  Such an argument shows that Numenius has strong views about the ontological status of matter, the basis, he supposes, of all bodies (fr. 4b.25). In his 4th c. CE Latin commentary on the Timaeus Calcidius presents a long discussion about the status of matter (In Timaeum p. 297.7-301.20 Waszink), claiming that this is based on Numenius (fr. 52.2). If Numenius did elaborate on the status of matter along the lines suggested in Calcidius, that must be because it was crucial to do so for his argument about what qualifies as being and also how the world has come into existence.  Interpreting the Timaeus literally, Numenius maintains that matter has never come into existence but is co-eternal with, and yet distinct from, God (fr. 52.7–14; cf. Alcinous, Didascalicus ch. 12, 166.15–30 Hermann), unlimited (apeiros), indefinite (aoristos), without form and quality (fr. 52.6–14, 44–45; cf. Antiochus in Cicero, Academica II.27, Alcinous, Didascalicus 163.6 Hermann). Numenius like other Platonists of his age follows Aristotle in identifying Plato's receptacle in the Timaeus with matter, which Aristotle characterizes as non being (Physics 192a3-14), formless and qualiteless (De caelo 306b17-19; cf. Timaeus 50d7). This lack of form of matter amounts to lack of reason for Numenius (alogos; fr. 4a.1–4). In the same vein already Plutarch (De Iside 374C f.) identified matter with Poverty (penia that is informed by Abundance (poros), giving a cosmological twist in Plato's myth in the Symposium (203B f.). Since matter is lacking reason, Numenius considers it in itself disordered (ataktos) and unknowable (fr. 4.4–5). Because disorder and division were taken to be essential characteristics of matter in the earlier Platonist tradition, matter had been identified with the indefinite “dyad” that is referred to in Aristotle's account of Plato's metaphysics (cf. Plato, Parmenides 149d2; see Baltes 1975, 255–6). This was widely maintained among the Pythagorean Platonists (Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians 10.261), including Eudorus (Simpicius, In Physica 181.7–30, 281.5) and Moderatus (ibid. 231.8–9; see Frede 1987, 1052). Numenius follows precisely this line of thought (frs. 11.15, 52.6). And since for Numenius disorder amounts to badness, he considers matter to be bad, the source and cause of all instances of badness and disorder in the world (fr. 52.37–9, 63–64). Numenius might appear to maintain that disordered matter (cf. Timaeus 30a) is animated by an evil world soul (fr. 52.64–5), as might be suggested in Laws 10 (896e) (cf. Plutarch, De animae procreatione in Timaeo 1014D). However, Calcidius' text, which preserves this view of Numenius, suggests instead that matter is not animated by, but somehow simply is the evil world soul, that is, matter has life of its own (fr.  52.44–47, 66–67; see Baltes 1975, 247–248 but also Deuse, 1983, 68–73, Phillips 2002, 237).  This is presumably because a soul, if it animates anything, cannot be really evil in doing so, as it is the principle of life. And life is one kind of order and thus good (see Waszink 1966, 68–9, Baltes 1975, 250–251, Frede 1987, 1053). The fact that for Numenius matter is bad, however, does not necessarily entail that the material world is also bad, as Dillon (1977, 369) suggests, associating Numenius with the Gnostic idea of an evil world. It actually seems that quite the opposite is the case: for Numenius the world is good because it is ordered due to the dominance of the highest principle, the Good.