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 41 · I.41.heading–I.41.1.1

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Book I Chapter 41 · I.41.heading–I.41.1.1

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Ancient Greek

p. 814

Κεφάλαιον ΜΑʹ

I.41.heading

Περὶ φύσεως καὶ τῶν συμβαινόντων ἐξ αὐτῆς αἰτιῶν.

1.1

I.41.1.1

Ἑρμοῦ ἐκ τοῦ πρὸς Τάτ.

⟨ΕΡΜ.⟩ Ἐγώ, ὦ τέκνον, καὶ τῆς φιλανθρωπίας ἕνεκα καὶ τῆς πρὸς τὸν θεὸν εὐσεβείας πρῶτον τόδε συγγράφω. Οὐδεμία γὰρ ἂν λέγοιτο δικαιότερον εὐσέβεια [ἢ] τοῦ νοῆσαι τὰ ὄντα καὶ χάριν τῷ ποιήσαντι ὑπὲρ τούτων ὁμολογῆσαι, ὅπερ διατελῶν οὐ παύσομαι.

Stobaeus, Volume I: Book I Chapter 41

p. 815

Chapter 41: On nature and the causes arising from it

I.41.heading

On nature and the causes arising from it.¹⁰⁵⁵

1.1 · Hermes: piety and understanding

I.41.1.1

From Hermes, from the work To Tat.¹⁰⁵⁶

⟨HERMES⟩ My child, I write this first both out of love for humanity and out of reverence for God. Nothing could more rightly be called piety [than] understanding the things that exist and acknowledging gratitude for them to their maker. I shall never cease to do this.¹⁰⁵⁷

1055.Wachsmuth’s apparatus reports that the chapter heading is absent from the two principal manuscripts. The title is retained as printed. Numbers after each excerpt number divide the text for facing-page comparison; they are not ancient subdivisions.

1056.The teacher is Hermes and the pupil Tat. The manuscript excerpt lacks speaker labels; Wachsmuth supplies them, and the angle brackets are retained in both languages. The attribution belongs to the Hermetic literary tradition, not to an identifiable historical author named Hermes.

1057.Eusebeia means piety or reverence; here it is expressed through understanding and gratitude. Wachsmuth rejects the comparative particle ē, “than,” because the following genitive already conveys the comparison. The English bracket makes that editorial deletion visible while retaining the comparison’s sense.

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.