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 31 · II.31.12.2

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Book II Chapter 31 · II.31.12.2

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Ancient Greek

p. 754

Ἀριστοφάνους — συνέχεια

II.31.12.2

εἰ δέ τις αὐτῶν βωμολοχεύσαιτ’ ἢ κάμψειέν τινα καμπήν, οἵας οἱ νῦν τὰς κατὰ Φρῦνιν ταύτας τὰς δυσκολοκάμπτους, ἐπετρίβετο τυπτόμενος πολλάς, ὡς τὰς Μούσας βασανίζων. ἐν παιδοτρίβου δὲ καθίζοντας τὸν μηρὸν ἔδει προβαλέσθαι τοὺς παῖδας, ὅπως τοῖς ἔξωθεν μηδὲν δείξειαν ἀπηνές· εἶτ’ αὖ πάλιν αὖθις ἀνισταμένους συμψῆσαι καὶ προνοῆσαι εἴδωλον τοῖσιν ἐρασταῖσιν τῆς ἥβης μὴ καταλείπειν. ἠλείψατο δ’ ἂν τοὐμφαλοῦ οὐδεὶς παῖς ὑπένερθεν τότ’ ἄν, ὥστε τοῖς αἰδοίοισι δρόσος καὶ χνοῦς ὥσπερ μήλοισιν ἐπήνθει.

Stobaeus, Volume II: Book II Chapter 31

p. 755

The Stronger Argument continued

II.31.12.2

If any of them played the buffoon or twisted one of those twists the moderns use in Phrynis’s style, those hard-to-twist twists, he was thrashed with many blows for torturing the Muses.¹⁰⁸⁸ When sitting at the physical trainer’s, the boys had to extend a thigh so that they showed onlookers nothing indecent; then, getting up again, they had to smooth the surface and take care not to leave their lovers an impression of their pubic parts.¹⁰⁸⁹ No boy then would anoint himself below the navel, so that dew and down bloomed on his genitals as on fruit.¹⁰⁹⁰

1088.The repeated καμπ- words parody elaborate melodic turns associated here with Phrynis. The local reading βασανίζων, torturing the Muses, is retained. The joke treats musical novelty as an injury to the Muses and answers it with physical punishment.

1089.Training in the gymnasium involved male nudity. The bodily imprint is to be smoothed away from the surface on which the boys sat; ἥβη, youth or puberty, here indicates the pubic region. The ἐρασταί are adult male lovers in the pederastic setting. The speaker’s ideal of modesty includes managing what those lovers can see.

1090.The imagery of dew and down compares the natural covering of the pubic region to the bloom on fruit. Μῆλα can denote apples or other tree-fruit. The speech’s praise of sexual restraint itself employs erotic imagery, a tension that belongs to the comedy.

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.