According to Plato’s Timaeus, a benevolent divine craftsman creates the cosmos, guided by his intellect’s reasoning and his ‘forethought’ or ‘providence’ (pronoia, Tim. 30b) about how to make it as good as possible. Similarly, in Laws 10, a wise god is said to exercise oversight over the cosmos, and to have devised laws of fate that promote virtue by assigning souls to positions in the cosmos according to their deserts. These and other Platonic texts were important sources for later Platonist theories of providence, according to which beneficent divine thought ensures the best possible arrangement and management of the cosmos.