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 6 · I.6.heading–I.6.1b

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Book I Chapter 6 · I.6.heading–I.6.1b

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Ancient Greek

p. 192

Κεφάλαιον Ϛʹ

I.6.heading

Περὶ τύχης ἢ ταὐτομάτου.

1a Μενάνδρου Ὑποβολιμαίῳ

I.6.1a

Παύσασθε νοῦν λέγοντες, οὐδὲν γὰρ πλέον ἀνθρώπινος νοῦς ἐστιν· ἀλλὰ τὸ τῆς τύχης (εἴτ’ ἔστι τοῦτο πνεῦμα θεῖον, εἴτε νοῦς) τοῦτ’ ἐστι τὸ κυβερνῶν ⟨ἅπαντα⟩ καὶ στρέφον καὶ σῷζον· ἡ πρόνοια δ’ ἡ θνητὴ καπνὸς καὶ φλήναφος. πείσθητε, κοὐ μέμψεσθέ με· πάνθ’ ὅσα ποιοῦμεν ἢ λέγομεν ἢ πράττομεν, τύχη ’στίν, ἡμεῖς δ’ ἐσμὲν ἐπιγεγραμμένοι.

1b ⟨Ἀδήλου κωμικοῦ ποιητοῦ⟩

I.6.1b

Τύχη κυβερνᾷ πάντα, ταύτην καὶ φρένας δεῖ καὶ πρόνοιαν καὶ θεὸν καλεῖν μόνην, εἰ μή τις ἄλλως ὀνόμασιν χαίρει κενοῖς.

Stobaeus, Volume I: Book I Chapter 6

p. 193

Chapter 6: Fortune and spontaneous occurrence

I.6.heading

On fortune or spontaneous occurrence.²¹⁰

1a Menander, The Supposititious Child

I.6.1a

Stop talking of intelligence: human intelligence counts for nothing. The power of Fortune (whether it is a divine spirit or mind) is what steers ⟨everything⟩, turns it, and preserves it; mortal foresight is smoke and nonsense. Believe me, and you will not blame me: whatever we make or say or do is Fortune’s work; our names are merely written on it.²¹¹

1b ⟨An unidentified comic poet⟩

I.6.1b

Fortune steers everything. It alone we should call intelligence, providence, and God, unless one simply delights in empty names.²¹²

210.Tychē can mean a person’s fortune, personified Fortune, or chance as a cause. To automaton means what happens of itself, without an intention directed at that outcome. The translation uses “spontaneous occurrence” in the technical discussions and “what happens of itself” in less formal passages. Excerpt 17a explicitly distinguishes the two terms.

211.The title Hypobolimaios refers to a child passed off as someone else’s. Pronoia here is mortal foresight, contrasted with Fortune’s governing power. The final image treats people as the names attached to deeds whose real author is Fortune; it is a comic speaker’s claim, not necessarily Menander’s own doctrine.

212.Wachsmuth treats these lines as a separate excerpt by an unidentified comic poet. His apparatus rejects their earlier attachment to Menander’s Hypobolimaios without sufficient evidence. The supplied Latin descriptive heading is rendered in Greek and English, as in the following anonymous excerpts.

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.