Of the word ΕΙ engraven over the gate of Apollo's temple at Delphi (16-20)

After what I have spoken to you, I said, Yet one short word to those about Nicander,

I’ll sing to men of skill.

It is so, said Nicander; but the cause is not to be told to others.

Well then, said I smiling, till such time as the God admits us, being consecrated, to know the truth, this also shall be added to those things that have been spoken concerning the quinary. This end, as I remember, had the discourse of the arithmetical and mathematical encomiums of E.

But Ammonius, who had himself also bestowed not the worst part of his time in mathematical philosophy, was delighted with what had been spoken, and said: It is not meet too eagerly to oppose these young men about these things, except by saying that every one of the numbers will afford you, if you desire to praise it, no small subject of commendations. And what need is there to speak of others? For the septener, sacred to Apollo, will take up a day’s time, before one can in words run through all its powers. We shall therefore pronounce, that the Sages do at once contest both against common law and a long series of time, if, throwing the septenary out of its seat, they consecrate the quinary to the God, as being more suitable to him. I am therefore of opinion, that this syllable signifies neither number, order, nor connection, nor any other of the deficient parts, but is a self-perfect appellation and salutation of the God, which brings the speaker to the conception of the power of the God at the very moment of uttering it. For the God in a manner calls upon every one of us who comes hither, with this salutation, Know thyself, which is nothing inferior to All hail. And we again, answering the God, say to him Εἶ, thou art; attributing to him the true, unfeigned, and sole appellation of being, as agreeing to him alone.

For we indeed do not at all essentially partake of being; but every mortal nature, being in the midst between generation and corruption, exhibits an appearance, and an obscure and weak opinion of itself. And if you fix your thought, desiring to comprehend it,—as the hard grasping of water, by the pressing and squeezing together that which is fluid, loses that which is held,—so when reason pursues too evident a perception of any one of the things subject to passion and change, it is deceived and led away, partly towards its generation and partly towards its corruption, being able to apprehend nothing either remaining

What then is it that has really a being? That which is eternal, unbegotten, and incorruptible, to which no

But God, we must say, is, and he is not in any time, but in eternity, which is immovable without time, and free from inclination, in which there is nothing first, or last, or newer; but being one, it has filled its eternal duration with one only now; and that only is which is really according to this, of which it cannot be said, that it either was or shall be, or that it begins or shall end. Thus ought those who worship to salute and invocate this Eternal Being, or else indeed, as some of the ancients have done, with this expression Εἶ ἴν, Thou art one. For the Divinity is not many, as every one of us is made of ten thousand differences in affections, being a confused heap, filled with all diversities. But that which is must be one, as one must have a being. But diversity, which is esteemed to be different from being, goes forth to the generation of that which