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 36 · I.36.2.10–I.36.2.12

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Ancient Greek Page · Branch 374 of 879

Book I Chapter 36 · I.36.2.10–I.36.2.12

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p. 744

Συνέχεια

I.36.2.10

ἐν ταύταις γὰρ ὑπὸ σεισμῶν οἰδήματα τῆς γῆς γενέσθαι μεγάλα, καὶ ταῦτα διαρραγέντα πολὺν ἄνεμον ἐκπεφυσηκέναι καὶ φέψαλον, ὥστε κατατεφρῶσαι πλησίον οὖσαν τὴν τῶν Λιπαραίων πόλιν.

Συνέχεια

I.36.2.11

Τὰς δὲ ποντίους λεγομένας νήσους ἧττον σείεσθαι τῶν προσγείων διὰ τὸ καταψύχεσθαι τῷ πλήθει τῆς θαλάττης τὴν ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς ἀναθυμίασιν.

Συνέχεια

I.36.2.12

Τεκμήριον δ᾽ εἶναι τοῦ ῥεῖν ὑπὸ τὴν γῆν τὸ πνεῦμα, πρῶτον μὲν ἀπὸ τοῦ ἐν οἷς γίνεται προσημαίνειν ἠχοῦντος, εἶτα τὸ περὶ τὸν ἥλιον πάθος· ἀμαυρότερον γὰρ καὶ ἀχλυώδη φαίνεσθαι χωρὶς νέφους, ὑπονοστεῖν ἀρχομένου τοῦ πνεύματος εἰς τὴν γῆν τοῦ λεπτύνοντος τὸν ἀέρα καὶ διακρίνοντος.

Stobaeus, Volume I: Book I Chapter 36

p. 745

Swelling ground and cinders

I.36.2.10

For in these places earthquakes produced great swellings of the ground. When these burst open, they blew out a great quantity of wind and cinders, covering the nearby city of the Liparians with ash.⁹⁵⁷

Islands in the open sea

I.36.2.11

The islands called open-sea islands shake less than those near the mainland, because the great mass of sea cools the exhalation from the earth.⁹⁵⁸

Sound and a dim sun

I.36.2.12

Evidence that air flows beneath the earth comes, first, from the warning it gives by resounding in the places where earthquakes occur,⁹⁵⁹ and then from what happens to the sun. For the sun appears dimmer and misty, though there is no cloud, when the current that thins and disperses the air begins to retreat beneath the earth.⁹⁶⁰

957.The abridgment says “in these places,” although Aristotle’s fuller account attaches the ashfall near Lipara to the island event. The plural is retained without harmonizing the geography. Phepsalos denotes burning fragments or cinders.

958.Pontious here means islands out at sea, contrasted with those close to land. It does not mean islands in the Pontus, despite the earlier mention of Pontic Heracleia.

959.The first clause is grammatically uneven. The English takes the resounding air as giving warning where the earthquakes occur. Usener proposes a rearrangement involving “the places”; that proposal is recorded in the apparatus but not adopted in the printed text.

960.The account distinguishes pneuma, a moving current, from aēr, the air it thins and disperses. Its withdrawal underground is offered as the reason for the cloudless haze.

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.