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 43 · I.43.heading–I.43.1

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Book I Chapter 43 · I.43.heading–I.43.1

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Ancient Greek

p. 896

Κεφάλαιον ΜΓʹ

I.43.heading

Πόσα γένη ζῴων καὶ εἰ πάντα λογικὰ καὶ αἰσθητά.

⟨Ἀετίου⟩

I.43.1

Πλάτων καὶ Ἀριστοτέλης τέτταρα γένη ζῴων· χερσαῖα, ἔνυδρα, πτηνά, οὐράνια. Καὶ γὰρ τὰ ἄστρα ζῷα λέγεσθαι, τὸν κόσμον † καὶ τὸν ἔνθεον ζῷον λογικὸν ἀθάνατον.

Stobaeus, Volume I: Book I Chapter 43

p. 897

Chapter 43: The kinds of living creatures

I.43.heading

How many kinds of living creatures there are, and whether all are rational and perceptible.¹¹⁵⁶

⟨Aëtius⟩: four kinds

I.43.1

Plato and Aristotle recognize four kinds of living creatures: terrestrial, aquatic, winged, and heavenly.¹¹⁵⁷ For the stars too are said to be living creatures, and the cosmos † and the divinely inspired one, a rational, immortal living creature.¹¹⁵⁸

1156.The printed aisthēta means “perceptible,” as distinct from aisthētika, “capable of perception,” which appears in I.45.2. The heading is retained without silently substituting the latter. Wachsmuth records a longer sequence of subordinate topics in the Laurentian index, but does not print their lost contents here.

1157.Wachsmuth supplies the attribution Aëtius V.20.1 (Diels, p. 432). The names introduce a reported position; this is not a direct quotation identified with a particular work by either philosopher.

1158.The dagger marks a corrupt clause. The English deliberately leaves its disrupted syntax visible. Diels’s proposed repair, recorded in the apparatus but not adopted in the printed text, would make the cosmos itself a living creature with divinity within it. Entheos suggests the presence of a god within; the precise construction here remains uncertain.

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.