Quaestiones Convivales
Plutarch
Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals, Vol. III. Goodwin, William W., editor; Creech, Thomas, translator. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company; Cambridge: Press of John Wilson and Son, 1874.
To this Florus subjoined: Now we are celebrating Plato’s nativity, why should we not mention Carneades, the most famous of the whole Academy, since both of them were born on Apollo’s feast; Plato, whilst they were celebrating the Thargelia at Athens, Carneades, whilst the Cyrenians kept their Carnea; and both these feasts are upon the same day. Nay, the God himself (he continued) you, his priests and prophets, call Hebdomagenes, as if he were born on the seventh day. And therefore those who make Apollo Plato’s father[*](For an account of the belief that Plato was the son of Apollo, not of Aristo, and the vision of Apollo said to have appeared to Aristo, see Diogenes Laertius, III. 1, 1. (G.)) do not, in my opinion, dishonor the God; since by Socrates’s as by another Chiron’s instructions he is become a physician for the greater diseases of the mind. And together with this, he mentioned that vision and voice which forbade Aristo, Plato’s father, to come near or lie with his wife for ten months.
To this Tyndares the Spartan subjoined: It is very fit we should apply that to Plato,
He seemed not sprung from mortal man, but God.[*](Il. XXIV. 258.)But, for my part, I am afraid to beget, as well as to be begotten, is repugnant to the incorruptibility of the Deity. For that implies a change and passion; as Alexander imagined, when he said that he knew himself to be mortal as often as he lay with a woman or slept. For sleep is a relaxation of the body, occasioned by the weakness of our nature; and all generation is a corruptive parting with some of our own substance. But yet I take heart again, when I hear Plato call the eternal and unbegotten Deity the father and maker of the world and all other begotten things; not as if he parted with any seed, but as if by his power he implanted a generative principle in matter, which acts upon, forms, and fashions it. Winds passing through a hen will sometimes impregnate her; and it seems no incredible thing, that the Deity, though not after the fashion of a man, but by some other certain communication, fills a mortal creature with some divine conception. Nor is this my sense; but the Egyptians say Apis was conceived by the influence of the moon, and make no question but that an immortal God may have communication with a mortal woman. But on the contrary, they think that no mortal can beget any thing on a goddess, because they believe the goddesses are made of thin air, and subtle heat and moisture.