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 15 · II.15.23–II.15.25

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Book II Chapter 15 · II.15.23–II.15.25

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Ancient Greek

p. 704

Μενάνδρου

II.15.23

Ὁ μὲν λόγος ⟨σου⟩ συνέσεως πολλῆς γέμει· τὰ δ’ ἔργα σύνεσιν οὐκ ἔχοντα φαίνεται.

Ποσειδίππου

II.15.24

Οὐκ ἔργον ἐστὶν εὖ λέγειν, ἀλλ’ εὖ φρονεῖν· πολλοὶ γὰρ εὖ λέγοντες οὐκ ἔχουσι νοῦν.

Εὐριπίδου

II.15.25

Ἤδη δὲ πολλῶν ᾑρέθην κριτὴς λόγων, καὶ πόλλ’ ἁμιλληθέντα μαρτύρων ὕπο τἀναντί’ ἔγνων συμφορᾶς μιᾶς πέρι. κἀγὼ μὲν οὕτω χὤστις ἔστ’ ἀνὴρ σοφὸς λογίζομαι τἀληθές, εἰς ἀνδρὸς φύσιν βλέπων δίαιτάν θ’ ἥντιν’ ἡμερεύεται.

Stobaeus, Volume II: Book II Chapter 15

p. 705

Menander

II.15.23

⟨Your⟩ speech is full of great understanding; but your deeds appear to lack understanding.¹⁰⁰¹

Poseidippus

II.15.24

Speaking well is no achievement; thinking well is; for many who speak well have no sense.¹⁰⁰²

Euripides, from Phoenix

II.15.25

Before now I have been chosen to judge many accounts,¹⁰⁰³ and when many claims were contested by witnesses, I learned contradictory things about a single event. This is how I, and any man who is wise, reckon the truth: by looking at a man’s character and the manner of life in which he spends his days.¹⁰⁰⁴

1001.The supplied ⟨σου⟩ means your. The same noun, σύνεσις, understanding, is first credited to the speech and then found absent from the deeds. The heading names Menander without identifying a play or speaker.

1002.Ἔργον here presents the worthwhile or demanding task: sound thought rather than fluent speech. Φρονεῖν, think or exercise judgment, is Wachsmuth’s printed reading; his apparatus records a correction from ποιεῖν, do. The translation follows the printed distinction between speaking and thinking.

1003.Aeschines, Against Timarchus 152, quotes these verses as Euripides’s Phoenix and uses them to urge judgment from a person’s life rather than suspicion or accusation. The local heading names Euripides only. Aeschines’s parallel has different word order in the first line and σκοπῶν, looking at, where the anthology prints βλέπων; the local text is retained.

1004.Contradictory accounts concern one and the same event, συμφορᾶς μιᾶς. The speaker therefore looks to the person’s φύσις, character or nature, and δίαιτα, habitual manner of living. The final middle form ἡμερεύεται is difficult; the rendering gives its apparent reference to daily life, supported by Aeschines’s explanation in section 153. It is retained rather than silently replaced by another reading.

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.