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← ExitStobaeus, Volume II

Reading language

Book II Chapter 4

Chapter 4

⟨On Speech and Letters⟩⁹⁷

⟨Hesiod⟩

All look to him as he settles matters of right with straight judgments; speaking with assurance, he swiftly and skillfully brings even a great dispute to an end. For this is why kings are wise: for people who have suffered harm they set matters right in the assembly, easily persuading them with gentle words. As he passes through the city, they honor him like a god with kindly reverence; he stands out among the assembled people.⁹⁸

Aeschylus in Prometheus

And I invented number for them, foremost of ingenious devices, and the joining of letters: the memory of all things, the Muses’ mother, a craftswoman.⁹⁹

Philemon

Speech is indeed useful to those who are ill. As a dressing properly placed on a wound stops the inflammation, so does speech.¹⁰⁰

Euripides

Many sayings of the ancients, too, are well said: for good words are a remedy for mortals’ fear.¹⁰¹

Philetas from Playthings

No foolish rustic, lifting his mattock, will take me, an alder, from the mountains; but one who knows the ordering of words and has labored much, who understands the path of every kind of tale.¹⁰²

Euripides in Heracles

I shall not cease to mingle the Graces with the Muses, in sweetest union. May I never live without the Muses’ arts.¹⁰³

Euripides in Andromeda

Poor soul, how feeble a fortune the divine power has given you! Yet your words think highly of themselves.¹⁰⁴

Euripides in Palamedes

I alone devised remedies against forgetfulness, voiceless and yet speaking, and arranged syllables: I invented letters for human beings to learn, so that, though absent across the sea’s expanse, they might know clearly all that happens at home, and, when dying, tell their children the extent of their property by writing it down, and the recipient might know. The troubles that fall into dispute among people a tablet settles, and does not allow falsehoods to be spoken.¹⁰⁵

Callimachus from ⟨Causes⟩ Book Two

For all the delicate golden oils I put on my head then, along with fragrant garlands, immediately lost their scent; and whatever slipped inside my teeth and down into my ungrateful belly— none of that remained until tomorrow. But what I took in through my ears, that alone is still with me.¹⁰⁶

Philemon from The Man without a City

This man discovered not only how we might speak to one another, though separated by a long stretch of time, and how none of us would ever again forget anything, but by looking at what is written would know the events of all time; he also left us writing as a physician for the soul.¹⁰⁷

Isocrates from Evagoras

I think, Nicocles, that likenesses of bodies too are fine memorials. Yet likenesses of deeds and thought are worth much more; these one could behold only in discourses composed with art.¹⁰⁸

Democritus

Speech becomes a powerful means of persuasion.¹⁰⁹

Socrates

As a safeguard in war, iron is better than gold; in life, reason is better than wealth.¹¹⁰

The same author

Reason, like a good sculptor, gives the soul a beautiful form.¹¹¹

Plato from the Philebus · 1

When vocal sound was recognized as unlimited, whether by a god or a divine man—whom the Egyptian story calls a certain Theuth—he first discerned that the vowels within this unlimited range were more than one. He also discerned others which partook not of voice but of a certain sound, and that these too had a definite number. As a third class of letters he distinguished what we now call mutes. Next he divided the soundless, voiceless letters down to each individual one, and the vowels and the intermediate sounds in the ⟨same⟩ way, until, having grasped their number, he gave each and all the name “element.”¹¹²

Plato from the Philebus · 2

Seeing that none of us could learn even one of them by itself without all the others, and reckoning in turn that this bond was one and somehow made all of them one, he declared that there was a single art concerned with them, and named it the art of letters.¹¹³

Plato from the Theaetetus

For a combination of names, it is said, is the essence of an account. Thus the elements have no account and cannot be known, though they can be perceived; syllables, however, can be known, expressed, and made the objects of true opinion. When someone acquires a true opinion of something without an account, his soul is right about it, but he does not know it. For whoever cannot give and receive an account is without knowledge of that thing; once he adds an account, he becomes capable of all these things and fully attains the condition of knowledge.¹¹⁴

Plato from the Sophist · 1

“Come, then: just as we spoke about forms and letters, let us examine names again in the same way. What we are now seeking seems to lie somewhere in this direction.”

“What question about names are we to consider?”

“Whether all fit together with one another, or none do, or some are willing to and others are not.”

“It is clear that some are willing to, and others are not.”

“Perhaps you mean that those which, when spoken in sequence, make something clear fit together, while those whose sequence signifies nothing fail to fit.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“What I thought you understood when you agreed. There are, I take it, two kinds of indications about being made by the voice.”

“How so?”

“One is called names, the other verbs.”¹¹⁵

97.Wachsmuth supplies the title from Photius. His apparatus explains that only II.4.18–19 survive here in the Eclogae manuscripts F and P; he reconstructs the preceding sequence from the Florilegium. Λόγος ranges across speech, discourse, an account, and reason; γράμματα can mean letters or writing. The English follows each passage’s use.

