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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

Reading language

Book I Chapter 21

9 Hermes: Comets as heralds

There is another kind, Tat, the so-called comets. They appear at the appointed occasion and become invisible again after a short time, neither rising nor setting nor dissolving. They become visible messengers and heralds of general events that are about to occur. Their region lies below the circle of the sun.⁶⁶⁴

9 Hermes: Appearances in the quarters

Whenever something is about to happen to the world, these appear ⟨and⟩, after appearing for a few days, pass again beneath the sun’s circle and remain invisible. ⟨Some⟩ appear in the east, others in the north, others in the southwest, and others in the south. We have called them diviners. Such is the nature of the stars.⁶⁶⁵

9 Hermes: A bracketed distinction

[Stars differ from star-groups. Stars are those borne aloft in heaven; star-groups are those embedded in the body of heaven and carried along with it, twelve of which we have named zodiacal signs.]⁶⁶⁶

9 Hermes: From understanding to vision

Whoever has not remained ignorant of these things can understand God precisely; and, if one may venture to say so, can even behold him in direct vision and, having beheld him, become blessed.

⟨TAT⟩ Truly blessed, father, is the one who has beheld him.⁶⁶⁷

9 Hermes: Preparing the soul

⟨HERMES⟩ But it is impossible, my child, for someone in a body to attain this good fortune. One must train one’s soul beforehand here, so that when it arrives there, where it is permitted to behold, it may not lose its way. Those who are lovers of the body could never behold the vision of the beautiful and good. What beauty there is, my child, in that which has neither shape nor color nor body!⁶⁶⁸

9 Hermes: Beauty without body

⟨TAT⟩ Could anything be beautiful apart from these, father?

⟨HERMES⟩ God alone, my child; or rather, that which is something greater: the name of God.⁶⁶⁹

664.Komētai means “long-haired” stars, hence comets. The dialogue distinguishes them from the dissolving lights below the moon and attributes a prophetic function to them. Apotelesmata, “events” or “outcomes,” carries the sense of effects brought to fulfillment in this astrological account.

665.The directions are named by winds. Lips conventionally denotes the southwest wind, so the printed libi is rendered “southwest,” even though this produces an uneven list of quarters. “Beneath” follows hypo here, as in the preceding description of the comets’ region.

666.Wachsmuth brackets this entire paragraph as an ancient gloss, following Usener. Both asteres and astra can ordinarily mean “stars”; “star-groups” makes the gloss’s special distinction readable in English, without imposing it on every occurrence of either word elsewhere in the volume.

667.The dialogue moves from knowledge of the celestial order to knowledge and vision of God. Autoptēs means seeing for oneself; the following exchange clarifies that the culminating vision is not ordinary bodily sight.

668.“Here” and “there” contrast preparation in embodied life with the soul’s eventual vision; the excerpt does not specify a physical location for “there.” Wachsmuth expressly takes the final sentence as an exclamation, not the question printed by earlier editors. That punctuation is followed here.

669.The closing phrase places the “name of God” after “that which is something greater.” Its compressed relation to the preceding answer remains difficult. The translation preserves the wording and stops at Stobaeus’s actual excerpt boundary, without supplying an explanation or extending the dialogue.