Diotimos Reading Desk

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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

Reading language

Book I Chapter 49

58.19 · An invitation to a beautiful story

“For if we should also tell a beautiful story, Simmias, it is worth hearing what the things upon the earth beneath heaven are like.”

“Indeed, Socrates,” Simmias said, “we would gladly hear this story.”¹⁷²³

58.20 · A many-colored globe

“Well then, my friend,” he said, “the account is that, first, the earth itself looks like this, if someone were to view it from above: like balls made of twelve pieces of hide, variegated and divided into colors. The colors here, which painters use, belong to these colors; but there the whole earth consists of such colors, and of colors far brighter and purer still.”¹⁷²⁴

58.21 · Purple, gold, and radiant white

“One part is purple and marvelous in beauty; another is golden; and whatever part is white is whiter than gypsum or snow. In the same way it is made up of the other colors too, more numerous ⟨and⟩ more beautiful than any we have seen.”¹⁷²⁵

58.22 · The hollows contribute to the whole

“For these very hollows of the earth, filled with water and air, contribute a certain appearance of color alongside the form, glittering amid the variety of the other colors. Thus a single continuous, variegated appearance of the earth presents itself.”¹⁷²⁶

58.23 · Plants, mountains, and precious stones

“On an earth of this kind the growing things grow correspondingly: trees, flowers, and fruits. Likewise its mountains and stones have a correspondingly finer perfection, translucence, and color. The small stones here, ⟨the⟩ ones we prize, are fragments of those: carnelians, jaspers, emeralds, and all such stones. There, nothing is unlike these, and everything is more beautiful still.”¹⁷²⁷

58.24 · Purity and the causes of decay

“The reason is that those stones are pure, neither eaten away nor spoiled like those here by decay and brine, by the things that have flowed together into this region, ⟨which⟩ bring ugliness and disease upon stones, earth, and the other things, both animals and plants.”¹⁷²⁸

58.25 · Treasures openly displayed

“The earth itself is adorned with all these things, and also with gold, silver, and the other materials of that kind. They occur openly, abundant in number, large, and in many places on the earth, so that to see it is a sight for the blessed.”¹⁷²⁹

58.26 · The inhabitants of the true earth

“There are many other living creatures upon it, and human beings: some live inland, others beside the air as we live beside the sea, and others on islands near the mainland, around which [toward] the air flows. In a word, what water and the sea are to us for our use, air is there; and what air is to us, aether is to them.”¹⁷³⁰

58.27 · A purer climate and stronger faculties

“Their seasons have such a temperate mixture that they are free from disease and live much longer than people here. In sight, hearing, understanding, and all such faculties they stand as far beyond us as air surpasses water, and aether air, in purity.”¹⁷³¹

58.28 · The presence of the gods

“They also have groves and sanctuaries of gods, in which gods truly dwell. They receive divine utterances and oracles, perceive the gods, and have such communion with them. They see the sun, moon, and stars as they really are, and their happiness in other respects is in keeping with these things.”¹⁷³²

58.29 · The earth’s hollows differ in shape

“Such is the nature of the whole earth and of what surrounds it. But within it there are many regions in its hollows, all around it: some deeper and more widely opened than the one we inhabit, others deeper but with a narrower opening than our region, and still others shallower than ours and wider.”¹⁷³³

58.30 · Passages connecting the hollows

“All these regions are connected underground by many openings, ⟨through⟩ narrower and wider passages, and have channels by which much water flows from one into another as into mixing bowls. Beneath the earth are immeasurably great perennial rivers, of hot waters as well as cold.”¹⁷³⁴

58.31 · Fire and streams of mud

“There is much fire and there are great rivers of fire, and large quantities of liquid clay, some purer and some muddier, like the rivers of clay that flow before the fiery stream in Sicily, and the fiery stream itself. Each region is filled with these substances according to the surrounding flow that happens to reach it on each occasion.”¹⁷³⁵

58.32 · Tartarus and the earth’s oscillation

“Something like a swing within the earth moves all these things up and down. This oscillation arises from a natural arrangement of the following kind. One of the earth’s chasms is both the greatest and bored straight through the entire earth. Homer spoke of it when he said:

Far away, where the deepest gulf lies beneath the earth.

