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 17 · I.17.1.4–I.17.2

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Book I Chapter 17 · I.17.1.4–I.17.2

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Ancient Greek

p. 392

1 ⟨Ἀετίου⟩ · 4

I.17.1.4

Πλάτων τὰ μὲν τρία σώματα τρεπτὰ εἰς ἄλληλα, πῦρ, ἀέρα, ὕδωρ· τὴν δὲ γῆν εἴς τι τούτων ἀμετάβλητον.

2 ⟨Ἀρείου Διδύμου⟩

I.17.2

Ἀριστοτέλους καὶ τῶν ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ.

Τὰ μὲν σώματα φασι θρυπτόμενα κατὰ μικρὰ μόρια παρατίθεσθαι ἀλλήλοις, τοῖς δ’ ἀσωμάτοις λόγοις, εἴ τινές εἰσι λόγοι, συγκιρνᾶσθαι.

Stobaeus, Volume I: Book I Chapter 17

p. 393

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Plato

I.17.1.4

Plato held that the three bodies, fire, air, and water, can change into one another, but that earth cannot change into any of them.⁴⁶⁹

2 ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Aristotle

I.17.2

Aristotle and his followers.⁴⁷⁰

They say that bodies, when broken into small parts, are placed beside one another, but are blended with respect to their incorporeal principles, if indeed there are such principles.⁴⁷¹

469.Compare Timaeus 54b-56e: the geometrical constituents of fire, air, and water allow their transformation into one another, whereas earth is constructed from a different kind of triangle. The qualification concerns conversion into the other elements, not an absolute inability of earth to undergo any change.

470.The attribution to Arius Didymus is supplied by Wachsmuth for excerpts 2-4. “Aristotle and his followers” is the surviving heading within this excerpt. This short report is translated as transmitted and edited here, rather than expanded into a reconstruction of Aristotle’s theory.

471.Logoi is rendered “principles,” though the word can also mean accounts or formulas. Wachsmuth prints Diels’s conjectural dative, tois asōmatois logois, in place of an accusative. The English construes this as “with respect to their incorporeal principles”; the exact relation remains compressed. The parenthetical doubt is retained, although Heeren deleted it.

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.