134 l/-20
some as a condition [hexis], for example, bones and sinews, and others
as mind, for example, the leading part of the soul. In this way the entire
cosmos too, being an animal and alive and rational, has aither as its
leading part, as Antipater of Tyre [says] in book eight of his On the
Cosmos. Chrysippus in book one of his On Providence and Posidonius in
his On Gods say that the heaven is the leading part of the cosmos, while
Cleanthes says it is the sun. Chrysippus, however, in the same work,
again somewhat differently, says it is the purest part of the aither, which
they also call the first god in a perceptible sense, [saying also] that it, as
it were, penetrates the things in the air and all the animals and plants;
and [it penetrates] even the earth in the form of a condition.
- [They say] that the cosmos is one, and limited at that, having a
spherical shape; for that sort of thing is most fit for movement, as
Posidonius, in book five of his Account of Physics, and the followers of
Antipater, in their treatises on the cosmos, say.
Spread around the outside of it is the unlimited void, which is incorpo-
real. And the void^21 is what can be occupied by bodies but is not occupied.
Inside the cosmos there is no void, but it is [fully] unified. For this is
necessitated by the sympathy and common tension of heavenly things in
relation to earthly things. Chrysippus speaks about the void in his On
Void and in the first of his Arts of Physics and [so do] Apollophanes in
his Physics and Posidonius in book two of his Account of Physics.
Things said [lekta]^22 are incorporeal in the same way. 141. Again, so
too is time an incorporeal, being the interval of the movement of the
cosmos. Of time, the past and future are unlimited, while the present is
limited. They believe too that the cosmos is destructible, on the grounds
that it is generated;^23 on the basis of argument: in the case
of things conceived of by sense-perception, that whose parts are destructi-
ble is also destructible as a whole; but the parts of the cosmos are
destructible, since they change into each other; therefore, the cosmos is
destructible. And if something is capable of change for the worse, it is
destructible; and the cosmos is [capable of such change], since it is dried
out and flooded. - The cosmos comes into being when substance turns from fire
through air to moisture, and then the thick part of it is formed into earth
and the thin part is rarefied and this when made even more thin produces
fire. Then by a mixing from these are made plants and animals and the
rest of the [natural] kinds. Zeno, then, speaks about the generation and - An emendation for the repeated "incorporeal".
- An emendation for "These things".
- The supplements are by Michael Frede.