[155] ἐπανόρθωσιν, “re-rectification”!
[156] What follows is from Plato’s Second Epistle, which is thought to have been written after Plato’s return from his third voyage to Syracuse, and is perhaps rather less suspect than the other Platonic epistles. Yet the chances of interpolation are so great that no stress can be laid on the genuineness of any particular passage.
[157] This passage alone is sufficient to make one doubtful as to the Platonic authorship. If Plato really wanted to keep his doctrine secret, the last thing he would have done would be to call the attention of the chance reader to the fact.
[158] Burges translates: “But about a second are the secondary things and about a third the third.”
[159] Nearly two pages are here omitted from the Epistle.
[160] Possibly an allusion to the Platonic theory that all learning is remembrance.
[161] Τὰ δὲ νῦν λεγόμενα Σωκράτους. “Said of him” or “said by him”? The passage is quoted by the Emperor Julian and by Aristides.
[162] So that Hippolytus’ attempt to show that Valentinus plagiarized from Plato resolves itself into an imaginative interpretation of a purposely obscure passage in an epistle which is only doubtfully assigned to Plato. That Valentinus like every one educated in the Greek learning was influenced by Plato is likely enough, but that there was any conscious borrowing of tenets is against probability.
[163] προαρχή τῶν ὅλων Αἰώνων.
[164] That Valentinus is said to have written psalms, see Tertullian, de Carne Christi, I, c. xvii, xx, t. ii, pp. 453, 457 (Oehl.).