[616d]
Its shape
was that of those in our world, but from his description we must conceive it
to be as if in one great whorl, hollow and scooped out, there lay enclosed,
right through, another like it but smaller, fitting into it as boxes that
fit into one another,1 and in like manner another, a third, and a fourth, and four
others, for there were eight of the whorls in all, lying within one another,
1 Cf. Burnet, Early Greek Philos. pp. 216-217 “In Plato's Myth of Er, which is certainly Pythagorean in its general character, we do not hear of spheres but of the ‘lips’ of concentric whorls fitted into one another like a nest of boxes . . . “ With 616-617 Cf. Laws 822 A-B, Tim. 36 D, Dante, Convivio, ii. 3. 5 ff. The names of the planets occur first in Epinomis 987 B-C.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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