De E apud Delphos

Of this number, which has so many and such great powers, the origin also is fair and lovely; not that which we have expounded, that it is composed of two and three, but that which the beginning combined with the first square produces. For the beginning of all number is one, and the first square is four[*](Cf. 429 e, infra.); and from these, as though from perfected form and matter, comes five. And if certain authorities are right, who, as we know, posit one as the first square, since it is a power of itself and its product is itself, then five, the offspring of the first two squares, does not lack a surpassing nobility of lineage.

But, said I, the most important matter I fear may embarrass our Plato when it is stated, just as he said that Anaxagoras was embarrassed by the name of the Moon, since he tried to claim as his own some very ancient opinion in regard to its illumination. Has not Plato said this in the Cratylus? [*](Plato, Cratylus, 409 a.)

Certainly, said Eustrophus, but what similarity there is I do not see.

Well, you know, of course, that in the Sophist [*](Plato, Sophist, 256 c.) he demonstrates that the supreme first principles are five: Being, Identity, Divergence, and fourth and fifth besides these, Motion and Rest.[*](Cf. 428 c, infra.) But in the Philebus [*](Plato, Philebus, 23 c.) he employs another method of division and affirms that the Infinite is one and the Definite a second, and from the combination of these all generation arises. The cause which makes them combine he posits as a fourth class; the fifth he has left for us to surmise, by which the things combined attain once more dissociation and disengagement. I infer that these are intended to be figurative expressions corresponding to those just mentioned, generation corresponding to being, the infinite to motion, the definite to rest, the combining principle to identity, and the dissociating principle to divergence. But if these last are not the same as the others, even so, considered either in that way or in this, his division into five different classes would still hold good.

Evidently someone anticipated Plato in comprehending this before he did, and for that reason dedicated to the god an E as a demonstration and symbol of the number of all the elements.

Furthermore, observing that the Good displays itself under five categories,[*](Cf. ibid. 66 a-c.) of which the first is moderation, the second due proportion, the third the mind, the fourth the sciences and arts and the true opinions that have to do with the soul, and the fifth any pleasure that is pure and unalloyed with pain, at

Bring to an end the current of song in the sixth generation.