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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

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Book I Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Fortune and spontaneous occurrence

On fortune or spontaneous occurrence.²¹⁰

1a Menander, The Supposititious Child

Stop talking of intelligence: human intelligence counts for nothing. The power of Fortune (whether it is a divine spirit or mind) is what steers ⟨everything⟩, turns it, and preserves it; mortal foresight is smoke and nonsense. Believe me, and you will not blame me: whatever we make or say or do is Fortune’s work; our names are merely written on it.²¹¹

1b ⟨An unidentified comic poet⟩

Fortune steers everything. It alone we should call intelligence, providence, and God, unless one simply delights in empty names.²¹²

2 ⟨An unidentified comic poet⟩

I see everything flowing and changing together with fortune.

3 ⟨Archilochus⟩

Fortune and fate, Pericles, give a man everything.²¹³

4 ⟨An unidentified comic poet⟩

Yet what happens of itself is a kind of council that hits the mark.²¹⁴

5 ⟨An unidentified comic poet⟩

What happens of itself is certainly a spiteful thing in life.

6 ⟨An unidentified tragic poet⟩

Fortune, who ⟨always⟩ watches over all mortal and divine affairs, and assigns to each of us the [portion] that accords with our worth.²¹⁵

7 Chaeremon, from Achilles the Slayer of Thersites

Mortal affairs are fortune’s doing, not sound deliberation.

8 Philemon

Each person is driven by a different fortune.²¹⁶

9 Menander, The Woman of Cnidus

What happens of itself is, it seems, a god, and brings many unforeseen affairs safely through.²¹⁷

10 Menander, The Supposititious Child

I think one would be right to judge that foresight is not the cause of every good: there are occasions when what happens of itself is useful.²¹⁸

11 Philemon, The Man Who Starves Himself

Now I know precisely what fortune is: it is not one, nor does it exist beforehand. Rather, with our bodies, as soon as we are born, fortune too comes to us, born together with the body; one person cannot take another person’s fortune.²¹⁹

12 ⟨Euripides⟩

We think the fortunate man is wise as well.²²⁰

13 ⟨An unidentified lyric poet⟩

Fortune, beginning and end of humankind, you sit upon wisdom’s seats and have set honor upon mortal works. From you comes more good than evil, and grace shines about your golden wing; what is given in your balance becomes most blessed. Amid pain you saw a way out of helplessness and brought bright light into darkness, foremost of the gods.²²¹

14a Menander, The Hairnet

What happens of itself helps us, though it is unseen.

14b ⟨The same author, The Nurse⟩

Affairs flow of themselves toward what benefits you, even while you sleep, or again toward its opposite.²²²

15 Chaeremon

Fortune conquers everything and turns it around; no one wins unless Fortune wills it.

16 Aeschylus

Fortune is tyrant over all the gods; these other names are attached in vain, for she alone intends to govern everything.²²³

17a ⟨Aëtius, Opinions⟩: Aristotle

Aristotle says that spontaneous occurrence differs from chance. What happens by chance belongs also to spontaneous occurrence and lies entirely within the sphere of action; spontaneous occurrence, however, is not necessarily by chance, since it also takes place outside action. Chance belongs to rational beings, whereas spontaneous occurrence belongs to rational beings, irrational beings, and inanimate things alike. Chance accompanies deliberate choice, whereas spontaneous occurrence takes place without choice. The former occurs when something is already in place; the latter without a rational plan, with nothing outside having willed it.²²⁴

17a ⟨Aëtius⟩, continued: Plato

Plato declared chance to be an incidental cause in things not chosen, an accompaniment and a coincidence, and an altered relation of choice with respect to the intention directed toward the end.²²⁵

17a ⟨Aëtius⟩, continued: Aristotle

Aristotle calls chance an incidental cause, unstable and obscure, in events arising from an impulse for the sake of some end. Two underlying conditions belong to the principles, order and disorder; and there are four causes in the universe, through which everything is constituted: intellect, nature, necessity, and chance.²²⁶ Each of these is twofold, one form operating in human affairs and the other in other things. Some things come about invariably, others for the most part, and others differently at different times. Fate is not a cause, but a certain mode of causation, somehow incidental to the ordered operations of necessity.²²⁷

17b Plato, Laws IV (709a)

No human being ever legislates anything; chances and misfortunes of every sort, falling upon us in every way, legislate everything for us. A war may force its way in, overthrow constitutions, and change laws; or the distress of severe poverty may do so. Diseases too compel many innovations, when plagues strike and when unfavorable seasons often persist over many years. Someone who foresaw all this might begin by saying just what I said a moment ago: no mortal legislates anything, and practically all human affairs are matters of chance. One could say all this about seafaring, navigation, medicine, and generalship, and seem to be speaking well. Yet, in these very same matters, it is also possible to say the following and speak well.²²⁸

17b Plato, continued

“What is that?” “That God steers all things and, together with God, fortune and opportunity steer all human affairs. We should take a gentler view and concede that skill must follow these as a third factor. For, in the critical moment of a storm, I would reckon the assistance of navigational skill, as against its absence, a great advantage. Would you not?”²²⁹ “Yes.” “Then would not the same account hold in the other cases too?”

