20
But God is (if there be need to say so), and He exists for no fixed time, but for the everlasting ages which are immovable, timeless, and undeviating, in which there is no earlier nor later, no future nor past, no older nor younger; but He, being One, has with only one Now completely filled For ever; and only when Being is after His pattern is it in reality Being, not having been nor about to be, nor has it had a beginning nor is it destined to come to an end. Under these conditions, therefore, we ought, as we pay Him reverence, to greet Him and to address Him with the words, Thou art; or even, I vow, as did some of the men of old, Thou art One.
20
In fact the Deity is not Many, like each of us who is compounded of hundreds of different factors which arise in the course of our experience, a heterogenous collection combined in a haphazard way. But Being must have Unity, even as Unity must have Being. Now divergence from Unity, because of its differing from Being, deviates into the creation of that which has no Being. Wherefore the first of the god’s names is excellently adapted to him, and so are the second and third as well. He is Apollo, that is to say, denying the Many Cf. 354 b, 381 f, and 388 f, supra. and abjuring multiplicity; he is Ieius, as being One and One aloneIeius is doubtless derived from ἰή, a cry used in invoking Apollo, but Plutarch would derive it from ἴα, ἴης, an epic word meaning one. ; and Phoebus, Cf. 388 f and 421 c, infra. as is well known, is a name that the men of old used to give to everything pure and undefiled; even as the Thessalians, to this day, I believe, when their priests, on the prohibited days, are spending their time alone by themselves outside the temples, say that the priests are keeping Phoebus.
