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.31.12.6

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Book II Chapter 31 · II.31.12.6

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Ancient Greek

p. 762

Ἀριστοφάνους — συνέχεια

II.31.12.6

Εἰ ταῦτ’, ὦ μειράκιον, πείσῃ τούτῳ, νὴ τὸν Διόνυσον τοῖς Ἱπποκράτους υἱέσιν εἴξεις καί σε καλοῦσιν βλιτομάμμαν. — Ἀλλ’ οὖν λιπαρός γε καὶ εὐανθὴς ἐν γυμνασίοις διατρίψεις, οὐ στωμύλλων κατὰ τὴν ἀγορὰν τριβολεκτράπελ’, οἷά περ οἱ νῦν, οὐδ’ ἑλκόμενος περὶ πραγματίου γλισχαντιλογεξεπιτρίπτου· ἀλλ’ εἰς Ἀκαδήμειαν κατιὼν ὑπὸ ταῖς μορίαις ἀποθρέξει στεφανωσάμενος καλάμῳ λευκῷ μετὰ σώφρονος ἡλικιώτου σμίλακος ὄζων καὶ ἀπραγμοσύνης καὶ λεύκης φυλλοβολούσης ἦρος ἐν ὥρᾳ χαίρων, ὁπόταν πλάτανος πτελέᾳ ψιθυρίζῃ.

Stobaeus, Volume II: Book II Chapter 31

p. 763

The rival Arguments continued

II.31.12.6

[Weaker Argument] If you obey him in this, young fellow, by Dionysus, you will turn out like Hippocrates’s sons, and they will call you a vegetable-pap fool. —¹⁰⁹⁸ [Stronger Argument] Yet you will be sleek and blooming, spending your time in the gymnasia, not jabbering thorny quips in the marketplace like the moderns, nor dragged about over some sticky, quibbling, pettifogging little case.¹⁰⁹⁹ Instead, going down to the Academe, you will run beneath the sacred olive trees, wreathed in white reed, with a temperate companion of your own age, smelling of smilax, an untroubled life, and poplar shedding its leaves, rejoicing in the season of spring, when plane-tree whispers to elm.¹¹⁰⁰

1098.The ancient scholia explain εἴξεις as becoming like, not yielding to, and identify this Hippocrates as an Athenian, not the physician. Βλιτομάμμαν is a comic insult glossed as fool: its food imagery combines leafy greens and pap. Vegetable-pap fool is a deliberately approximate rendering of the wordplay.

1099.The extended compounds mock the verbal cleverness and petty litigation of the rival education. Wachsmuth’s γλισχαντιλογεξεπιτρίπτου is retained without inserting the rho found in γλισχραντι- in other texts. Ἀπραγμοσύνη below, an untroubled life or freedom from meddling, answers this picture of contentious business.

1100.Here the Academe is a gymnasium ground with sacred olive trees. Καλάμῳ λευκῷ is white reed; λεύκη later is poplar, and smilax a climbing plant. Φυλλοβολούσης is rendered shedding leaves; putting out leaves is also proposed for this disputed phrase. The spring setting and whispering plane-tree and elm are retained.

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.