Elsewhere both he and many other poets have called it Tartarus.”¹⁷³⁶

58.33 · All rivers enter and leave the chasm

“For all the rivers flow together into this chasm, and all flow out of it again. Each takes on the character of the earth through which it flows. The reason all the streams flow out from here and back into it is that this fluid has neither a bottom nor a supporting base.”¹⁷³⁷

1723.Mythos is rendered “story,” retaining the speaker’s explicit characterization of the account. The invitation follows his earlier distinction between describing his conviction and proving it true. The adjective kalon, “beautiful,” belongs to the printed text and is retained; the apparatus notes variation in the parallel tradition.

1724.The scan prints ē tis, not ei tis; “if someone” is a provisional rendering of the viewing clause in light of the conditional alternative recorded in the apparatus. The printed Greek is retained. The twelve pieces describe the compared balls without specifying a geometrical solid. The parallel phrase “like samples,” reported in the apparatus after “colors,” is absent here and has not been inserted.

1725.The supplied kai remains marked as “and.” Halourgēs denotes purple, while chrysoeidēs means goldlike. The comparisons use familiar substances to suggest a brilliance exceeding familiar experience. “Part” is understood from the successive feminine articles referring to regions of the earth.

1726.The difficult phrase para to eidos, absent from the parallel Plato text according to the apparatus, is retained provisionally as “alongside the form.” It may relate the hollows’ contribution to the earth’s overall appearance. The plural “glittering” describes the hollows. The concluding contrast joins continuity of the whole with variety of color.

1727.The supplied article before “prized” is marked in English. Diaphaneia is rendered “translucence,” following the printed word. The ordinary valued stones are described as fragments of the finer material above. The familiar English gemstone names serve as translations of the ancient names; the argument concerns their beauty and relative perfection.

1728.The supplied relative ha is marked as “which.” The repeated hypo, “by,” is retained, connecting corruption with the substances collected in our lower region. The claim extends damage and disease across the listed kinds of things. Its explanation belongs to the account’s contrast between the pure upper earth and the hollows.

1729.The printed expression is theama eudaimonōn, “a sight for the blessed.” The apparatus reports an additional word for “spectators” in the parallel Plato text; it is not added to the Greek here. The account next turns to the living creatures and human inhabitants of that earth.

1730.This continues Socrates’ description in Plato’s Phaedo, source excerpt 58. The inhabited world above repeats familiar geographical relationships with a different surrounding medium. The rejected pros remains as the bracketed “toward”; removing it leaves the English sentence grammatical. Aether remains distinct from the air beneath it. The decimal suffixes are modern comparison divisions.

1731.Krāsis is a mixture or tempering, here the condition of the seasons. The comparison extends the account’s successive levels of purity to the inhabitants’ health, longevity, and faculties. Phronēsis is rendered “understanding.” These qualities describe the people of the upper earth within the story.

1732.The passage distinguishes sacred places from the gods’ actual habitation in them. Phēmai is rendered “divine utterances” in this setting, while manteiai denotes oracles. Aisthēseis adds perception of the gods themselves. Their unobstructed view of the heavenly bodies completes the earlier analogy of emerging above our ordinary air.

1733.The account now turns from the earth’s upper surface to its cavities. Depth and breadth vary independently: a deeper hollow need not have a wider opening. Chasma is rendered “opening” here and “chasm” where the following passage describes the great channel through the earth.

1734.The supplement affects the first two letters of kata; English marks the whole corresponding preposition “through.” Kratēres are mixing bowls or basins, supplying an image of connected receptacles. The passage describes the channels and waters of the story’s subterranean system, not separate named rivers yet.

1735.Rhyax can denote a rushing stream; the association with Sicily and fire gives the sense of a volcanic flow here. “Liquid clay” preserves pēlos, alongside the muddier material. The final hōs an construction follows Wachsmuth’s printed text, describing how each region is filled as a flow reaches it.

1736.The quoted verse is Homer, Iliad 8.14. The printed correction tēle mal’, “far away,” is retained. Aiōra names a swing or oscillation; the following sentences explain it through a throughgoing chasm and the movement of fluid. The English makes the swing the subject of “moves,” retaining the relationship expressed by the infinitive construction.

1737.The rivers’ differing properties are connected with the ground through which they pass. The absence of a bottom or base belongs to the central body of fluid in the chasm. This prepares the oscillation described next, in which movement toward either side displaces water and air.