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 26 · I.26.5.heading–I.26.5.2

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Book I Chapter 26 · I.26.5.heading–I.26.5.2

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Ancient Greek

p. 632

5 Περὶ ἀποστημάτων

I.26.5.heading

Περὶ δὲ τῶν ἀποστημάτων.

5 ⟨Ἀετίου⟩ · 1

I.26.5.1

Ἐμπεδοκλῆς διπλάσιον ἀπέχειν τῆς σελήνης ἀπὸ ⟨τῆς⟩ γῆς ἤπερ ἀπὸ τοῦ ἡλίου.

Οἱ δὲ ἀπὸ τῶν μαθηματικῶν ὀκτωκαιδεκαπλάσιον.

5 ⟨Ἀετίου⟩ · 2

I.26.5.2

Ἐρατοσθένης τὸν ἥλιον ἀπέχειν ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς σταδίων μυριάδας [μυριάδων] τετρακοσίας καὶ στάδια ὀκτάκις μύρια· τὴν δὲ σελήνην ἀπέχειν ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς μυριάδας ἑβδομήκοντα ὀκτὼ σταδίων.

Stobaeus, Volume I: Book I Chapter 26

p. 633

5 On distances

I.26.5.heading

On distances.

5 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Ratios of distance

I.26.5.1

Empedocles: a distance twice as great, of the moon from ⟨the⟩ earth as from the sun.⁸¹⁷

Those who follow mathematical astronomy: eighteen times as great.⁸¹⁸

5 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Eratosthenes

I.26.5.2

Eratosthenes held that the sun is distant from the earth by four hundred myriads of stadia plus eighty thousand stadia, and that the moon is distant from the earth by seventy-eight myriads of stadia.⁸¹⁹

817.The Greek construction is damaged: “of the moon” is genitive where the infinitive needs a subject, and Wachsmuth calls the wording seriously disordered. This deliberately fragmentary English preserves the surviving terms and their order; it does not establish a reliable ratio. The parallel Placita II.31.1 gives a different arrangement of the distances. The supplied article before “earth” is Meineke’s addition.

818.The following eighteenfold statement supplies no explicit subject or distances of its own. Its intended comparison cannot securely be recovered merely by treating the damaged preceding sentence as sound.

819.A myriad is ten thousand. With the bracketed myriadōn excluded, as in Wachsmuth’s text, these figures are 4,080,000 and 780,000 stadia. The apparatus says Diels rejected the extra word as a variant of the preceding myriadas. Keeping it would drastically change the number; no more familiar estimate is substituted here. Stadia are retained rather than converted into a modern unit.

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.