3. Lamprias quoted the traditional account, that the Wise Men, who were properly five, not seven, met here, and, after discussion, set up the letter E, as a numeral, for a protest against the intrusion of a sixth and seventh into their company. The ancient wooden E is still called that of the Wise Men.
4. Ammonius smiled, knowing Lamprias to be capable of improvising a ‘traditional view’. One of the company mentioned a Chaldaean visitor, who had lately talked much nonsense about the number seven. The officials of the temple know no view except that the letter is significant as a word (‘if’ or ‘whether’).
5. Nicander confirmed this. ‘If’ is used with us in the formula of questions put to the god, or, as ‘if only’, in prayers.
6. Theon puts in a plea for ‘Dialectic’, i.e. Logic. ‘If’ is the conjunction which holds together the conjunctive proposition or syllogism, the special prerogative of human intellect. Hercules, in his early days, mocked at Logic and the E, and then removed the tripod by force.
7. Eustrophus: ‘Bravo, Theon, a Hercules, all but the lion’s skin!’ He appeals to the devotees of Mathematics to say a word for the arithmetical virtues of the number five (a thrust at Plutarch himself, who had yet to learn Academic moderation in his zeal for Mathematics).
8-16. Plutarch loq.:
8. Yes, five has virtues: 5 = 2 + 3, the first even added to the first odd. It is called ‘Marriage’. After multiplication it reproduces itself, and so symbolizes the ‘Conflagration’ and ‘Renovation’ of Heraclitus (and the Stoics),
9. Which relate to the legends of Apollo and also of Dionysus.
10. Five, when multiplied, gives alternately five itself and the perfect ten. It is also essential in harmonies.
11. Plato holds that, if there are more worlds than one, there may be five, and no more. Aristotle that there is one world composed of five elements, the five regular solids.