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.8.47.3–II.8.48

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Book II Chapter 8 · II.8.47.3–II.8.48

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Ancient Greek

p. 652

Ἰαμβλίχου — συνέχεια

II.8.47.3

Καὶ αὕτη τοίνυν ἡ διάθεσις τοῦ σπουδαίου τὸ καλὸν προτιμᾷ τε διαφερόντως καὶ τὴν τοῦ λόγου τελειότητα μόνην ἐν μακαρίᾳ ζωῇ τίθεται, τὰ δὲ ἄλλα ἐν οὐδενὸς μέρει περιορᾷ καὶ ἀτιμάζει.

⟨Ἐν ταὐτῷ⟩

II.8.48

Ἐπεὶ τοίνυν ἐν ψυχῇ μέν ἐστιν ὁ ἄνθρωπος, ἡ δὲ ψυχὴ νοερά τε ἐστὶ καὶ ἀθάνατος, καὶ τὸ καλὸν ἄρα αὐτῆς καὶ τὸ ἀγαθὸν καὶ τὸ τέλος ἐνυπάρχει τῇ θείᾳ ζωῇ, τῶν δὲ θνητοειδῶν οὐδὲν κύριον ἢ συμβάλλεσθαί τι πρὸς τὴν τελείαν ζωὴν ἐστιν, ἢ παραιρεῖν αὐτῆς τὴν εὐδαιμονίαν. Ὅλως γὰρ ἐν νοερᾷ μὲν ζωῇ τὸ μακάριον ἡμῖν ὑπάρχει· ταύτην δὲ οὐδὲν τῶν μέσων οὔτε ἐπιδιδόναι ποιεῖ οὔτ’ ἐστὶν ἀφαιρεῖσθαι. Μάτην ἄρα αἱ τύχαι καὶ τὰ ἄνισα δῶρα τῆς τύχης διατεθρύληται παρὰ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις.

Stobaeus, Volume II: Book II Chapter 8

p. 653

Iamblichus continued

II.8.47.3

This disposition of the good person, therefore, gives special honor to the noble and counts only the perfection of reason as belonging to a blessed life; everything else it disregards and disdains as of no account.⁹¹²

⟨From the same work⟩

II.8.48

Since, then, the human being is in the soul, and the soul is intellectual and immortal, the soul’s nobility, good, and end are therefore inherent in divine life. Nothing of a mortal kind has power either to contribute anything to perfect life or to deprive it of happiness.⁹¹³ In general, our blessedness lies in intellectual life; none of the intermediate things makes this life advance or can take it away.⁹¹⁴ It is in vain, then, that people have gone on talking about turns of fortune and Fortune’s unequal gifts.

912.Τὸ καλόν is the noble, the object of moral esteem here. Λόγος is reason, whose perfection is placed at the center of the blessed life, μακαρία ζωή. The contrasting judgment on everything else continues the refusal to make virtue’s value depend on Fortune’s gifts.

913.Wachsmuth separates this paragraph as a new excerpt and supplies From the same work; the heading stays bracketed in both languages. The printed ἐν ψυχῇ, in the soul, is retained rather than adopting a proposed alteration of the opening. It locates the human being in the soul for the argument that follows. Θεία ζωή is divine life, as printed; the apparatus proposes perfect instead of divine, but that is not substituted here.

914.The intermediate things, τὰ μέσα, are the indifferents considered apart from moral good and evil. The feminine ταύτην most directly resumes intellectual life, νοερὰ ζωή, rather than the neuter blessedness, τὸ μακάριον; this life makes that reference explicit. Τέλος is the end or final aim, while εὐδαιμονία, happiness, and τὸ μακάριον, blessedness, describe the fulfillment located in that life.

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.