Ps.-Timaeus Locrus on the Generation of the World

Among the debates on the eternity of the world in post-Hellenistic period, Ps.-Timaeus Locrus’ treatise On the nature of the world and the soul has attracted attention for its non-temporalist interpretation of the generation of the cosmos in Plato’s Timaeus. Nevertheless, this interpretation has largely been treated as a mere parallel for the ‘didactic’ interpretation of the Timaeus supposedly defended by Eudorus of Alexandria. In this article, I argue that Ps.-Timaeus offers far more than a parallel to Eudorus. He understands generation as non-temporal dependence on ontologically prior principles and may have been the first post-Hellenistic interpreter we know of to have developed his reading of Plato’s Timaeus by indirectly answering Aristotle’s criticism of Plato and the Academics that a generated cosmos cannot be eternal.