Diotimos Reading Desk

Tap the page, move to the top or bottom edge, swipe down, or press Tab to reveal reading controls. Use the arrow keys or swipe sideways to turn pages.

← ExitStobaeus, Volume II

Reading language

Book II Chapter 1

John Stobaeus

Extracts, Sayings, and Precepts

Book Two⁴

Chapter 1

On those who interpret divine things, and how the truth of intelligible things in their essence is beyond human comprehension.⁵

From the Tantalus of Aristarchus

On these matters too, it is all one to speak well or not; inquiring and not knowing come to the same. For in these matters the wise know no more than those who are not wise. If one speaks better than another, it is in speaking that he excels.⁶

Euripides in Philoctetes

Why then, seated in seats of authority, do you swear that you know the gods’ affairs clearly? Human beings are the craftsmen of these speeches. Whoever boasts of knowing about the gods knows nothing more than how to persuade with words.⁷

Anaxandrides in The Basket Bearer

We are all foolish when it comes to divine things, and we know nothing.⁸

Sophocles

You could not learn divine things while the gods conceal them, even if you went through everything in your search.⁹

Philemon

Acknowledge God and revere him, but do not inquire; you gain nothing beyond the inquiry itself.¹⁰

⟨From the same author⟩

Do not wish to learn whether he exists or not; ⟨but⟩ revere him as existing and always present.¹¹

⟨From the same author⟩

What he is, God does not wish you to learn.¹²

Menander in The Supposititious Child

Fortune is a thing that is hard to follow.¹³

Hesiod

For the gods keep people’s livelihood hidden.¹⁴

Pindar from the Paeans

What do you expect wisdom to be, by which one man has but little advantage over another? There is no way to search out the gods’ counsels with a mortal mind.¹⁵

Iophon from the Bacchae

This too I know, woman though I am: the more someone seeks to know the gods’ affairs, the less, by that much more, he will know.¹⁶

Simonides

Easily the gods steal away the human mind.¹⁷

Demonax

When some people were investigating whether the world is ensouled, and again whether it is spherical, ⟨Demonax⟩ said: “You busy yourselves with the order of the world, but take no thought for your own disorder?”¹⁸

Democritus

Do not be eager to know everything, lest you become ignorant of everything.¹⁹

Plutarch from On Isis

For human souls, enclosed here in bodies and passions, there is no participation in God beyond touching a dim dream in thought through philosophy.²⁰

Plato from the Statesman

It is difficult, my good friend, to explain any of the greater matters adequately without using examples. For each of us seems to know particular things as though in a dream, yet then to be ignorant of them all again as though awake.²¹

Plato from the Timaeus

To find the maker and father of this universe is a difficult task; and having found him, it is impossible to speak of him to everyone.²²

Iamblichus from On the Soul

How much better, then, Heraclitus judged human opinions to be children’s playthings.²³

Didymus from On Schools

A saying of Xenophanes first came among the Greeks that was worth recording: with a touch of playfulness he rebuked the boldness of others while showing his own caution, to the effect that

God knows the truth, but opinion is fashioned over all.²⁴

For philosophy is a hunt for truth and a desire for it. | Some who have pursued philosophy say that they have found the quarry, as Epicurus and the Stoics do; others say that they are still searching, since it is somewhere among the gods and wisdom is no human possession. Socrates and Pyrrho spoke in this way.²⁵

Plato from the Timaeus

If, then, Socrates, after the many things that many people have said about the gods and the coming into being of the universe, we cannot give accounts that are completely consistent with themselves and exact in every respect, do not be surprised. But if we offer accounts no less likely than anyone else’s, we must be content, remembering that both the speaker and you who judge have a human nature. So, accepting the likely story about these matters, we ought to seek nothing beyond it.²⁶

Bion

Bion said that those who study the stars are utterly ridiculous: they cannot see the fish on the shores, yet claim to know the fish in the sky.²⁷

Pindar

Pindar said that those who inquire into nature

reap an unripe fruit of wisdom.²⁸

From Serenus’s Recollections

When Thales, looking toward the sky, fell into a pit, his servant, a Thracian woman, said that he had got what he deserved: he was studying what was in the sky while unaware of what lay at his feet.²⁹

4.The Greek title stands on printed p. 1 (scan p. 4). Book II is the ancient division of the Anthology; Volume II is the physical volume of Wachsmuth’s edition. All surviving anthology text in this volume is included, through II.46.22; missing chapters are represented by their preserved headings.

5.“Intelligible” means apprehended by thought, as distinct from what is perceived by the senses; “in their essence” renders κατὰ τὴν οὐσίαν. The heading states the topic under which the excerpts are collected. It should not be taken as a single conclusion endorsed equally by every speaker.

6.The repeated ἴσον and ἐξ ἴσου express equality: neither eloquence nor inquiry establishes greater knowledge here. The Greek contrasts speaking well with not doing so, without an explicit word for “badly.” In the last sentence, ἄλλου means “than another,” and τῷ λέγειν specifies speaking as the respect in which one excels. The lost dramatic setting prevents us from simply identifying the speaker’s view with Aristarchus’s own.

