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.49.67.4–I.49.67.6

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Book I Chapter 49 · I.49.67.4–I.49.67.6

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Ancient Greek

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67.4

I.49.67.4

Τῶν δὲ πρεσβυτέρων τινὲς ὑπερέχειν μὲν αὐτὴν λογισμοῦ φασι, τὰ δὲ ἔργα αὐτῆς οὕτω διηκριβωμένα ἀφορίζονται, ὡς οὐκ ἂν ἐξεύροι τῶν λογισμῶν ὁ καθαρὸς καὶ τελειότατος.

67.5

I.49.67.5

Πορφύριος δὲ αὐτὰς ἀφαιρεῖ παντάπασιν ἀπὸ τῆς ἀδεσπότου ζωῆς, ὡς οὔσας συμφυεῖς τῇ γενέσει καὶ πρὸς ἐπικουρίαν δοθείσας τοῖς συνθέτοις ζῴοις.

67.6

I.49.67.6

Ὁ δὲ παρὰ Πλάτωνι Τίμαιος ᾗπερ ἐσπάρησαν διαφερόντως ὑπὸ τοῦ δημιουργοῦ, ἄλλαι μὲν εἰς ἥλιον, ἄλλαι δὲ εἰς γῆν, ταύτῃ καὶ τὴν ἄνοδον αὐτὰς ἀνάγει, μὴ ὑπερβαινούσας τὸν ὅρον τῆς οἰκείας ἑκάστην πρόσθεν δημιουργικῆς καταβολῆς.

Stobaeus, Volume I: Book I Chapter 49

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67.4 · Activity beyond reasoning

I.49.67.4

Some of the older thinkers say that it stands above reasoning, yet describe its activities as so exact that even the purest and most perfect reasoning could not discover their like.¹⁸²⁸

67.5 · What belongs to embodied life

I.49.67.5

Porphyry, however, removes them altogether from the life that is free from mastery, on the ground that they are naturally bound up with coming-to-be and were given to composite living beings for their assistance.¹⁸²⁹

67.6 · Return to the original station

I.49.67.6

Timaeus in Plato leads the souls back in their ascent to the places where the creator originally sowed them in different ways, some into the Sun and others into the earth. Each remains within the boundary of its own previous creative establishment.¹⁸³⁰

1828.Logismos is reasoning or calculation, contrasted with a higher mode of activity. Their like supplies the comparison implicit in the final clause. The point is that activity without discursive reasoning need not be less exact than reasoned activity.

1829.The feminine plural autas, them, has an uncertain antecedent in this excerpt. The English leaves it as a pronoun rather than silently supplying souls, activities, or faculties. Adespotos describes a life subject to no master; composite living beings are the recipients of the assistance mentioned.

1830.Timaeus is the speaker within Plato’s work. The local relative hēiper and the corresponding tautē connect ascent to the original distribution. The edition’s prosthen, previous, is retained. Creative establishment renders dēmiourgikē katabolē, the initial placement by the creator; it does not imply creation from nothing.

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.