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 8

Chapter 8

On What Is Up to Us.⁷⁷⁸

Philemon

In whatever comes about through the agents themselves, fortune has no place and takes no share.⁷⁷⁹

Euripides in Daughters of Pelias

The gods’ affairs are not unjust; but among human beings, things grievously diseased involve great confusion.⁷⁸⁰

Menander

If we all always helped one another, no human being would need fortune.⁷⁸¹

Euripides in Pirithous

Whoever first introduced this new saying did not speak with an untrained mind: fortune fights alongside those who think well.⁷⁸²

Menander

How feeble a thing is fortune’s body! Whoever does not bear events in accordance with nature has called his own character fortune.⁷⁸³

Philemon in The Pancratiast

Do something yourself as well. For you ⟨must⟩ not rest all your hopes on fortune, my child, for what you want, but yourself lend fortune a hand. Fortune labors more easily if she does this with another, not alone.⁷⁸⁴

Menander

Misfortune and wrongdoing differ: the one comes about through fortune, the other through choice.⁷⁸⁵

Euripides in Orestes

Now distinguish yourself from the bad, for you can; and do not merely say this, but think it too.⁷⁸⁶

Menander in The Woman Being Slapped

The man who refuses what is beneficial, when the gods themselves give it for living, does not wish to live.⁷⁸⁷

⟨Anonymous⟩

But being unfortunate, or not, is given by a god; it is no fault of character.⁷⁸⁸

Aeschylus

Fortune is common to all; judgment belongs to those who possess it.⁷⁸⁹

⟨Euripides⟩

Most evils that mortals suffer are of their own choosing.⁷⁹⁰

The same author

We have desires of every kind in life: one longs to gain noble birth, while another has no concern for that, but wants to be called the father of great wealth in his house.⁷⁹¹ Another likes to persuade his neighbors with wicked daring, though nothing sound comes from his mind in speech; and some mortals seek shameful gains before the noble. Thus human life is a wandering astray. I ⟨however⟩ have no wish to obtain any of these; I would wish to have a reputation for honorable renown.⁷⁹²

Homer from the Odyssey

If you leave them unharmed and keep your return in mind, you may yet reach Ithaca, though suffering hardships; but if you harm them, then I foretell destruction for you.⁷⁹³

Homer from the Iliad

For my mother, the silver-footed goddess Thetis, tells me that I carry two different fates toward my end in death. If I stay here and fight around the Trojans’ city, my homecoming is lost, but my fame will never perish. If I go home to my dear native land, my noble fame is lost, but my life will endure for a long time; the end that is death will not soon overtake me.⁷⁹⁴

Demosthenes in On the Crown

For what was the task of good men has been done by all; and the fortune that the divine power allotted to each is the fortune they have had.⁷⁹⁵

Democritus

People fashioned an image of Fortune as an excuse for their own lack of judgment. For fortune opposes practical wisdom in few things, while intelligent clear sight directs most things in life.⁷⁹⁶

778.Τὰ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν are things that depend on us or are up to us. The heading frames a collection about agency, choice, and fortune; it does not make the excerpts agree on a single theory. This is Chapter 8 in Wachsmuth, numbered 7 in the Gaisford and Meineke editions cited in his chapter heading.

779.The opening ὅσα, whatever things, limits the assertion to events caused by the agents themselves. Οὐδενί refers back to those events. Τύχη is fortune or chance; both verbs exclude its participation in this specified class, rather than in every event without qualification.

780.The neuter plural τὰ θεῶν is the gods’ affairs. The second clause is compressed: νοσοῦντα, being diseased, carries an image of sickness into human affairs. Κακῶς modifies the sickness, rendered grievously diseased. The English preserves that image and the unusual construction, without substituting the alternative readings proposed in the apparatus. The title Πελιάσιν identifies the lost play Daughters of Pelias; the fragment alone does not identify its speaker.

781.The counterfactual condition includes both everyone and always. It makes mutual assistance a proposed alternative to reliance on fortune; it does not assert that such universal assistance already occurs. Ἐδεήθη is a form of δέομαι, to need.

782.The first two lines describe the unnamed originator of the maxim in the third. Συμμαχεῖ is a military image, fights as an ally. The attribution follows Wachsmuth’s heading, Euripides in Pirithous; the isolated verses do not establish who speaks them within the play.

783.The printed σῶμα means body. Its personification of fortune is retained instead of the different wording proposed by earlier editors. Τρόπος is a person’s character or disposition, not the external event itself. The final contrast challenges the habit of naming one’s own response fortune; κατὰ φύσιν, in accordance with nature, remains explicit.

