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.8.24.2

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Book II Chapter 8 · II.8.24.2

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Ancient Greek

p. 570

Κρίτωνος Πυθαγορείου — συνέχεια

II.8.24.2

Καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἀναθρῴσκοντα αὐτὸν ἐποίησε εἰς [τὸν] ὠρανὸν καὶ αὐτὸ νοατὸν καὶ ὄψιν αὐτῷ ἐνέφυσε τοιαύταν, τὸν προσαγορευόμενον νόον, ᾧ τὸν θεὸν ὀψεῖται. Οὔτε γὰρ ἄνευ θεῶ τὸ ἄριστον καὶ τὸ κάλλιστον ἦν εὑρὲν οὔτ’ ἄνευ νόω ἰδὲν τὸν θεὸν αὐτόν, ἐπειδὴ πᾶν τὸ θνατὸν φύσιν ἔχει μετὰ ἀφροσύνας συγγενέος ῥιζοῦσθαι· καὶ ταύταν οὐχ ὁ θεὸς ἐστιν ὁ δωρούμενος, ἀλλ’ ἁ τᾶς γενέσιος οὐσία καὶ τᾶς αὐτῶν ψυχᾶς ἁ προαίρεσις.

Stobaeus, Volume II: Book II Chapter 8

p. 571

Crito the Pythagorean continued

II.8.24.2

And for this reason he made him rise toward heaven and the intelligible itself, and implanted in him a kind of sight, what is called intellect, by which he will see God.⁸⁰⁶ For without God it was not possible to find what is best and most beautiful, nor without intellect to see God himself, since everything mortal naturally takes root with an inborn lack of understanding. It is not God who bestows this lack of understanding, but the substance of coming to be and the choice of their own soul.⁸⁰⁷

806.The printed ἀναθρῴσκοντα conveys rising or springing upward. Wachsmuth retains this unusual expression rather than replacing it with the proposed verb for looking upward. The Greek retains rejected [τὸν] before heaven; the English follows its deletion. Αὐτὸ νοατόν means the intelligible itself, not that the human being is himself intelligible. The following explanation identifies the sight in question with νόος, intellect, rather than with bodily eyesight.

807.The Doric forms θεῶ and νόω correspond to the genitives θεοῦ and νοῦ. The final ταύταν refers to ἀφροσύνα, lack of understanding; it does not refer to intellect. The text locates this deficiency in the nature of coming to be and the soul’s own choice, expressly denying that God gives it. The plural αὐτῶν, their own, follows the general reference to mortal beings; the accompanying ψυχᾶς, soul, is singular in the Greek. This is the continuation and end of excerpt 24; the added subdivision serves layout only.

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.