Book 3
1.9
Some authorities, amongst them Satyrus, say that he wrote to Dion in Sicily instructing him to purchase three Pythagorean books from Philolaus for 100 minae. For they say he was well off, having received from Dionysius over eighty talents. This is stated by Onetor in an essay upon the theme, Whether a wise man will make money. Further, he derived great assistance from Epicharmus the Comic poet, for he transcribed a great deal from him, as Alcimus says in the essays dedicated to Amyntas, of which there are four. In the first of them he writes thus:
1.9
It is evident that Plato often employs the words of Epicharmus.The genuineness of these fragments is doubted by Wilamowitz, Rohde, and others; see Wilamowitz, Platon, ii. 28 note 2, and on the other side Diels, note ad loc. (Frag. der Vorsok. 13 B. 1-5). Just consider. Plato asserts that the object of sense is that which never abides in quality or quantity, but is ever in flux and change.
1.10
The assumption is that the things from which you take away number are no longer equal nor determinate, nor have they quantity or quality. These are the things to which becoming always, and being never, belongs. But the object of thought is something constant from which nothing is subtracted, to which nothing is added. This is the nature of the eternal things, the attribute of which is to be ever alike and the same. And indeed Epicharmus has expressed himself plainly about objects of sense and objects of thought.
