The Nature of Time
It is ignorance to think time to be a measure or number of motion according to antecedent and subsequent, as Aristotle said, or what in motion is quantitative, as Speusippus did, or extension of motion and nothing else, as did some of the Stoics, defining it by an accident and not comprehending its essence and potency,
Pythagoras, when asked what time is, answered, the soul of the universe. For time is not an attribute or accident of any chance motion, but cause, potency and principle of that which holds together all the things that come to be, of the symmetry and order in which the nature of the whole universe, being animate, is in motion ; or rather, being motion and order itself and symmetry, it is called time.
In fact, the ancients even held that the essence of soul is number itself moving itself. Plato said that time had come to be simultaneously with heaven but there had been motion even before the generation of the heaven. Time there was not, however, for there was not order either or any measure or distinction but motion indeterminate, amorphous and unwrought matter, as it were, of time, but providence, when she took in tow and curbed matter withs shapes and motion with revolutions, simultaneously made of the former a universe and of the latter time. They are both semblances of god, the universe of his essence and time a semblance in motion of his eternity, even as in the realm of becoming the universe is god.
Commentary
With the modern notion of the space-time, it is easier to think of time as a constituent part of the universe, not just a measure of motion. Both time and space constitute and define the architecture of the universe, similarly they constitute and define the history of the world. In this sense, time and space would be governing principles, not merely attributes, of the universe.
Interestingly, Platonists assign a prominent role to the Sun, as the instrument of time, sovereign/overseer of the universe. This seems to echo the Book of Genesis, where the lights in the sky are said “to rule over the day and over the night”.
According to some Platonic philosophers, gods are identical to or immanent in the universe. If so, the gods would be subject to the same governing principles that govern the universe, i.e., they would be governed by space-time, just as human beings are.
References:
- Plutarch. Moralia Volume XIII. Part 1. Translated by Harold Frederick Cherniss. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976.