never attained to a periodic style. And hence we find the same sort of
clumsiness in the Timaeus of Plato which characterizes the philosophical
poem of Lucretius. There is a want of flow and often a defect of rhythm;
the meaning is sometimes obscure, and there is a greater use of apposition
and more of repetition than occurs in Plato's earlier writings.
The sentences are less closely connected and also more involved; the
antecedents of demonstrative and relative pronouns are in some cases remote
and perplexing. The greater frequency of participles and of absolute
constructions gives the effect of heaviness. The descriptive portion of
the Timaeus retains traces of the first Greek prose composition; for the
great master of language was speaking on a theme with which he was
imperfectly acquainted, and had no words in which to express his meaning.
The rugged grandeur of the opening discourse of Timaeus may be compared
with the more harmonious beauty of a similar passage in the Phaedrus.

To the same cause we may attribute the want of plan. Plato had not the
command of his materials which would have enabled him to produce a perfect
work of art. Hence there are several new beginnings and resumptions and
formal or artificial connections; we miss the 'callida junctura' of the
earlier dialogues. His speculations about the Eternal, his theories of
creation, his mathematical anticipations, are supplemented by desultory
remarks on the one immortal and the two mortal souls of man, on the
functions of the bodily organs in health and disease, on sight, hearing,
smell, taste, and touch. He soars into the heavens, and then, as if his
wings were suddenly clipped, he walks ungracefully and with difficulty upon
the earth. The greatest things in the world, and the least things in man,
are brought within the compass of a short treatise. But the intermediate
links are missing, and we cannot be surprised that there should be a want
of unity in a work which embraces astronomy, theology, physiology, and
natural philosophy in a few pages.