98.Theogony 85–92. Wachsmuth supplies the attribution, since the Florilegium transmission joins these verses to preceding material without a separate heading. The king’s authority is shown in just judgment and the settling of disputes through speech. Μετάτροπα ἔργα, rendered “set matters right,” describes acts that reverse the harm; “straight” preserves the image in ἰθείῃσι.

99.Prometheus Bound 459–461; Prometheus speaks of his gifts to human beings. The joining of letters is writing. The feminine “craftswoman” renders ἐργάνην, and “the Muses’ mother” preserves μουσομήτορα: memory makes the arts possible. Wachsmuth prints the singular σύνθεσιν, “joining,” and the reading ἐργάνην rather than the alternative ἐργάτιν noted in his apparatus.

100.Σπληνίον is a small dressing or compress. The comparison gives speech the soothing function of a physical treatment. Wachsmuth keeps the first line with the two that follow; his apparatus records an earlier separation and competing attributions in the transmission.

101.The printed φόβου means “of fear.” Wachsmuth’s apparatus records proposed alternatives, but the English follows the text he prints. Φάρμακον is a remedy here, continuing the medical comparison of speech in the preceding excerpt.

102.The alder speaks as an object fit for a learned reader rather than an unlettered woodcutter. Wachsmuth favors an interpretation involving wooden writing tablets used by a poet; the object’s precise identity remains debated. The translation retains the literal alder and mattock instead of inserting “book” or “tablet.” Παίγνια, the collection title, means playthings or playful pieces.

103.Heracles 673–676. The Graces and Muses unite beauty or charm with artistic cultivation. Ἀμουσία is the absence of the Muses’ arts, especially music and song, rather than merely silence. “Sweetest” follows the Doric ἁδίσταν printed here.

104.The contrast is between the person’s weak circumstances and the pride expressed in speech. The English retains the personification in μέγα φρονοῦσι δ’ οἱ λόγοι, literally “the words have high thoughts.” Δαίμων here names the divine power responsible for the allotment of fortune.

105.Palamedes describes the invention of writing. The paradox “voiceless and yet speaking” characterizes written signs; the following examples concern communication at a distance, inheritance, and the settling of disputes. The Greek shifts between singular and plural constructions in the inheritance clause. The English supplies the people doing the writing without changing the examples or silently adopting the apparatus’s proposed wording.

106.Wachsmuth supplies the work’s title, Αἴτια or Causes. The speaker contrasts the fleeting pleasures of perfume and food with the lasting possession acquired through hearing. Ἄπνοα, literally “without breath,” refers here to the loss of scent; the belly is “ungrateful” because it retains none of what was given to it.

107.The inventor is not named within this excerpt. Wachsmuth prints χρόνον, “time,” in the second line, although his apparatus discusses proposed readings involving place or distance. The English retains the temporal separation. “What is written” makes explicit what the reader looks at, while “physician for the soul” preserves the final medical metaphor.

108.Evagoras 73. The comparison is between bodily portraits and representations of action and thought in discourse. Wachsmuth supplies ⟨τὰς⟩ from Isocrates, carrying forward “likenesses” as the understood noun. Τεχνικῶς refers to the skill or art of the composition, rather than to a technical subject matter.

109.The attribution and the neuter ἰσχυρόν, “a powerful thing,” follow the printed text. Wachsmuth discusses a longer parallel and a comparison with gold in his apparatus; neither the comparative form nor “gold” is added to this brief excerpt.

110.Iron represents the means of defense, as against possession of gold. Λόγος in the corresponding clause can mean reason or intelligent discourse. The comparison makes it a safeguard for living, rather than simply a means of acquiring wealth.

111.The printed “same author” refers back to Socrates. Πλάστης is a modeler or sculptor; λόγος now shapes the soul as an artisan shapes material. The image continues the favorable account of reason in the preceding saying.

112.Philebus 18B–D spans parts 1–2; Socrates speaks. The account distinguishes vowels, an intermediate class, and mute letters according to ancient phonetic categories. “Element” renders στοιχεῖον, also the word for an individual letter. The supplied ⟨same⟩ follows Wachsmuth’s ⟨αὐτόν⟩. Theuth’s work turns an unlimited field into a finite, articulated system.

113.Γραμματικὴ τέχνη here is the organized knowledge of letters and their relations, wider than grammar understood only as rules of syntax. The point is the interdependence of the elements: their number alone does not constitute the art without the bond that makes them a system.

114.Theaetetus 202B–C. Socrates is reporting a theory he presents as a dream, which the dialogue subsequently examines; the excerpt is not its final verdict. “Account” renders λόγος. “Elements” and “syllables” preserve the letter analogy used to distinguish constituents from combinations, alongside the distinction between true opinion and knowledge.

115.Sophist 261D–262E spans parts 1–4; the Eleatic Stranger speaks with Theaetetus. The passage compares the combination of words with earlier discussions of forms and letters. “Names” renders ὀνόματα, initially words in general and then the class distinguished from verbs. The verbs “fit” and “are willing” personify their capacity to combine meaningfully.