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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

Reading language

Book I Chapter 1

Chapter 1

That God is the maker of existing things and governs the whole through the rational order of providence, and what his essence is.²⁸

1 Theodectes

It is fitting to make our beginning with the gods.

2 Euripides

Do you see this boundless aether high above, holding the earth about in its moist embrace? Regard it as Zeus; take this to be God.²⁹

3 Aratus

Let us begin with Zeus, whom we men never leave unspoken. Every street is full of Zeus, and every gathering place of men; the sea and harbors are full of him. Everywhere we all need Zeus. For we too are his offspring. Kindly toward mankind, he gives favorable signs and rouses the people to work, reminding them of their livelihood. He tells when the soil is best for oxen and mattocks, and when the seasons favor digging around the plants and sowing every seed.³⁰

4 ⟨Homer⟩

Zeus increases or diminishes men’s prowess as he wills, for he is mightiest of all.³¹

5 ⟨An unidentified tragic poet⟩

For God is the highest law for human beings.

6 ⟨An unidentified elegiac poet⟩

Zeus himself alone holds remedies for all things.³²

7 ⟨Homer⟩

Olympian Zeus himself allots prosperity to human beings, to good and bad alike, as he wills for each.

8 ⟨Homer⟩

It is easy for the gods who hold broad heaven either to exalt a mortal man or bring him low.³³

9 ⟨An unidentified poet⟩

Zeus, who governs the bounds of life and death.

10 Simonides

Without the gods no one has gained excellence: no city, no ⟨mortal⟩.³⁴

11 Menander

In silence God brings everything to completion.

12 Cleanthes (1)

Most glorious of immortals, many-named, almighty ever, Zeus, author of nature, steering all things by law, hail! It is right for every mortal to address you. For we are your offspring, alone of all mortal things that live and move upon the earth having received an “image of sound.”†³⁵ So I shall hymn you and sing forever of your might. This whole cosmos, wheeling around the earth, obeys you wherever you lead, and willingly submits to your rule. Such is the servant you hold in your unconquerable hands: the two-edged, fiery, ever-living thunderbolt; beneath its stroke all nature trembles.³⁶

12 Cleanthes (2)

With it you direct the common reason, which runs through all, mingling with the lights both great and small— …³⁷ so great are you, supreme king through all time. No deed is done upon the earth apart from you, divine one, nor in the divine vault of heaven, nor in the sea, except what bad men do in their own folly. Yet you know how to make what is uneven even, to bring order to disorder; what is hostile is friendly to you.³⁸ For you have fitted all things into one, good with bad, so that there is one reason for all, existing forever. The wicked among mortals flee from it and let it go— unhappy men who always long to possess good things, yet neither see nor hear the common law of God. If they obeyed it with understanding, their life would be good.

12 Cleanthes (3)

Instead, senseless, they rush, each toward a different evil: some driven by a bitter rivalry for reputation, some turning to profit with no sense of order, others to ease and the body’s pleasant pursuits; … they are carried this way and that toward different ends, eager that the very opposite of these things should come to pass.³⁹ But Zeus, giver of all, dark-clouded lord of thunder, rescue human beings from their wretched ignorance. Dispel it from the soul, Father, and grant us a share in the judgment on which you rely to govern all with justice, so that, honored by you, we may repay you with honor, continually singing of your works, as befits a mortal; for neither mortals nor gods have any greater prize than always, in justice, to hymn the common law.

13a ⟨An unidentified tragic poet⟩

When God wills it, everything turns out well.⁴⁰

13b ⟨An unidentified tragic poet⟩

What could not happen if God ⟨indeed⟩ gave Fortune leave?

13c ⟨Sophocles⟩

With the god’s leave, each of us both laughs and laments.⁴¹

13d ⟨An unidentified poet⟩

The divine brings forth gifts of good fortune.

13e ⟨An unidentified tragic poet⟩

It is Zeus who sends our daily sustenance.

13f ⟨An unidentified tragic poet⟩

For without God not a single man has strength.

13g ⟨An unidentified tragic poet⟩

Through divine providence nature brought forth everything.

13h ⟨An unidentified poet⟩

God alone is truly great among mortals.

14 ⟨Homer⟩

The gods too, looking like strangers from abroad, come in all manner of forms and go about the cities, watching human arrogance and respect for law.⁴²

15 ⟨Homer⟩

The mind of men upon the earth is shaped by the day the father of men and gods brings upon them.⁴³

16 ⟨An unidentified poet⟩

God is present everywhere and sees everywhere.

17 ⟨Euripides⟩

For no mortal prospers apart from God or rises to greater things. As for mortal foresight without the gods, I bid it farewell.⁴⁴

18 ⟨Archilochus⟩

Glaucus, son of Leptines, the temper of mortal men changes with whatever day Zeus brings upon them.

19 ⟨Euripides, Thyestes⟩

If God wills it, you could sail even on a wicker mat.⁴⁵

20 ⟨An unidentified tragic poet⟩

For mortal human beings, the gods are a refuge.

