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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

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Book I Chapter 6

17c ⟨Aëtius, Opinions⟩

Theophrastus further distinguishes, among the causes, the cause that operates through choice. He tends in some way toward the view that each thing’s nature is its fate; within it there is room for four different causes: choice, ⟨nature⟩, chance, and necessity.²³⁰ Epicurus: according to necessity, according to choice, according to chance.²³¹

18 Aristoxenus, Pythagorean Statements

On fortune they used to say the following. There is also a certain divine element in it, since an influence from the divine comes upon some people, for better or for worse; and it is plainly on this very account that some are fortunate and others unfortunate. This is most evident ⟨from the fact that⟩ people acting without forethought and at random often succeed, while those who deliberate beforehand and take thought to act correctly fail.²³²

18 Aristoxenus, continued

There is also another kind of fortune, according to which some people grow up naturally gifted and good at hitting the mark, while others lack aptitude and have the opposite nature. The former hit their target in whatever they undertake; the latter miss the mark, their thinking never moving accurately toward its aim but always falling into confusion. This misfortune is innate, not introduced from outside.²³³

19 Eurysus, On Fortune

It seems to me that fortune, and everything that happens by fortune, comes about not through some definite, underlying cause, but as something incidentally occurring and arising alongside certain other causes. Fortune, then, and what happens by fortune are neither nature and what nature produces, nor skill and a kind of human or divine intelligence. They are something that occurs incidentally alongside these, contrary to calculation and without being foreseen.²³⁴

19 Eurysus, continued

For there are two natures in this whole universe, opposed to one another. One is expressible, ordered, and rationally related to everything; the other is inexpressible, disordered, irrational, and without any arrangement. It is therefore immediately clear that what happens by fortune and spontaneous occurrence happens when the irrational and disorderly nature breaks into events. All [the] events that correspond to these universal natures are always divided into opposing classes, according to better and worse: some as though a beneficent, kingly nature were in control, others as though a maleficent, tyrannical nature were.²³⁵

230.The supplied “nature” completes the list of four. The report associates fate with each thing’s own nature while still allowing different kinds of cause a place within it.

231.This is an abbreviated list, without an expressed subject or verb. The translation preserves that form instead of supplying a complete doctrinal statement.

232.The heading presents Aristoxenus’s report of Pythagorean sayings. “Influence” renders epipnoia, literally a breathing upon someone. The argument appeals to success and failure that diverge from the care taken in planning.

233.The second explanation turns to differences of natural aptitude. Its repeated images of aiming and missing describe how thought reaches, or fails to reach, a practical objective. The contrast with an influence from outside belongs to the passage itself.

234.The Greek retains the passage’s Doric forms, including tycha for tychē. Its account begins by treating chance as incidental to other causes; the following paragraph connects such incidents with an irrational and disorderly nature.

235.“Expressible” and “inexpressible” render rhēta and arrhētos; their contrast accompanies the oppositions of order and disorder, reason and unreason. The political images distinguish beneficent rule from destructive domination. The Greek article marked for deletion is retained in square brackets on both sides.