Timaeus

Timaeus, an astronomer from southern Italy, explains how the universe came to be: a divine craftsman, looking to eternal patterns, shaped the world as a living, ordered body with a soul. He builds the elements out of geometric shapes, describes time as a moving image of eternity, and goes on to the human body and its diseases. The introduction also tells, for the first time, the story of lost Atlantis.

For more than a thousand years this was the dialogue of Plato that medieval Europe knew best, through a Latin translation, and it shaped the medieval picture of the cosmos. It is hard going in places, but read slowly, it shows philosophy and science before they became separate subjects.

Plato (c. 428–348 BC) was born into an aristocratic family in Athens and became the devoted student of Socrates. After his teacher's trial and execution in 399 BC, he travelled, returned to Athens and founded the Academy, a school that lasted for centuries and counted Aristotle among its students.

Almost all his writings are dialogues in which Socrates questions his fellow citizens about justice, love, knowledge and the soul, from the Apology to the Symposium and the Republic. Known to Arab philosophers as Aflatun, he was read closely by al-Farabi and Ibn Rushd, and Western philosophy has been called a series of footnotes to him.