Diotimos Reading Desk

Tap the page, move to the top or bottom edge, swipe down, or press Tab to reveal reading controls. Use the arrow keys or swipe sideways to turn pages.

← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

Reading language

Book I Chapter 49

37.9 · Ascent and descent

Accordingly, the works of universal and more divine souls are unmixed because of the purity of their substance; those of souls in matter and particular souls are no longer undefiled in the same way. The works of souls ascending and being released from becoming are henceforth freed from bodies, whereas those of descending souls are entangled and interwoven with them in many ways.¹⁴⁶³

37.10 · Luminous vehicles and solid bodies

Souls borne upon luminous pneumas, and easily bringing about through them whatever they wish, manifest their own works from above without trouble. But the works inserted into more solid bodies and held within them become in some measure imbued with the nature of those bodies.¹⁴⁶⁴

37.11 · What turns toward what

The works of universal souls turn the things they govern toward themselves, whereas those of divided souls are themselves turned toward the things of which they take care.¹⁴⁶⁵

37.12 · Functions of the composite

On another principle for distinguishing these same matters, the Peripatetic opinion assigns the works of soul solely to the living being, the composite. [Plato, however, attaches them primarily to soul and only then imparts them to the composite.]¹⁴⁶⁶

37.13 · Soul prior to nature

Plato and Pythagoras, by setting soul’s substance above nature and making it generative of nature, give it works prior to and more honorable than nature. They do not make soul receive its rule from nature; they suppose that soul itself directs its own activities from itself and about itself. Whatever noble and excellent motions in it surpass nature, they set apart in their own right.¹⁴⁶⁷

37.14 · Unity, conflict, and harmony

There are, moreover, many disagreements among the Platonists themselves. Some, such as Plotinus and Porphyry, bring the forms and parts of life and its operations into a single order and form. Others, such as Numenius, draw them into conflict. Others harmonize them out of conflicting elements, as do the followers of Atticus and Plutarch. These last say that disorderly and discordant motions exist beforehand, and that the motions which order and arrange them enter subsequently. In this way they weave concord from both;¹⁴⁶⁸

37.15 · Causes of activities leading downward

the cause of activities leading downward being, according to Plotinus, primary otherness; according to Empedocles, the [first] flight from the god; according to Heraclitus, rest in the midst of change; according to the Gnostics, derangement or deviation; and according to Albinus, the mistaken judgment of free choice.¹⁴⁶⁹

37.16 · Evil arising from external attachments

Others, in turn, disagree with these accounts and attach evil to soul in one way or another through things that adhere to it from outside: Numenius and Cronius often derive it from matter; these same thinkers, and Harpocration, sometimes derive it from bodies; Plotinus and Porphyry usually derive it from nature and irrational life.¹⁴⁷⁰

37.17 · Human activities and degrees of imperfection

According to Aristotle, these things are distinguished separately in the human sphere by forms of life and other defining criteria. According to the Stoics, such operations of life are apportioned in ever less complete forms; and the further they proceed into irrationality, the more the inferior operations are carried toward incompleteness in comparison with the prior ones.¹⁴⁷¹

37.18 · Human and animal resemblances

But as I have heard from certain Platonists, such as Porphyry and many others, human operations become like those of beasts, and those of animals like human operations, to the extent that things distinguished by different substances are naturally capable of resembling one another.¹⁴⁷²

38.1 · The measure of soul: unity and plurality

In the same work: on the measure of soul.

Some posit one substance of soul in number, yet hold that it becomes multiple through relations and assignments, as Amelius thinks, or through inspirations from the universal soul, as the Orphics say;¹⁴⁷³

38.2 · Returning multiplicity to unity

then, drawing back from the multiplicity of the whole to the one soul that has laid aside its relations and its assignments to another, and releasing it from division among its participants, as the distinction among those participants is dissolved, they preserve it whole and everywhere the same. They give it one substance, bounded by unity.¹⁴⁷⁴

38.3 · Infinitely many worlds and souls

Others think that, in infinitely many worlds, as the followers of Democritus and Epicurus suppose, from infinitely many atoms coming together by chance * * souls are constituted from elements of this kind. In accordance with their own premises, they declare the souls to be infinite in number.¹⁴⁷⁵

38.4 · Endless generation and transformation

Those who generate souls from seeds, each capable of sowing many more, leave infinity always in the process of coming-to-be, since this generative process goes on forever and nowhere stops. Those who produce many living beings and many lives by transformation from one living being that perishes conceive an unlimited multitude of souls through continuous transformation and the unceasing generation that succeeds it: the multitude always becomes greater.¹⁴⁷⁶

1463.The continuing infinitives develop the distinctions already under discussion. The passage now adds the direction of a soul’s movement, ascent or descent, to its rank and relation to matter. The English repeats “works” to keep clear that the immediate subject is what souls do, even though the descriptions of ascent and descent belong to the souls themselves.

