expository discourse, upon a subject very different and of far greater magnitude. Unfortunately the narrative promised by Kritias stands before us only as a fragment. There is reason to believe that Plato never completed it.[3] But the discourse assigned to Timæus was finished, and still remains, as a valuable record of ancient philosophy. [Footnote 1: Plato, Timæus, p. 20 B.] [Footnote 2: Plato, Timæus, p. 27 A.] [Footnote 3: Plutarch, Solon, c. 33. Another discourse appears to have been contemplated by Plato, to be delivered by Hermokrates after Kritias had concluded (Plato, Timæus, p. 20 A; Kritias, p. 108). But nothing of this was probably ever composed.] [Side-note: The Timæus is the earliest ancient physical theory, which we possess in the words of its author.] For us, modern readers, the Timæus of Plato possesses a species of interest which it did not possess either for the contemporaries of its author, or for the ancient world generally. We read in it a system--at least the sketch of a system--of universal philosophy, the earliest that has come to us in the words of the author himself. Among the many other systems, anterior or simultaneous--those of Thales and the other Ionic philosophers, of Herakleitus, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Empedokles, Anaxagoras, Demokritus--not one remains to us as it was promulgated by its original author or supporters. We know all of them only in fragments and through the criticisms of others: fragments always scanty--criticisms generally dissentient, often harsh, sometimes unfair, introduced by the critic to illustrate opposing doctrines of his own. Here, however, the Platonic system is made known to us, not in this fragmentary and half-attested form, but in the full exposition which Plato himself deemed sufficient for it. This is a remarkable peculiarity. [Side-note: Position** and character of the Pythagorean Timæus.]