21 ⟨An unidentified tragic poet⟩

God comes in pursuit of transgressions too; from him those who have fared badly take a suppliant’s branch, and escape their distress.⁴⁶

22 ⟨An unidentified tragic poet⟩

Now my heart is divided no longer; ⟨the saying is⟩ clear: for mortals Zeus cuts across every expectation, bringing down what seems likely, and raising up what no one expects.⁴⁷

28.The chapter heading frames the excerpts that follow. Dēmiourgos means a maker or craftsman; it does not by itself specify creation from nothing. “Rational order” renders logos in the phrase concerning providence. The singular “God” in the heading coexists with poems speaking of Zeus and the gods. The anthology preserves these different voices.

29.Aether is the high, bright region of the sky. The verse identifies the enclosing heaven with Zeus. Wachsmuth cites it as a fragment of Euripides from an unidentified play (Nauck 935); the anthology’s context should not be mistaken for the missing dramatic context.

30.Aratus, Phaenomena 1-9. The poem introduces its account of the sky and its signs through Zeus’s provision for human labor. Gyroō means to dig around or make a circular trench around a plant; “planting trees” alone would lose the particular action named here.

31.Iliad 20.242-243. Aretē here is prowess or excellence, in the poem’s martial setting; rendering it automatically as moral “virtue” would obscure that context. The author heading is supplied in Wachsmuth’s text.

32.Wachsmuth leaves this verse anonymous and discusses an attribution to Simonides that he regards as conjectural. The generic Greek headings for anonymous excerpts 5, 6, and 9 are editorial translations of the Latin labels in his edition. Pharmaka here is rendered “remedies.”

33.Excerpts 7 and 8 are Odyssey 6.188-189 and 16.211-212. The anthology brings them together under its theological heading, although they belong to different scenes in Homer.

34.The last word is supplied in Wachsmuth from the parallel quotation in Theophilus, To Autolycus II.8. “Excellence” retains the broader sense of aretē here; the city-and-individual pairing makes “martial prowess” too narrow as a default.

35.Wachsmuth marks ēchou mimēma, literally “an image or imitation of sound,” as corrupt. His apparatus records alternatives involving reason, mind, or a share, and connects the passage with human speech. The English retains a literal rendering of the doubtful words rather than silently adopting a conjecture. The dagger marks this unresolved difficulty.

36.This is the opening of Cleanthes’s hymn to Zeus. The thunderbolt becomes the instrument directing the reason common to the world in the next lines. In erriga⟨sin⟩ the edition supplies the verb’s ending; English cannot display that supplement at an equivalent word boundary.

37.The dots reproduce a gap marked in the Greek edition. “Common reason” translates koinos logos: the rational order described here as passing through and unifying everything. “Lights” renders the printed phaessi.

38.The paired terms perissa/artia can mean irregular/regular or odd/even; akosma/kosmein, disorder/to order. “Uneven/even” preserves something of the first pairing. The claim about wrongdoing is retained without supplying a reconciliation between human folly and divine government. The supplied connective te is absorbed into the English coordination.

39.The source marks missing text at the beginning of the line about being carried toward different ends. The next line is also difficult: the printed genesthai says “should come to pass,” while Wachsmuth asks whether penesthai, “to lack,” should be read. “These things” has an uncertain reference in the damaged sequence. The translation follows the printed text. The supplied particle men is also absorbed into the English coordination.

40.The subdivisions 13a–h belong to Wachsmuth’s edition. Generic Greek headings for unidentified authors translate his Latin labels throughout this sequence. Angle brackets retain their supplied status.

41.Sophocles, Ajax 383. “With the god’s leave” expresses syn tō theō, literally “with the god.” The line places both contrary fortunes under divine power; it does not promise uninterrupted happiness.

42.Odyssey 17.485–487. The contrast is between hybris, overbearing or abusive conduct, and eunomiē, good order or observance of law.

43.Odyssey 18.135–136. “Day” includes the circumstances or fortune the day brings. Compare the saying attributed to Archilochus in excerpt 18.

44.The edition supplies the attribution to Euripides and cites an unidentified fragment (Nauck 1014). Its apparatus notes that a parallel source attributes the first line to him. The assembled fragment does not establish a lost dramatic context.

45.Rhips is a woven or plaited object: the saying imagines an utterly inadequate craft succeeding through divine favor. The assignment to Euripides’s Thyestes is supplied by the editor from parallel testimony, as the brackets indicate.

46.The construction of the first line and its relation to the following two are uncertain. The translation takes erchetai … meta as pursuit of offenses and hothen as referring back to God. Wachsmuth changes the transmitted “safety” to hiketērian, a suppliant’s branch, and discusses disagreement over whether these lines belong together. The resulting image is difficult; the English preserves it.

47.The Greek says literally that Zeus “cuts everything crosswise” for mortals. The next pair, “what seems likely” and “the unexpected,” supplies the sense of overturned expectations. The words “the saying is” are an editorial supplement.