Stobaeus, Volume II

Name: Stobaeus, Volume II
Author: John Stobaeus

Greek and English with an introduction and explanatory footnotes.

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Stobaeus, Volume IIBook II Chapter 7 · II.7.11k.6–II.7.11k.7

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Ancient Greek Page · Branch 173 of 516

Book II Chapter 7 · II.7.11k.6–II.7.11k.7

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Ancient Greek

p. 342

Ἡ κατ’ ἀξίαν δόσις τῆς ἀρετῆς

II.7.11k.6

Μηδὲ γὰρ τὴν κατ’ ἀξίαν ποιεῖσθαι δόσιν τῆς ἀρετῆς τῶν φαύλων τινά, σπουδαῖον μὲν γὰρ εἶναι τὴν δόσιν, ἐπιστήμην οὖσαν, καθ’ ἣν ἀξιόλογόν τι ἡγούμεθα περιποιεῖσθαι. Τῶν δὲ σπουδαίων μηδὲν εἰς φαύλους πίπτειν, ὥστε μηδὲ τὴν ἀξίαν τῆς ἀρετῆς δόσιν ποιεῖσθαί τινα τῶν φαύλων. Εἰ γὰρ τὴν κατ’ ἀξίαν τις ἐποιεῖτο δόσιν τῶν ἀφρόνων τῆς ἀρετῆς, ἐφ’ ὅσον ἐτίμα ταύτην, ἀπῳκονομεῖτο ἂν τὴν κακίαν.

Λόγος καὶ πράξεις τῶν φαύλων

II.7.11k.7

Πᾶς δέ τις ἄφρων σύνεστιν ἡδέως τῇ ἑαυτοῦ κακίᾳ. Σκοπεῖν γὰρ δεῖ μὴ τὸν ἐξώφορον αὐτῶν λόγον, φαῦλον ὄντα, ἀλλὰ τὸν τῶν πράξεων. Ἐκ τούτων γὰρ ἀπελέγχονται [καὶ] μὴ περὶ τὰ καλὰ καὶ σπουδαῖα παρωρμημένοι, ἀλλὰ περὶ τὰς ἀνδραποδώδεις ἀμέτρους ἀπολαύσεις.

Stobaeus, Volume II: Book II Chapter 7

p. 343

Assigning Virtue Its Due Worth

II.7.11k.6

No base person assigns virtue its due worth. For such an assignment is a thing of moral excellence, being knowledge in accordance with which we judge something worth acquiring. Nothing of moral excellence falls to base people, so no base person makes an appraisal worthy of virtue.⁴⁵¹ For if a foolish person assigned virtue its due worth, to the extent that he honored it he would rid himself of vice.⁴⁵²

The Speech and Deeds of the Base

II.7.11k.7

Every fool gladly keeps company with his own vice. For one must examine the account given by their deeds, rather than their outward speech, which is base. For their deeds expose them as impelled toward slavish, immoderate enjoyments rather than toward noble and worthy things.⁴⁵³

451.Δόσις here concerns assigning or appraising worth, and the source calls it knowledge; it is not a material gift to virtue. The two phrases κατ’ ἀξίαν δόσιν and ἀξίαν … δόσιν are retained as assigning due worth and making an appraisal worthy of virtue. Compare the earlier difficult definition through κρίσις, “assessment,” at II.7.7f.2.

452.The condition is counterfactual and the extent clause, ἐφ’ ὅσον, remains explicit. The inference connects honoring virtue with putting vice away; it does not identify merely saying that virtue is valuable with the knowledge just defined.

453.Ἐξώφορος is the account brought outward in speech; the contrasting “account of deeds” is the evidence of conduct. The adjective φαῦλον remains “base,” following the print despite the apparatus’s suggestion of a word meaning deceptive or fabricated. Wachsmuth brackets καί for deletion before μή; the rejected word remains in the Greek and is omitted in the English. “Their deeds” makes the antecedent of τούτων explicit.

About This Reading Edition

The complete surviving text of Stobaeus’s second book, through II.46.22, in Ancient Greek and English, with an introduction and 1,541 explanatory notes. All forty-six chapter headings remain, including the notices for chapters whose texts are missing.

Historical Text and Translation

Greek: Curt Wachsmuth, Ioannis Stobaei Anthologii libri duo priores, volumen II (Berlin: Weidmann, 1884), printed p. 1 and pp. 3–264. The supplied edition preserves consequential editorial signs, reconstructed joins, qualified attributions, and missing-text notices. English translation, introduction, and explanatory notes: Diotimos Editions, 2026.

About Diotimos Editions

This historical edition credits Diotimos Editions as its English translator.

Rights

Stobaeus’s ancient Greek work and Wachsmuth’s 1884 edition are in the public domain. The supplied English translation, introduction, and explanatory notes are published with the site owner’s authorization.