7.The excerpt questions human claims to divine knowledge. The printed ἀρχικοῖς describes seats of authority; its apparatus records an earlier reading ἀρχαῖοις, “ancient.” “Craftsmen” renders χειρώνακτες, a pointedly human image of making and working. The final line follows the printed infinitive πείθειν, “to persuade,” rather than the manuscript πείθει, “he persuades.”

8.The attribution and play title follow the printed heading. The comic register is retained: ἀβέλτεροι is blunt, not a technical term for a philosophical suspension of judgment.

9.The condition matters: the gods’ concealment defeats the investigation. The fragment does not itself deny the possibility of divine disclosure.

10.Νόμιζε can mean acknowledge, recognize, or hold in customary regard. The capitalized English “God” follows the singular expression without assigning the maxim a particular theology. The heading attributes it to Philemon.

11.Angle brackets retain the editor’s supplied author-heading and connective δ’. “The same author” refers to the preceding Philemon attribution; it is not a new attribution independently furnished by this extract.

12.The question now concerns what God is, rather than whether he exists. The supplied attribution continues the preceding sequence.

13.“Hard to follow” means difficult to trace or comprehend. Τύχη can name fortune, chance, or what befalls someone; the single line does not define a systematic doctrine of chance.

14.Works and Days 42. Βίος here is livelihood or the means of living, not simply biological life. In its new setting the line contributes an image of divine concealment.

15.The question and the qualification “but little” are retained. The Greek line wrapping is regularized here; the excerpt crosses printed pp. 4–5. “Counsels” renders βουλεύματα, the gods’ deliberations or purposes.

16.The feminine participle οὖσα marks a female dramatic speaker. The poem is attributed to Iophon in the heading; this Bacchae must not silently be substituted with Euripides’s surviving play of that name.

17.The metaphor is retained. “Steal away” suggests that people can be deprived of their judgment or deceived, without specifying a physical mechanism.

18.The personal name in angle brackets is supplied in the text; it also appears in the heading. The joke turns on κόσμος, “world” or “order,” and ἀκοσμία, “disorder.” “Ensouled” means possessing a soul; the anecdote redirects inquiry toward the inquirers’ conduct.

19.The second μή is read as the warning or feared outcome: indiscriminate ambition may defeat learning. The maxim counsels a limit to one’s pursuit, not a refusal to learn anything.

20.On Isis and Osiris 79, 382F. The exception is essential: thought through philosophy affords a limited, dreamlike contact. Μετουσία is participation or a share in; the excerpt does not make it equivalent to ordinary sensory perception.

21.Statesman 277D. Παράδειγμα here is an explanatory example or model. The dream comparison exposes an unstable grasp of what one knows; it is not presented as evidence that dreams reliably disclose truth.

22.Timaeus 28C. The noun printed here is ποιητής, “maker,” not δημιουργός, “craftsman” or “demiurge,” although the passage concerns the same cosmological context. The qualification “to everyone” must not be omitted: this sentence does not simply say that nothing at all can be said.

23.This is Iamblichus’s report of Heraclitus, with Iamblichus’s approving comparison “how much better.” The report should not be presented as an unmediated quotation from a surviving book by Heraclitus.

24.The words are transmitted within Didymus’s report. Δόκος is opinion or seeming; the statement is not treated here as an independently preserved, complete poem of Xenophanes. The English retains the report’s caution about human claims to truth.

25.This combined locator preserves the passage’s continuity under Didymus. Wachsmuth prints a concordance to earlier numbering, “17 H. 18 G. M.,” before “For philosophy,” rather than a fresh author-heading. The vertical stroke after “desire” marks his reconstruction of the join: his note explains that two leaves missing from the Eclogae tradition were preserved in the Florilegium. The following material is part of his restored text, not an addition invented for this translation.

26.Timaeus 29C–D. The translation follows the form of the excerpt printed by Wachsmuth, including its reference to what many people have said. Εἰκώς is “likely” or “plausible”; μῦθος is “story” or “account.” Their combination expresses the account’s qualified status, not a license to replace its claims with arbitrary invention.

27.The fish in the sky supply the joke’s celestial counterpart to ordinary fish. Wachsmuth brackets τοὺς πὰρ ποσὶ, “those at their feet,” as wording rejected from the text; it remains visible in the Greek but is omitted from the English sentence. His apparatus notes its apparent intrusion from the Thales anecdote on the next page.

28.The first line frames the reported saying; the second carries its poetic image. Ἀτελής can mean unfinished or incomplete; “unripe” gives the agricultural force of a fruit that has not reached maturity.

29.The heading attributes this version to Serenus’s Recollections. Wachsmuth’s note compares Plato, Theaetetus 174A, where the object is a well; the facing Greek here reads βόθρον, “pit,” and that is the word translated.