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.8.32.2–II.8.33

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Facing Pages · Branch 295 of 516

Book II Chapter 8 · II.8.32.2–II.8.33

Book Mode

Ancient Greek

p. 586

Πλουτάρχου · συνέχεια

II.8.32.2

ἀνεκπλήκτους πρὸς τὸ μέλλον εἶναι καὶ θαρραλέους καὶ πρὸς τὴν τύχην λέγοντας, ⟨ἃ⟩ Σωκράτης, δοκῶν πρὸς τοὺς κατηγόρους λέγειν, πρὸς τοὺς δικαστὰς ἔλεγεν, ὡς ἀποκτεῖναι μὲν Ἄνυτος καὶ Μέλητος δύνανται, βλάψαι δὲ οὐ δύνανται. Καὶ γὰρ ἡ τύχη δύναται νόσῳ περιβαλεῖν, ἀφελέσθαι χρήματα, διαβαλεῖν πρὸς δῆμον ἢ τύραννον· κακὸν δὲ καὶ δειλὸν καὶ ταπεινόφρονα καὶ ἀγεννῆ καὶ φθονερὸν οὐ δύναται ποιῆσαι τὸν ἀγαθὸν καὶ ἀνδρώδη καὶ μεγαλόψυχον ⟨καὶ γενναῖον καὶ ἐλευθέριον⟩, οὐδὲ παρελέσθαι τὴν διάθεσιν τῶν καλῶν.

Πλάτωνος

II.8.33

Τὰ ἀπὸ τύχης γιγνόμενα οὐκ ἀνθρωπίνῃ ἡγεμονίᾳ γίγνεται, ᾧ δ’ ἄνθρωπος ἡγεμών ἐστιν ἐπὶ τὸ ὀρθόν, δύο ταῦτα ἡγεῖται, δόξα ἀληθὴς καὶ ἐπιστήμη.

Stobaeus, Volume II: Book II Chapter 8

p. 587

Plutarch · Continuation

II.8.32.2

We should be undaunted and confident about the future and say to fortune ⟨what⟩ Socrates, while seeming to address his accusers, said to the judges: Anytus and Meletus can kill me, but they cannot harm me.⁸²⁷ For fortune can indeed inflict disease, take away possessions, and slander a man before the people or a tyrant. But it cannot make the good and manly and magnanimous ⟨and noble and generous⟩ man bad, cowardly, low-minded, ignoble, or envious; nor can it take away his disposition toward noble things.⁸²⁸

Plato

II.8.33

Things that happen through fortune do not come about through human guidance. Where a human being is a guide toward what is right, these two are the guides: true opinion and knowledge.⁸²⁹

827.The opening continues the exhortation begun in II.8.32.1. Supplied ⟨ἃ⟩ appears as ⟨what⟩. Anytus and Meletus were Socrates’s accusers; the distinction between killing and harming recalls Plato, Apology 30C–D. This excerpt gives the saying in its own indirect form and directs its force toward the judges as well as the accusers.

828.Wachsmuth supplies the whole phrase ⟨καὶ γενναῖον καὶ ἐλευθέριον⟩, represented by the bracketed continuation noble and generous. All the adjectives describe the same man. Ἀνδρώδη, manly, commends courage in the account’s idiom. The final disposition toward noble things follows τὴν διάθεσιν τῶν καλῶν; the local wording is retained rather than replaced by the longer continuation in On Tranquillity of Mind.

829.Meno 99A. The excerpt distinguishes what happens by fortune from action guided by a person, and identifies true opinion and knowledge as the two guides to correctness. Δόξα ἀληθής is true opinion, contrasted with ἐπιστήμη, knowledge; the contrast does not make every opinion false. The compressed final wording follows this anthology’s local text.

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.