CHAPTER XXXIII.
But Parmenides begins to speak about it as follows: “Proceed therefore, and still farther consider this. What? We have said that the one participates of essence, so far as it is being. We have said so. And on this account the one being appears to be many.” But he completes his discourse about the first monad thus: “Are not three things odd, and two even? How should they not?” And about the second monad, as follows: “Hence there will be the evenly-even, and the oddly-odd, and the oddly-even, and the evenly-odd.” But he completes his discourse about the third and all the succeeding triad, as follows: “The one being therefore, is not only many, but it is likewise necessary that the one which is distributed by being should be many. Entirely so.” The first triad, therefore, of the intelligible, and at the same time, intellectual Gods, is through these things unfolded to us by Plato, and which possesses indeed, according to the first monad the first powers of numbers, I mean the odd and the even, and is completed through these principles which were in intelligibles occultly, viz. monad, duad, triad. But according to the second monad it possesses the second powers of numbers which subsist from these [i.e. from the first powers]. For the section of the forms of the even number, is allotted a second order. And the oddly-odd is subordinate to the first odd numbers. But according to the third monad, it possesses the more partial causes of divine numbers. Hence also, a separation into minute parts, infinity, all-perfect division, and unical and essential number are here; receiving indeed, the unical and the essential from unity and being, but the separation of number from difference. For every where difference is in the three monads, but it particularly unfolds the multitudes of numbers, according to the third monad, generates more partial Gods, and divides being in conjunction with the Gods. For neither is deity in these imparticipable, because unity is not separate from being, nor is essence destitute of deity, because neither is being deprived of the one.
Since however, all things are in each of the monads, but unically and intelligibly in the first, generatively, and according to the peculiarity of difference in the second, and intellectually, and according to being in the third;—this being the case, Plato when unfolding to us the first monad, very properly begins from the monad, and proceeds as far as to the triad; but when teaching about the second, he begins from evenly-even numbers, and proceeds as far as to those that are evenly-odd, both which belong to the nature of the even number. And when he adds the third monad, he begins from being, and recurs through difference to the one. For having shown that being participates of number, he from hence leads us round to unical number, employing the mode of conversion in the conception of this monad.