Diotimos Library · Greek Antiquity Collection · Bilingual Edition
Stobaeus, Volume II
Greek and English with an introduction and explanatory footnotes.
Explore the LexiconSwipe or use the arrow keys.
Facing Pages · Branch 497 of 516
Book II Chapter 31 · II.31.129.7
Ancient Greek
p. 990Πλάτωνος — συνέχεια
νομίζοντες γάρ, ὦ παῖ φίλε, οἱ καθαίροντες αὐτούς, ὥσπερ οἱ περὶ τὰ σώματα ἰατροὶ νενομίκασι μὴ πρότερον ἂν τῆς προσφερομένης τροφῆς ἀπολαύειν δύνασθαι σῶμα, πρὶν ⟨ἂν⟩ τὰ ἐμποδίζοντα ἐντός τις ἐκβάλῃ, ταὐτὸν καὶ περὶ ψυχῆς διενοήθησαν ἐκεῖνοι, μὴ πρότερον αὐτὴν ἕξειν τῶν προσφερομένων μαθημάτων ὄνησιν, πρὶν ἂν ἐλέγχων τις τὸν ἐλεγχόμενον εἰς αἰσχύνην καταστήσας, τὰς τοῖς μαθήμασιν ἐμποδίους δόξας ἐξελών, καθαρὸν ἀποφήνῃ καὶ ταῦτα ἡγούμενον, ἅπερ οἶδεν, εἰδέναι μόνα, πλείω δὲ μή. — Βελτίστη γοῦν καὶ σωφρονεστάτη τῶν ἕξεων αὕτη. — Διὰ ταῦτα δὴ πάντα ἡμῖν, ὦ Θεαίτητε, καὶ τὸν ἔλεγχον λεκτέον ὡς ἄρα μεγίστη καὶ κυριωτάτη τῶν καθάρσεών ἐστι, καὶ τὸν ἀνέλεγκτον αὖ νομιστέον, ἂν καὶ τυγχάνῃ βασιλεὺς ὁ μέγας ὤν, τὰ μέγιστα ἀκάθαρτον ὄντα, ἀπαίδευτόν τε καὶ αἰσχρὸν γεγονέναι ταῦτα, ἃ καθαρώτατον καὶ κάλλιστον ἔπρεπε τὸν ὄντως ἐσόμενον εὐδαίμονα εἶναι.
Stobaeus, Volume II: Book II Chapter 31
p. 991Plato continued
For, my dear boy, those who purify them have formed the same judgment about the soul as physicians have about bodies. Physicians believe that a body cannot benefit from the food offered it until someone has expelled what obstructs it within.1463 So these men think that the soul will gain no benefit from the studies offered it until someone examining the person has brought him to shame, removed the opinions obstructing his learning, and made him appear purified, believing that he knows only the things he actually knows, and no more.1464 — Certainly this is the best and most temperate of dispositions.1465 — For all these reasons, Theaetetus, we must say that refutation is the greatest and most authoritative of purifications. And we must hold that someone who has not been refuted, even if he happens to be the Great King, is unclean in the most important respects and has become uneducated and ugly in precisely those respects in which someone who is truly to be happy ought to be most pure and most beautiful.1466
Socrates
Reading Stobaeus, Volume II · Book II Chapter 31 · II.31.129.7
Ask about a concept, passage, contradiction, or connection.
Socrates will begin with this book and its sources.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.