1464.Augoeidē pneumata are luminous or radiant pneumas, subtle vehicles upon which souls are carried. Pneuma retains the sense of breath or a subtle bodily medium. The opening Greek is compressed, beginning with the works and then speaking of manifesting “their own works”; the English makes the souls the subject of that first clause for clarity. The contrast with solid bodies is retained without adding a separate theory of these vehicles.

1465.The same verb, epistrephein, appears first actively and then in a passive or middle form. The contrast concerns the direction of dependence: the higher activity draws what it governs toward itself, while divided activity is directed toward its objects of care. The English keeps the works as the subject of this continuing sequence.

1466.The entire sentence about Plato is bracketed in the edition. The apparatus explains Usener’s deletion of it as a learned reader’s marginal summary of what follows. It is retained and translated within brackets, rather than silently treated as part of the undisputed text. To koinon again denotes the composite shared by soul and body.

1467.Hyperphyēs here means above nature within the stated ordering of soul and nature. Archesthai is taken as “be ruled,” in contrast with exēgeisthai, “direct” or “lead,” rather than simply “begin.” The source prints rough-breathed contracted reflexives in “from itself” and “about itself,” but a smooth-breathed form in the final kath’ auta; those forms are preserved. Priority and honor concern rank in this account.

1468.The report distinguishes three accounts: unity, conflict, and a harmony formed from prior conflict. “These last” refers to the group around Atticus and Plutarch. The source cites Numenius, fragment 49 in Thedinga’s edition; this is the edition’s reference system, not a newly verified modern numbering. The following causal catalogue begins with a loose grammatical transition.

1469.The English moves the causal phrase forward to make the series of genitives readable. The source compares Plotinus, Enneads IV.8.7, and gives older fragment references for Empedocles and Heraclitus; these are reported formulations, not newly introduced direct quotations. Wachsmuth rejects “first” before flight, and both languages retain the brackets. The unusual adjective katagōgōn is translated “leading downward”; its form was questioned by Heeren, but it remains in the print. Autexousion concerns self-determination or free choice.

1470.The unfinished genitive construction is made into an independent English sentence. Its contrast is with the preceding causes of downward activity. The qualifications “often,” “sometimes,” and “usually” are all retained: the author does not assign each thinker one invariable explanation. Matter, bodies, nature, and irrational life remain distinct proposed sources rather than interchangeable terms.

1471.The Aristotle sentence is compressed: “these things” resumes the activities and distinctions under discussion, without supplying a specific list. The Stoic comparison is also difficult. “Further into irrationality” gives the contextual sense of prosōterō tēs alogias provisionally; the genitive construction could otherwise suggest “beyond irrationality.” The repeated contrast between greater and lesser completeness guides the translation, while the Greek is left unchanged.

1472.The first-person report belongs to the excerpt’s author. It concerns a reciprocal resemblance of operations, qualified by the difference of the substances involved. It should therefore not be turned into an unqualified claim of identity between human and animal souls. The repeated “operations” in English supplies the noun understood from the preceding discussion.

1473.The heading continues the work attributed to Iamblichus as On the Soul. “Measure” concerns the unity, number, and possible infinitude of souls. The text adopts Wachsmuth’s correction plēthyousan, making soul itself become multiple. Katataxeis are placements or assignments to an order; epipnoiai suggests inspirations or breathings into recipients. “Universal soul” renders hē holē, the whole soul, without adding a new named source.

1474.The participles continue the subject of the preceding unit. The difficult anascheontes is rendered provisionally “drawing back”: the apparatus expects the sense of restraining or contracting multiplicity and discusses several repairs, none adopted here. The printed apothemenēn agrees with soul. The argument removes divisions associated with participants while retaining the identity of the whole soul; it does not state that a spatially extended substance is being compressed.

1475.The asterisks preserve Wachsmuth’s marked gap. His apparatus supposes that a participle referring to the worlds has been lost, unless the preceding participle should instead be changed. The English leaves the break visible and does not invent the missing clause. The repeated phrase “from elements of this kind” remains in the print although Heeren deleted it; it is retained in both languages.

1476.Two kinds of continuing increase are distinguished: generation from seeds and transformation following the destruction of a living being. The first explicitly locates infinity in an ongoing process. The second describes a multitude without a terminating limit. The final phrase about becoming ever greater is retained although the apparatus records Heeren’s deletion of it.