquando dicitur ignis, et tunc dicitur vulcanus quasi volicanus id est volans candor quia volat in altum et canus est per favillas …. Hic Palladi se commiscere desiderat quando ex fervore ingenii aliquis perfecte sapientie aspirat. Sed Pallas reluctatur quia nullus in hac vita perfectam potest habere sapientiam. Sed quamvis Pallada non retineat, semen tamen elicit quia etsi perfectam non habeat sapientiam, aliquam tamen adquirit quia
“Est quodam prodire tenus si non datur ultra”
Sed semen illud cadit in terram quia ex fragili et terreno corpore gravatur.116
We read in fables that Vulcan wished to mate with Pallas. And when she refused, his semen fell to the ground from which Ericthonius was born, with serpentine feet. So, to hide the shame of his feet, he invented the chariot.… This is the truth of this integumentum. Fire is sometimes called Vulcan, in which case it is called “vulcan” as if it were “vol-can,” that is, flying whiteness, since it flies high and is white like glowing ashes.… Vulcan wishes to unite with Pallas when anyone, moved by his own fervor, aspires to perfect wisdom. But Pallas resists since no one in this life can attain perfect wisdom. But although Pallas does not retain the semen, she does draw it out because even if one cannot acquire perfect wisdom, one can acquire some, for
“It is something to go as far as one can, even if one cannot go any further.”
But that semen fell to the ground because it was weighed down by the fragile, earthly body.
Several of the Digby glossators tackle this passage, one that also attracted the attention of Bernard Silvestris.117 One of the earlier ones fills the left-hand column of folio 13 verso with shorter points that give the gist of what is going on, beginning “Hic ostendit ciuitatem atenien/sium ciuitatem egypcioruum esse priorem et hoc numero annonrum et quan/titate temporis” (Here he shows the city of Athens to be older than that of the Egyptians, and this by the number of years and length of time). Once again the pothook glossator goes much further, raising the same points made by William of Conches, often with similar phrasing. He notes the story of Erectheus and his dragon’s feet and the crucial allegorical point that perfect wisdom cannot be attained “quia in hacuita nulla est perfecta sapientia.”
After this, the glosses become less frequent for a while, and many pages are almost untouched, although there are a few doodles and nota bene hands. Once we come to the discussion of the composition of the world soul at folio 25V, however, the glosses resume in force, and they are often accompanied by diagrams. A very large part of the glossing, including the work of the pothook glossator, was completed within roughly half a century of the original copying, but the manuscript continued to attract some glosses for years to come, probably well into the fourteenth century. On folio 55V there are a series of notes in a thirteenth-century hand on Timaeus 35B to 36B, the discussion of the mathematical divisions that form the world soul.
While some of the glosses in Digby 23(1) may date from the fourteenth century, the bulk of them, and many of the most substantial ones, were completed within the first few generations. This pattern echoes that of other manuscripts of the Timaeus, where the glosses bridge the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the status of the Timaeus in the schools at large, where it certainly declines from the position it held in the twelfth century but does not completely disappear.118 In Paris the Timaeus appears to have been part of the arts curriculum until about 1255, but no student work on the Timaeus has yet been identified nor have any student notes. Dutton concludes that the students of Paris in the first half of the thirteenth century were probably required to know the text only second hand, or in a cursory fashion, and were not forced “to engage with the Timaeus, explore its difficult design, unravel its account of early Greek history, or probe its deeper metaphysics.”119 Nor would the doctors of theology and philosophy have spent much time on a text that played little role in late scholastic debates (although Thomas Aquinas cited it on a few
