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.7.13.heading–II.7.13.2

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English Page · Branch 195 of 516

Book II Chapter 7 · II.7.13.heading–II.7.13.2

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Ancient Greek

p. 386

Ἀριστοτέλους καὶ τῶν λοιπῶν Περιπατητικῶν

II.7.13.heading

Ἀριστοτέλους καὶ τῶν λοιπῶν Περιπατητικῶν περὶ τῶν ἠθικῶν.

Ἦθος καὶ ἔθος

II.7.13.1

Τὸ μὲν οὖν ἦθος τοὔνομα λαβεῖν φησὶν ἀπὸ τοῦ ἔθους· ὧν γὰρ ἐκ φύσεως ἀρχὰς ἔχομεν καὶ σπέρματα, τούτων τὰς τελειότητας περιποιεῖσθαι τοῖς ἔθεσι καὶ ταῖς ὀρθαῖς ἀγωγαῖς· δι’ ὃ καὶ τὴν ἠθικὴν ἐθικὴν εἶναι καὶ περὶ μόνα τὰ ζῷα γίνεσθαι καὶ μάλιστα περὶ ἄνθρωπον.

Τὸ πειθόμενον λόγῳ

II.7.13.2

Τὰ μὲν γὰρ λοιπὰ ἐθισθέντα οὐ λόγῳ ἀλλὰ τῇ ἀνάγκῃ γίνεσθαι ποιά ἄττα, τὸν δ’ ἄνθρωπον τῷ λόγῳ πλαττόμενον ἐκ τοῦ ἐθισμοῦ, ⟨τοῦ ἀλόγου⟩ μέρους τῆς ψυχῆς διακειμένου κατὰ τὸν λόγον. Ἄλογον δὲ λέγεσθαι ψυχῆς μέρος οὐ τὸ καθάπαξ ἄλογον, ἀλλὰ τὸ οἷόν τε πείθεσθαι λόγῳ, ὁποῖόν ἐστι τὸ παθητικόν, τοῦτο ⟨δὲ⟩ καὶ τῆς ἀρετῆς δεκτικόν.

Stobaeus, Volume II: Book II Chapter 7

p. 387

Aristotle and the Other Peripatetics

II.7.13.heading

Aristotle and the other Peripatetics on ethics.⁵¹⁵

Character and Habit

II.7.13.1

He says, then, that character takes its name from habit. For where we have beginnings and seeds from nature, we acquire their perfection through habits and right training. Hence ethics too concerns habit and has to do only with living creatures, and above all with the human being.⁵¹⁶

What Can Obey Reason

II.7.13.2

The other creatures, when habituated, acquire a certain character through compulsion rather than reason. The human being, however, is shaped by reason through habituation, as the ⟨nonrational⟩ part of the soul comes to be disposed in accordance with reason. By a nonrational part of the soul is meant not what is wholly without reason, but what can obey reason, such as the part subject to feeling; ⟨and⟩ this is also receptive to virtue.⁵¹⁷

515.This is the source heading introducing a new account after the Stoic exposition. It identifies the doctrines under discussion; it does not make the following epitome a continuous verbatim quotation from Aristotle. The opening φησίν, “he says,” is rendered without supplying a further personal name. Numerical subdivisions within II.7.13 divide the long source account for layout only.

516.The Greek links ἦθος, character, with ἔθος, habit, and plays on ἠθική and ἐθική, ethical and habitual. Compare Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics II.1, 1103a17–25, where moral virtue is acquired through habit and its name is related to ἔθος. “Living creatures” renders ζῷα; the passage itself immediately distinguishes the other creatures from the human being. Natural beginnings and seeds are not identified with already perfected virtue.

517.Wachsmuth supplies τοῦ ἀλόγου and δέ; their English equivalents remain bracketed. The distinction is between what is altogether without reason and what can listen to reason without itself being the reasoning faculty. Παθητικόν names the part capable of being affected or feeling. Compare Nicomachean Ethics I.13, 1102b13–1103a3. The English retains the account’s contrast between compulsion in the other creatures and rational formation in human habituation.

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.