Diotimos Library · Greek Antiquity Collection · Bilingual Edition
Stobaeus, Volume II
Greek and English with an introduction and explanatory footnotes.
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Facing Pages · Branch 240 of 516
Book II Chapter 7 · II.7.20.5–II.7.20.6
Ancient Greek
p. 476Αὔξησις καὶ φθορὰ τῆς ἀρετῆς
Ταῦτ’ ἄρα καὶ αὔξειν καὶ φθείρειν τὴν ἀρετήν, ὥστε τοὺς μὲν μετρίους φόβους αὔξειν τὴν ἀνδρείαν, τοὺς δὲ μείζονας ἢ ἐλάττονας φθείρειν. Ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἀρετῶν τὰς μὲν οὔσας κατὰ ταύτας ὑπερβολὰς καὶ ἐλλείψεις φθείρειν αὐτάς, τὰς δὲ μετριότητας αὔξειν.
Ἡδονὴ καὶ λύπη
Οὐ μόνον δὲ τούτοις ἀφορίζεσθαι τὴν ἀρετήν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἡδονῇ καὶ λύπῃ. Διὰ γὰρ τὴν ἡδονὴν τὰ φαῦλα πράττειν ἡμᾶς, διὰ δὲ τὴν λύπην ἀπέχεσθαι τῶν καλῶν· οὐκ εἶναι δὲ λαβεῖν οὔτ’ ἀρετὴν οὔτε κακίαν ἄνευ λύπης καὶ ἡδονῆς. Τὴν οὖν ἀρετὴν περὶ ἡδονὰς καὶ λύπας ὑπάρχειν.
Stobaeus, Volume II: Book II Chapter 7
p. 477The Growth and Destruction of Virtue
These things, then, both increase and destroy virtue: measured fears increase courage, while greater or lesser fears destroy it. Similarly with the other virtues: the excesses and deficiencies associated with them destroy them, while due measures increase them.636
Pleasure and Pain
Virtue is marked out not only by these things but also by pleasure and pain. For pleasure leads us to do base things, and pain to refrain from noble things. Neither virtue nor vice can be acquired without pain and pleasure. Virtue, therefore, concerns pleasures and pains.637
Socrates
Reading Stobaeus, Volume II · Book II Chapter 7 · II.7.20.5–II.7.20.6
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Socrates will begin with this book and its sources.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.