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 1 · II.1.20–II.1.22

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Facing Pages · Branch 12 of 516

Book II Chapter 1 · II.1.20–II.1.22

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Ancient Greek

p. 20

Βίωνος

II.1.20

Βίων ἔλεγε γελοιοτάτους εἶναι τοὺς ἀστρονομοῦντας, οἳ [τοὺς πὰρ ποσὶ] τοὺς ἐν τοῖς αἰγιαλοῖς ἰχθῦς οὐ βλέποντες τοὺς ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ φάσκουσιν εἰδέναι.

Πινδάρου

II.1.21

Τοὺς φυσιολογοῦντας ἔφη Πίνδαρος

ἀτελῆ σοφίας καρπὸν δρέπειν.

Ἐκ τῶν Σερήνου Ἀπομνημονευμάτων

II.1.22

Θαλῆν εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν ὁρῶντα καὶ ἐμπεσόντα εἰς βόθρον ἡ θεράπαινα, Θρᾷττα οὖσα, δίκαια παθεῖν ἔφη, ὃς τὰ παρὰ ποσὶν ἀγνοῶν τὰ ἐν οὐρανῷ ἐσκόπει.

Stobaeus, Volume II: Book II Chapter 1

p. 21

Bion

II.1.20

Bion said that those who study the stars are utterly ridiculous: they cannot see the fish on the shores, yet claim to know the fish in the sky.²⁷

Pindar

II.1.21

Pindar said that those who inquire into nature

reap an unripe fruit of wisdom.²⁸

From Serenus’s Recollections

II.1.22

When Thales, looking toward the sky, fell into a pit, his servant, a Thracian woman, said that he had got what he deserved: he was studying what was in the sky while unaware of what lay at his feet.²⁹

27.The fish in the sky supply the joke’s celestial counterpart to ordinary fish. Wachsmuth brackets τοὺς πὰρ ποσὶ, “those at their feet,” as wording rejected from the text; it remains visible in the Greek but is omitted from the English sentence. His apparatus notes its apparent intrusion from the Thales anecdote on the next page.

28.The first line frames the reported saying; the second carries its poetic image. Ἀτελής can mean unfinished or incomplete; “unripe” gives the agricultural force of a fruit that has not reached maturity.

29.The heading attributes this version to Serenus’s Recollections. Wachsmuth’s note compares Plato, Theaetetus 174A, where the object is a well; the facing Greek here reads βόθρον, “pit,” and that is the word translated.

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.