784.The fragment opens with the infinitive πράττειν used as an injunction. Wachsmuth supplies ⟨χρὴ⟩, represented by bracketed must. The generic τις, someone, is made natural in English through you, continuing the direct address παιδίον, my child. Συλλαμβάνεσθαι is to assist or lend a hand: the speaker urges cooperation with fortune, rather than denying it every role. A pancratiast is an athlete in the pancration, a contest combining wrestling and striking.

785.Ἀτύχημα is an unlucky occurrence, ἀδίκημα a wrongful act. Αἵρεσις is choice; the distinction concerns how the two occur, not simply whether their outcomes are painful. The manuscripts attribute this item only to Menander. Wachsmuth’s parenthetical comparison with The Woman Being Slapped does not supply an ancient play title to the heading.

786.Orestes 251–252. In the dialogue Orestes addresses Electra after her criticism of Helen’s family. Τῶν κακῶν accordingly means the bad or wicked people; διάφερε urges her to be different from them. The source excerpt retains the positive command φρόνει, think, following λέγ’, say. It is not rewritten into a different injunction drawn from a dramatic paraphrase.

787.The wording is difficult. Τῶν θεῶν αὐτῶν διδόντων means when the gods themselves give, with τὸ σύμφορον, what is beneficial, understood as their gift. The final οὐ βούλεται, does not wish, has no expressed infinitive; the English supplies to live from the nearby τοῦ ζῆν. Wachsmuth retains the negative and states that the passage is not resolved. The translation gives this contextual construction without silently adopting a conjecture that removes the negative or changes the statement into a question.

788.Wachsmuth separates these two verses from the preceding Menander fragment and supplies the Latin heading Anonymi, of an anonymous author. The heading remains bracketed in both languages; the added letter a preserves his separate locator. Τὸ μή abbreviates not being unfortunate, and τρόπου here concerns character. The clause contrasts what a god gives with a fault of character. Wachsmuth considers the wording unresolved and discusses either a gap after gives or deletion of or not. Its compressed form is retained rather than replaced with an apparatus reconstruction.

789.Κοινόν means something shared in common, contrasted with the restricted possessors of γνώμη, judgment or understanding. The neuter κοινόν is retained as printed rather than changed to agree in gender with τύχη. The verse does not say that everyone has equally good judgment.

790.Wachsmuth supplies the attribution in Latin, Euripidis, on the evidence of the following heading, the same author. The supplement remains bracketed. Αὐθαίρετα means self-chosen; τὰ πλεῖστα, most, is essential and is not expanded to all. Suffer makes explicit the relation of the dative θνητοῖς, for mortals, to the evils.

791.The same author refers to Euripides. Wachsmuth identifies the first eight verses with Rhadamanthys and notes their recurrence elsewhere in Stobaeus under that title. Εὐγένεια is noble birth, here an object of social aspiration. The unusual image father of wealth follows πάτωρ with κεκλῆσθαι, to be called; it is not silently changed into possessing wealth.

792.The contrast is between shameful gain and τὸ καλόν, the noble. Πλάνη is wandering or going astray. Supplied ⟨δὲ⟩ remains bracketed as however. The closing δόξαν εὐκλείας combines reputation with honorable renown; no particular deeds or prize are named. The first-person preference belongs to the fragment’s speaker.

793.Odyssey XI.110–112: Tiresias warns Odysseus about the cattle of the Sun. Them refers to the cattle, whose identity is outside the quoted lines. Both conditions and the qualification though suffering hardships remain. The promise of return is conditional, not a guarantee independent of conduct.

794.Iliad IX.410–416. Achilles describes the alternatives reported by his mother: death at Troy with lasting fame, or return with a long life. Κῆρες are the two fates concerning his death; the alternatives are conditional. The accusative μέ is the subject of φερέμεν: Achilles carries the two fates. The English follows the seven lines as Wachsmuth prints them, including ἵκομαι in the homecoming condition, rather than substituting the wording of another Homeric edition.

795.On the Crown XVIII.208. The contrast separates the honorable task performed by the agents from the fortune allotted to each. Δαίμων here is a divine power, not a demon in the later sense. The perfects πέπρακται and κέχρηνται look back on what has been done and the fortune experienced; they do not promise control of the outcome.

796.Εἴδωλον is an image or likeness, here something people fashion to excuse ἀβουλίη, failure to deliberate well. The Ionic forms ἰδίης, ἀβουλίης, and ὀξυδερκίη remain in the Greek. The qualification few things, followed by most things, leaves a role for fortune; it is not a claim that judgment controls every event. Wachsmuth discusses a different wording of the first part transmitted through Eusebius, but the translation follows the text printed here.