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 20 · I.20.heading–I.20.1c

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Book I Chapter 20 · I.20.heading–I.20.1c

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Ancient Greek

p. 456

Κεφάλαιον Κʹ

I.20.heading

Περὶ γενέσεως καὶ φθορᾶς.

1a ⟨Ἀετίου⟩

I.20.1a

Παρμενίδης καὶ Μέλισσος ἀνῄρουν γένεσιν καὶ φθορὰν διὰ τὸ νομίζειν τὸ πᾶν ἀκίνητον.

1b Ἡράκλειτος

I.20.1b

Ἡράκλειτος φησιν, ὅτι πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει· καὶ ποταμοῦ ῥοῇ ἀπεικάζων τὰ ὄντα λέγει ὡς δὶς ἐς τὸν αὐτὸν ποταμὸν οὐκ ἂν ἐμβαίης.

1c ⟨Ἀετίου⟩

I.20.1c

Πλάτων φθαρτὸν μὲν τὸν κόσμον, ὅσον ἐπὶ τῇ φύσει, αἰσθητὸν γὰρ εἶναι, διότι καὶ σωματικόν, οὐ μὴν φθαρησόμενόν γε προνοίᾳ καὶ συνοχῇ θεοῦ.

Stobaeus, Volume I: Book I Chapter 20

p. 457

Chapter 20: Coming into Being and Passing Away

I.20.heading

On coming into being and passing away.

1a ⟨Aëtius⟩: Parmenides and Melissus

I.20.1a

Parmenides and Melissus denied coming into being and passing away, because they held the whole to be unmoving.⁵⁶¹

1b Heraclitus: The river

I.20.1b

Heraclitus says that everything moves on and nothing remains; and, comparing existing things to the flow of a river, he says that you could not step twice into the same river.⁵⁶²

1c ⟨Aëtius⟩: Plato

I.20.1c

Plato held the world to be perishable so far as its nature is concerned, for it is perceptible because it is also bodily; nevertheless, it will not perish, owing to God’s providence and his holding it together.⁵⁶³

561.Genesis and phthora mean coming into being and passing away; in the following reports they are also rendered “generation” and “destruction.” Their scope includes the formation and dissolution of things, not merely birth and death. Wachsmuth supplies the attribution to Aëtius here and in 1c, 1d, 1f, and 1g.

562.This is drawn from Plato, Cratylus 402a, where Socrates reports Heraclitus’s view. As Wachsmuth notes, it is an insertion from Plato, not part of the surrounding Aëtian material. The river saying is thus presented through Plato’s report, rather than as a securely verbatim quotation from Heraclitus’s book.

563.The report distinguishes being capable of dissolution from actually being dissolved. Synochē is the holding together or cohesion supplied by God. Compare the passages from the Timaeus collected below in excerpts 9 and 10.

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.