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John Stobaeus

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 8 · II.8.heading–II.8.3

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Book II Chapter 8 · II.8.heading–II.8.3

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Ancient Greek

p. 552

Κεφάλαιον Ηʹ

II.8.heading

Περὶ τῶν ἐφ’ ἡμῖν.

Φιλήμονος

II.8.1

Ὅσα διὰ τοὺς πράττοντας αὐτοὺς γίγνεται, οὐδενὶ πρόσεστιν οὐδὲ κοινωνεῖ τύχη.

Εὐριπίδου Πελιάσιν

II.8.2

Οὐκ ἔστι τὰ θεῶν ἄδικ’· ἐν ἀνθρώποισι δὲ κακῶς νοσοῦντα σύγχυσιν πολλὴν ἔχει.

Μενάνδρου

II.8.3

Εἰ πάντες ἐβοηθοῦμεν ἀλλήλοις ἀεί, οὐδεὶς ἂν ὢν ἄνθρωπος ἐδεήθη τύχης.

Stobaeus, Volume II: Book II Chapter 8

p. 553

Chapter 8

II.8.heading

On What Is Up to Us.⁷⁷⁸

Philemon

II.8.1

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

Euripides in Daughters of Pelias

II.8.2

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

Menander

II.8.3

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

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.

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.