SVF I.88

Original — Latin

Deinde Zeno hanc ipsam essentiam finitam esse dicit unamque eam communem omnium quae sunt esse substantiam, dividuam quoque et usque quaque mutabilem: partes quippe eius verti, sed non interire, ita ut de existentibus consumantur in nihilum. Sed ut innumerabilium diversarum, etiam cerearum figurarum, sic neque formam neque figuram nec ullam omnino qualitatem propriam fore censet fundamenti rerum omnium silvae, coniunctam tamen esse semper et inseparabiliter cohaerere alicui qualitati. Cumque tam sine ortu sit quam sine interitu, quia neque de non existente subsistit neque consumetur in nihilum, non deesse ei spiritum ac vigorem ex aeternitate, qui moveat eam rationabiliter totam interdum, nonnumquam pro portione, quae causa sit tam crebrae tamque vehementis universae rei conversionis; spiritum porro motivum illum fore non naturam, sed animam et quidem rationabilem, quae vivificans sensilem mundum exornaverit eum ad hanc, qua nunc inlustratur, venustatem. Quem … beatum animal et deum adpellant.

StoicOs Translation

Next Zeno says that this very substance is finite, and that it is the one common substance of all things that are, divisible too and changeable through and through: for its parts turn into other things but do not perish, so as to be consumed from beings into nothing. But as with the innumerable different shapes of wax, so he holds that the foundation of all things, matter, will have neither form nor figure nor any quality at all of its own — yet that it is always joined to some quality and coheres with it inseparably. And since it is as much without birth as without perishing — because it neither arises from the non-existent nor will be consumed into nothing — it does not lack, from eternity, a breath and vigour that moves it rationally, sometimes as a whole, sometimes in part, which is the cause of the so frequent and so vehement turning of the universe; that moving breath, moreover, is not mere nature but soul, and indeed rational soul, which, giving life to the sensible world, has adorned it to this beauty by which it now shines. And this they call … a blessed living being, and god.

Context

Chalcidius, the late-antique Latin commentator on Plato's Timaeus, surveys the philosophers' doctrines of matter and devotes this chapter expressly to Zeno, directly after the chapter printed as SVF I.86.

Source notes:Text verified against von Arnim, SVF I (1903), no. 88, p. 25 (OCR of the scanned edition; the chapter number is garbled in the OCR — the fragment follows c. 290, printed as SVF I.86). One word before “beatum animal” in the final clause is illegible in the scan and is left unrestored.

What the source actually tells us

A connected Latin summary, under Zeno's name, of his doctrine of substance: finite, one, divisible, qualityless in itself yet never bare, ungenerated and imperishable, and moved from eternity by a rational breath that is soul and god. The wax-image and the god-conclusion agree with the Greek testimonia (SVF I.85, I.87).

Philosophical meaning

Against the infinite worlds of the atomists, Zeno's universe is one finite body: matter that never exists bare, always shaped by the divine breath that pervades it. Nothing perishes into nothing; every destruction is a turning of the same substance. The chapter completes the doctrine of SVF I.87 by naming the mover: the rational world-soul, a blessed living being, god.

Scholarly uncertainty

Chalcidius writes some six centuries after Zeno, in Latin and with Platonic vocabulary (silva for matter); the sequence of thought is likely faithful, the wording certainly not Zeno's. One word of the final clause is illegible in the scan and left unrestored rather than conjectured.

Go deeper

• Read SVF I.87 — substance as eternal prime matter →
• Read SVF I.85 — the two principles, god and matter →