Calcidius

Calcidius was the Latin scholar (fourth century) whose partial translation of, and commentary on, the Timaeus carried Platonic cosmology into the Latin Middle Ages — a time when almost all of Plato had otherwise fallen silent in the West.

For centuries his version was the chief window through which the Latin world glimpsed the Timaeus: its world-soul, its mathematics, its making of the cosmos by a divine craftsman. The commentary, steeped in Middle Platonic learning, transmitted a whole vocabulary of soul, fate, and the heavens to readers who could not reach the Greek.