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.49.63.1–I.49.63.3

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Book I Chapter 49 · I.49.63.1–I.49.63.3

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Ancient Greek

p. 1484

63.1

I.49.63.1

Πλάτωνος ἐκ τοῦ Γοργίου.

Ἄκουε δή, φησί, μάλα καλοῦ λόγου, ὃν σὺ μὲν ἡγήσῃ μῦθον, ὡς ἐγᾦμαι, ἐγὼ δὲ λόγον· ὡς ἀληθῆ γὰρ ὄντα σοι λέξω ἃ μέλλω λέγειν.

63.2

I.49.63.2

Ὥσπερ γὰρ Ὅμηρος λέγει, διενείμαντο τὴν ἀρχὴν ὁ Ζεὺς καὶ ὁ Ποσειδῶν καὶ ὁ Πλούτων, ἐπειδὴ παρὰ τοῦ πατρὸς παρέλαβον.

63.3

I.49.63.3

Ἦν οὖν νόμος ὅδε περὶ ἀνθρώπων ἐπὶ Κρόνου, καὶ ἀεὶ καὶ νῦν ἔτ᾽ ἐστὶν ἐν θεοῖς, τῶν ἀνθρώπων τὸν μὲν δικαίως τὸν βίον διελθόντα καὶ ὁσίως, ἐπειδὰν τελευτήσῃ, εἰς μακάρων νήσους ἀπιόντα οἰκεῖν ἐν πάσῃ εὐδαιμονίᾳ ἐκτὸς κακῶν, τὸν δὲ ἀδίκως καὶ ἀθέως εἰς τὸ τῆς τίσεώς τε καὶ δίκης δεσμωτήριον, ὃ δὴ Τάρταρον καλοῦσιν, ἰέναι.

Stobaeus, Volume I: Book I Chapter 49

p. 1485

63.1 · Plato: a story offered as true

I.49.63.1

Plato, from the Gorgias.

“Listen, then,” he says, “to a very fine account, which you will regard as a myth, I suppose, but I as an account. For I shall tell you what I am about to say as something true.”¹⁷⁸⁰

63.2 · The division of divine rule

I.49.63.2

“For, as Homer says, Zeus, Poseidon, and Pluto divided sovereignty among themselves after receiving it from their father.”¹⁷⁸¹

63.3 · The law governing the dead

I.49.63.3

“Under Cronus, then, this law concerning human beings existed, and it has always remained among the gods, even now: whoever has passed through life justly and reverently shall, when he dies, go to the Isles of the Blessed and dwell in complete happiness, free from evils; whoever has lived unjustly and impiously shall go to the prison of requital and punishment that they call Tartarus.”¹⁷⁸²

1780.The edition locates excerpt 63 at Gorgias 523A-524A. The speaker is Socrates. His contrast turns on mythos and logos; account is repeated to preserve that verbal contrast, with the claim to truth stated in the next sentence. This is a different framing from his qualification at the end of the Phaedo extract.

1781.This is a prose reference to Homer, rather than a verse quotation. Pluto names the ruler of the underworld. The succession from the father prepares the contrast between judgment under Cronus and its later reform under Zeus; the excerpt itself supplies that sequence.

1782.The law itself remains constant; the procedure for judging people will change. Hosiōs and atheōs concern reverence and impiety in conduct. The latter is not used here as a precise label for a modern philosophical position. Tisis and dikē retain their paired senses of requital and punishment.

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.