[25] Pæan is a song of rejoicing, which was sung at festivals and on other occasions, in honour of Apollo, for having slain the serpent Python.
[26] A kind of harp beaten with sticks.
[27] In the original ουρανιον ζωον a celestial animal; but as Callicratidas is here speaking of the Demiurgus, or artificer of the universe, who is an intellectual god, for ουρανιον I read νοερον. For the Demiurgus is the maker, and not one of the celestial gods. But he is called an animal, as being the cause of life to all things. Thus, too, Aristotle, in the 12th book of his Metaphysics, says, “that God is an animal eternal and most excellent.”
[28] This Perictyone is different from her who was the mother of Plato.
[29] In this extract no mention whatever is made of the harmony of a woman; for it wholly consists of the duty of children to their parents.
[30] και νοσῳ is omitted in the original, but ought, as it appears to me, to be inserted.
[31] It is well observed by Olympiodorus, on the Phædo of Plato, “that the soul is not punished by divinity through anger but medicinally; and that by eternity of punishment we must understand punishment commensurate with the soul’s partial period; because souls that have committed the greatest offences cannot be sufficiently purified in one period.”
[32] For φρονεειν in this place, which is evidently erroneous, I read φθονεειν.
[33] The whole of this extract is to be found in the fourth book of Plato’s Laws. (See tom. viii. p. 187, and 188, of the Bipont edition.) But there is occasionally some little difference between the text of Plato and that of Aristoxenus, as the critical reader will easily discover. Neither Fabricius nor the editors of Stobæus have noticed the source of this extract.
[34] The whole of this extract is taken from the eleventh book of Plato’s Laws, but what is there said is here somewhat amplified.