Simplicius on Physics #7: Corollary on Place

Excerpt from J. O. Urmson, Simplicius: Corollaries on Place and Time, 1992.

From page 76 of the translation = page 642 of the edition:

"Perhaps this has already been said. But now it should be added to the above that there is a common conception of the whole of place which says that it is the determination of the position of each distinct thing among entities. The distinction is in relation either to the receptacle or to the container or to the ordering of the position of each in relation to the rest. All these are observable in both incorporeal and corporeal things. For the intelligible orderings were allotted to the different receptacles of the intelligible universe as different places. At any rate Orpheus says about him who regulates the differences of dwelling-places:

Seizing such a measure, he divided out the universe to gods and men.

And THERE the container (periochê) is often called place. That is why the Syrian Atargate is called the place (topos) of the gods, and Isis similarly called by the Egyptians, since they include in themselves the characteristics of many gods [διὸ καὶ τὴν Συρίαν Ἀταργάτην τόπον θεῶν καλοῦσιν καὶ τὴν Ἶσιν οἱ Αἰγύπτιοι, ὡς πολλῶν θεῶν ἰδιότητας περιεχούσας].

Plato calls that place in which the order of the intelligible forms is determined and distinguished in accordance with the order of the position of each towards the rest supramundane and intelligible. With the same signification we say that each number is allotted its proper place when the unit is first, the dyad second, and next the triad, and, as was previously said, the square numbers have their areas and others have others in due order. Also the soul is called the place of forms in accordance with this form of containment. Again, the special types of argument in dialectical proofs are called topics, such as that from opposites and those from similars and those from genera and species."