210.Tychē can mean a person’s fortune, personified Fortune, or chance as a cause. To automaton means what happens of itself, without an intention directed at that outcome. The translation uses “spontaneous occurrence” in the technical discussions and “what happens of itself” in less formal passages. Excerpt 17a explicitly distinguishes the two terms.

211.The title Hypobolimaios refers to a child passed off as someone else’s. Pronoia here is mortal foresight, contrasted with Fortune’s governing power. The final image treats people as the names attached to deeds whose real author is Fortune; it is a comic speaker’s claim, not necessarily Menander’s own doctrine.

212.Wachsmuth treats these lines as a separate excerpt by an unidentified comic poet. His apparatus rejects their earlier attachment to Menander’s Hypobolimaios without sufficient evidence. The supplied Latin descriptive heading is rendered in Greek and English, as in the following anonymous excerpts.

213.The name Archilochus is supplied in the base edition. Pericles is the person addressed within the poem; the line does not identify him further.

214.Bouleutērion is a council chamber, used here as an image for deliberation; eustochon means successful in aiming. The joke gives deliberative skill to what happens without deliberation.

215.The excerpt is a description without a main verb. Wachsmuth prints merida, “portion,” in brackets as a suspected explanatory gloss; the English keeps it bracketed. The supplied “always” belongs to the editor’s reconstruction.

216.Daimonizetai suggests being possessed or driven by a divine power. The English preserves the force of being acted upon without importing a specific account of possession.

217.“Unforeseen” interprets aorata, literally “unseen,” in the context of events resolved without foresight. Wachsmuth prints Usener’s correction of a damaged reading, supported by a parallel source.

218.This more qualified saying grants foresight a role while denying that it accounts for every beneficial result. The English rearranges the opening construction to make its scope clear: “not” qualifies “every good.”

219.The passage gives each person a fortune that begins with bodily life. Prōiēn normally means “recently” or “the day before yesterday”; “beforehand” is a contextual reading here. Wachsmuth prints Bentley’s conjecture for manuscript prōtē, “first.” The line remains uncertain.

220.The supplied attribution is drawn by Wachsmuth from the scholia on Pindar, Nemean 1.13. The maxim distinguishes the appearance of wisdom that success confers from proof that wisdom caused it.

221.The source leaves this lyric poet unidentified, rejecting attempts to attach displaced author-headings to the hymn. Its favorable picture of Fortune belongs beside, rather than being reconciled with, the hostile or skeptical sayings elsewhere in the chapter. The text of several lines is reconstructed in the apparatus.

222.Wachsmuth supplies the author and play from a parallel excerpt elsewhere in Stobaeus. The second line qualifies the first: unaided events can be favorable or unfavorable.

223.The Aeschylean heading is retained as Wachsmuth assigns it, though his reference also records the fragment among anonymous tragic lines. The passage makes a claim about Fortune’s supremacy, not an editorial assertion about divine government.

224.The report treats chance as a narrower category within spontaneous occurrence. Chance accompanies a chosen action without making the accidental result itself an intended result. The final contrast is compressed: the Greek does not specify what is “already in place.” The apparatus compares Aristotle, Physics II.6.

225.The syntax of this report is uncertain. The translation follows Wachsmuth’s printed wording; his apparatus records a parallel text with “a coincidence of nature or choice.” The brief report should not be treated as a verbatim quotation from Plato.

226.The four causes listed in this report are intellect, nature, necessity, and chance. This is not the familiar Aristotelian classification into material, formal, efficient, and final causes.

227.The last sentence’s relation to the preceding account is difficult; the apparatus notes a disturbance at the end. “Mode of causation” renders tropos aitias, distinguishing a manner in which a cause operates from a further independent cause.

228.This argument first stresses how circumstances constrain human planning. The dialogue then qualifies it by making room for skilled action. Its two stages should be read together; the opening claim is not the excerpt’s final conclusion.

229.Kairos is the timely or critical occasion; technē is practiced expertise. The storm example gives skill a real role even where the sailor does not control the conditions. The Greek’s singular “steers” links the divine government and the accompanying factors in one construction.