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 4 · II.4.3–II.4.5

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Facing Pages · Branch 41 of 516

Book II Chapter 4 · II.4.3–II.4.5

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Ancient Greek

p. 78

Φιλήμονος

II.4.3

Ἄρ’ ἔστι τοῖς νοσοῦσι χρήσιμος λόγος. ὡς σπληνίον πρὸς ἕλκος οἰκείως τεθὲν τὴν φλεγμονὴν ἔπαυσεν, οὕτω καὶ λόγος.

Εὐριπίδου

II.4.4

Καὶ τῶν παλαιῶν πόλλ’ ἔπη καλῶς ἔχει· λόγοι γὰρ ἐσθλοὶ φάρμακον φόβου βροτοῖς.

Φιλητᾶ Παιγνίων

II.4.5

Οὔ μέ τις ἐξ ὀρέων ἀποφώλιος ἀγροιώτης αἱρήσει κλήθρην, αἰρόμενος μακέλην· ἀλλ’ ἐπέων εἰδὼς κόσμον καὶ πολλὰ μογήσας, μύθων παντοίων οἶμον ἐπιστάμενος.

Stobaeus, Volume II: Book II Chapter 4

p. 79

Philemon

II.4.3

Speech is indeed useful to those who are ill. As a dressing properly placed on a wound stops the inflammation, so does speech.¹⁰⁰

Euripides

II.4.4

Many sayings of the ancients, too, are well said: for good words are a remedy for mortals’ fear.¹⁰¹

Philetas from Playthings

II.4.5

No foolish rustic, lifting his mattock, will take me, an alder, from the mountains; but one who knows the ordering of words and has labored much, who understands the path of every kind of tale.¹⁰²

100.Σπληνίον is a small dressing or compress. The comparison gives speech the soothing function of a physical treatment. Wachsmuth keeps the first line with the two that follow; his apparatus records an earlier separation and competing attributions in the transmission.

101.The printed φόβου means “of fear.” Wachsmuth’s apparatus records proposed alternatives, but the English follows the text he prints. Φάρμακον is a remedy here, continuing the medical comparison of speech in the preceding excerpt.

102.The alder speaks as an object fit for a learned reader rather than an unlettered woodcutter. Wachsmuth favors an interpretation involving wooden writing tablets used by a poet; the object’s precise identity remains debated. The translation retains the literal alder and mattock instead of inserting “book” or “tablet.” Παίγνια, the collection title, means playthings or playful pieces.

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.