From the book
Stobaeus, Volume II
John Stobaeus · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordThe adjective means having no master. In the quoted myth virtue’s masterlessness is connected with each person’s honoring or dishonoring it, not with unrestricted control of events.
- In StobaeusPorphyry first presents a difficulty: how can virtue have no master when the myth also describes constraints imposed through Necessity, the Fates, forgetfulness and a guiding daimon?
- In this editionKeep the claim within the objection and reply that frame it. It does not assert that every embodied action or external circumstance escapes all causal limitation.
- A place to readChapter 8 · Excerpt 39 · Passage 3 Read the question after the narrated constraints and forgetting, before Porphyry’s answer; the masterlessness of virtue is what the objection seeks to explain.
- English renderings
- masterless; having no master
Meaning
Adespotos denies possession or mastery by another. In these philosophical contexts it concerns the soul’s authority or the status of virtue, not the absence of every rule, relation or cause.
Use in the book
Porphyry quotes the claim that virtue is masterless while raising a difficulty about lives constrained by Necessity and the Fates. His question asks how such mastery can remain once a life has been chosen; it should not be detached as his final denial of agency. Iamblichus positively says that the life according to intellect restores the soul’s masterless authority and releases it from bonds of necessity. That life also holds fast to the gods and is fulfilled by their will. Masterlessness here is therefore compatible with divine orientation, rather than a name for unlimited personal license.
The accumulation of constraints gives the final question its force. The selected life has been ratified; the daimon watches over fate; drinking at the river removes memory. The objector then asks what could remain under our mastery. The quotation about virtue is not presented as a settled solution at this point, but as a claim apparently threatened by the narrative. Porphyry’s subsequent distinctions address that difficulty. Isolating the adjective would conceal the problem that makes it philosophically important in this excerpt.
Places to read
- Chapter 8 · Excerpt 39 · Passage 32Porphyry asks how masterless virtue fits the constraints of the chosen life.
- Chapter 8 · Excerpt 442Iamblichus connects the soul’s masterless authority with intellectual and divine life.
Translation in this edition
“Masterless” preserves the pointed connection with a master or owner. “Free” can be used in explanation, but should not hide the particular authority at stake.
ἀδέσποτος
Attested. Chapter 8 · Excerpt 39 · Passage 3; Wachsmuth II, printed p. 164.
ἡ ἀρετὴ ἀδέσποτος
ἀδέσποτον
Attested. Chapter 8 · Excerpt 44; Wachsmuth II, printed p. 173.
τὴν ἀδέσποτον τῆς ψυχῆς ἐξουσίαν
Source note
Wachsmuth, volume II, printed pp. 164, 173. The Porphyrian witness is a quotation within an objection; the Iamblichean witness is an affirmative statement. Their argumentative functions are not interchangeable.