Audiobook · read by volunteers
Timaeus
Plato
Read by Leni, David Huston, Philippa, Annise, Kristine Bekere, Patti Cunningham, Rosalind Wills, Leon Mire, Anna Simon, mevans · 20 chapters · 7 h 50
About the book
In Plato's Timaeus, a group of friends gather to continue the previous day's conversation about the ideal state, and the astronomer Timaeus is invited to speak first. What he offers is nothing less than an account of the universe: how the world was made by a divine craftsman, how order was brought out of disorder, how time, the planets, the elements and the human body came to be. Along the way the dialogue touches on the soul, on the relation between eternal forms and the changing things we see, and on the legend of Atlantis, which opens the conversation. Dense, ambitious and endlessly debated, it is one of the most influential texts of ancient philosophy, here in the English translation by Benjamin Jowett.
Introduction
Plato (428-347 BC) was a student of Socrates and the founder of the Academy in Athens, the school often described as the first university in the Western world. His dialogues, which present philosophical argument in the form of conversation, have been read continuously for nearly two and a half thousand years.
The Timaeus is one of his later works, and it differs from many of the earlier dialogues by being largely a continuous speech rather than a series of questions and answers. It deals with cosmology and natural philosophy: the origin and structure of the universe, the nature of matter, and the make-up of living creatures. Its influence has been immense. Through the Latin translation of part of the text, the Timaeus was one of the few works of Plato widely known in medieval Europe, and it shaped the way educated readers imagined the cosmos for centuries.
This recording uses the translation by Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893), the Oxford scholar whose versions of Plato became the standard English texts for much of the Victorian age and beyond. It is divided into twenty sections and runs for nearly eight hours, read by LibriVox volunteers. It is not an easy listen, but it rewards patience, and it offers a fascinating view of how one of the greatest minds of antiquity tried to explain the order of the world. Do not be discouraged if some passages seem technical. The dialogue contains moments of great poetic beauty, and its picture of an ordered, living universe is one of the most remarkable products of ancient thought. It rewards a second hearing, and a third.
Public domain
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text