Stobaeus, Volume I

Name: Stobaeus, Volume I
Author: John Stobaeus

Greek with an independent English translation.

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Stobaeus, Volume IBook I Chapter 49 · I.49.44.76–I.49.44.78

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Book I Chapter 49 · I.49.44.76–I.49.44.78

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Ancient Greek

p. 1312

44.76

I.49.44.76

“οὗτοι τὰ κρυπτά”, φησὶν Ἑρμῆς, “τῶν ἐμῶν ἐπιγνώσονται γραμμάτων πάντα καὶ διακρινοῦσι καὶ τινὰ μὲν αὐτοὶ κατασχώσιν, ἃ δὲ καὶ πρὸς εὐεργεσίας θνητῶν φθάνει, στήλαις καὶ ὀβελίσκοις χαράξουσιν·”

44.77

I.49.44.77

οὗτοι πρῶτοι δείξαντες δικαστήρια εὐνομίας τὰ σύμπαντα καὶ δικαιοσύνης ἐπλήρωσαν· οὗτοι δεξιᾶς καὶ πίστεως ἀρχηγέται γενόμενοι καὶ τὸν μέγιστον θεὸν Ὅρκον εἰσηγάγοντο εἰς τὸν βίον· οὗτοι τοὺς παυσαμένους τοῦ ζῆν, ὡς δέον ἐστίν, ἐδίδαξαν περιστέλλειν·

44.78

I.49.44.78

οὗτοι τὸ τοῦ θανάτου ζητήσαντες ἄγριον ἔγνωσαν, ὡς τοῦ ἔξωθεν πνεύματος φιλυποστρόφου τυγχάνοντος εἰς τὰ τῶν ἀνθρώπων πλάσματα, ἐὰν ὑστερήσῃ ποτέ, ἀνάκτησιν οὐκ ἔχον ἐργάζεται λειποθυμίας·

Stobaeus, Volume I: Book I Chapter 49

p. 1313

44.76 · Hermes’ writings and their disclosure

I.49.44.76

“They,” Hermes says, “will come to know all the secrets of my writings and distinguish among them. Some they will keep to themselves; whatever extends to the benefit of mortals they will engrave upon stelae and obelisks.”¹⁵⁸⁷

44.77 · Justice, trust, and care for the dead

I.49.44.77

They were the first to establish courts of judgment and filled all things with good order and justice. They originated the pledge of the right hand and trust, and introduced the very great god Oath into human life. They taught people to lay out those who had ceased to live in the proper manner;¹⁵⁸⁸

44.78 · The breath’s return and irreversible collapse

I.49.44.78

They investigated the cruelty of death and understood that the breath from outside, being disposed to return into the fashioned human bodies, if it should ever fail to arrive in time, produces fainting without recovery;¹⁵⁸⁹

1587.Isis introduces a quotation from Hermes inside her own speech. The Greek shifts to future forms and includes the subjunctive kataschōsin, “may retain”; English makes the coordinated prediction readable without changing the Greek. The division concerns what is kept secret and what is made available for human benefit. Stelae are inscribed standing monuments.

1588.Dexia, the right hand, expresses the hand given as a pledge; pistis denotes trust or good faith. Oath is personified and explicitly called a god. Peristellein concerns attending to and laying out the dead. The wording alone does not specify a complete embalming procedure. The following sentence gives the passage’s own account of death.

1589.Philypostrophos describes a disposition to return. The neuter “not having recovery” agrees with pneuma in the printed text, while “fainting” is plural. English transfers the qualification to the resulting collapse to convey the likely sense; this is an interpretation of a compressed construction. The distinction between this failure of returning breath and recoverable fainting is not developed here.

About This Reading Edition

Stobaeus gathered Greek philosophy and poetry for his son Septimius. Volume I presents the dedication testimony, On Arithmetic, Book I through chapter 60, and the ancient contents of all four books. This complete bilingual edition includes an introduction and 2,117 explanatory notes.

Historical Text and Translation

The Greek follows Curt Wachsmuth’s 1884 Volume I, checked against the supplied scan. Gaps, lost-chapter headings, and uncertain attributions remain visible. Chapter 2 includes a labeled proposed reconstruction. The appendix outlines Books I–IV; the full texts of Books II–IV are outside this volume. Reader pages preserve the companion PDF’s numbering.

About Diotimos Editions

Diotimos Editions prepared this independent English translation directly from the Greek. Prose and verse retain their distinct forms, with mixed passages preserving their quoted verse. Every passage is paired with its Greek and identified by the edition’s reference number. All 2,117 notes remain linked to their passages, with continuous numbering across the introduction and text.

Rights

Stobaeus’s ancient Greek work and Wachsmuth’s 1884 printing are in the public domain. The independent English translation, introduction, and explanatory notes are © 2026 Diotimos Editions. The complete supplied edition is available as PDF, EPUB, Word, and Markdown. The PDF retains the fixed page locations used by the companion lexicon.