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Encyclopedia Britannica

STOBAEUS, JOANNES

This article appears in Volume V25, Page 929 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: STE-SUS

STOBAEUS, JOANNES , so called from his native place Stobi in Macedonia, the compiler of a valuable

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

of extracts from Greek authors. Of his life nothing is known, but he probably belongs to the latter half of the 5th century A.D. From his silence in regard to Christian authors, it is inferred that he was not a Christian.
The extracts were intended by Stobaeus for his son Septimius, and were preceded by a

letter

LETTER (through Fr. lettre from Lat. littera or litera, letter of the alphabet; the origin of the Latin word is obscure; it has probably no connexion with the root of linere, to smear, i.e. with wax, for an inscription with a stilus)

briefly explaining the purpose of the

work

WORK

and giving a summary of the contents. From this summary (preserved in Photius's Bibliotheca) we learn that Stobaeus divided his

work

WORK

into four books and two volumes. In most of our MSS. the work is divided into three books, of which the first and second are generally called 'EKkoyai vataai Kai i1B0Kal (Physical and Moral Extracts), and the third 'AvOo-Xiycov (Florilegium or Sermones). As each of the four books is sometimes called 'AvOoXoytov, it is probable that this name originally belonged to the entire work; the full title, as we know from Photius, was 'EKXoyc::v airort)Beya-ra>v ulroBrpi3v !34 Xfa TETTapa (Four Books of Extracts, Sayings and Precepts). The modern arrangement is somewhat arbitrary and there are several marked discrepancies between it and the account given
XX V ..20by Photius. The introduction to the whole work, treating of the value of philosophy and of philosophical sects, is lost, with the exception of the concluding portion; the second book is little more than a fragment, and the third and fourth have been amalgamated by altering the

original

ORIGINAL

sections. From these and other indications it seems probable that what we have is only an epitome of the

original

ORIGINAL

work, made by an

anonymous

ANONYMOUS

Byzantine writer of much later date. The didactic aim of Stobaeus's work is apparent throughout. The first book teaches physicsin the wide sense which the Greeks assigned to this termby means of extracts. It is often untrustworthy: Stobaeus betrays a tendency to confound the dogmas of the early Ionic philosophers, and he occasionally mixes up

Platonism

PLATONISM

with Pythagoreanism. For part of this book and much of book ii. he depended on the works of Aetius, a peripatetic philosopher, and Didymus. The third and fourth books, like the larger part of the second, treat of ethics; the third, of virtues and vices, in pairs; the fourth, of more general ethical and political subjects, frequently citing extracts to illustrate the pros and cons of a question in two successive chapters. In all, Stobaeus quotes more than five hundred writers, generally beginning with the poets, and then proceeding to the historians, orators, philosophers and physicians. It is to him that we owe many of our most important fragments of the dramatists, particularly of Euripides.
Editio princeps (1609) ; Eclogae, ed. T. Gaisford (1822), A.

Meineke

MEINEKE, JOHANN ALBRECHT
FRIEDRICH
- FRIEDRICH, JOHANN (1836— )
AUGUST (1790-1870)

, (186o1864); Florilegium, ed. T. Gaisford (185o) ; A.

Meineke

MEINEKE, JOHANN ALBRECHT
FRIEDRICH
- FRIEDRICH, JOHANN (1836— )
AUGUST (1790-1870)

(18551857), C.

Wachsmuth

WACHSMUTH, CHARLES (1829-1896)

and O. Hense (18841894, and 1909).

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JCSM is a 501(c)(3), non-profit organization. Copyright © 1997-present.