Calcidius on Demons: Fragments of the Commentarius on Plato’s Timaeus (A Translation and Notes)

Abstract

The publication presents a commented Russian translation of chapters 120 and 127–136 from Calcidius’ Commentarius on Plato’s Timaeus dealing with demonology, a most important part of philosophical knowledge in the eyes of Neoplatonic thinkers. We know virtually nothing about Calcidius, neither the dates of his lifespan, nor the place where he lived and worked. Even his name has become debatable recently: Chalcidius or Calcidius. Meanwhile, his principal (and only) work, a Latin translation of Plato’s Timaeus accompanied by a detailed commentary, has become the most important link in the transmission of Plato’s legacy from Antiquity to the medieval Latin West. Up to the twelfth-century turning point and the rise of the School of Chartres, the reception of Plato in the West was channeled almost exclusively through Calcidius’s work. His translation of the Timaeus, which occupies pages 17a–92c in the Corpus Platonicum, carries on only up to page 57c; another translation of the Timaeus, which has been accessible in the Latin West, belonged to Cicero, and was even more abridged (pages 27d–47b with omissions); nevertheless, it was Cicero’s translation that St. Augustine (354–430) used, unaware, it would seem, of Calcidius’ work. The most probable dating of our author seems to be the 4th – the beginning of the 5th century AD. Calcidius reveals himself as an author in his own right, who had not only accomplished the serious job of translating philosophical terminology from Greek into Latin, but also contributed to the development of the genre of commentary, and so deserves to be studied not only as a transmitter of knowledge from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. The Russian translation is based on the standard Jan Hendrik Waszink’s edition (1975), taking into account more recent editions by C. Moreschini (2003), B. Bakhouche (2011), and J. Magee (2016), which are accompanied by translations into modern European languages; the chronological density of these publications testifies to the undoubtable surge of interest in Calcidius’ work in the last few decades.