Joannes Stobaeus

Background

Of his life nothing is known. He derived his surname apparently from being a native of Stobi in Macedonia Salutaris. The age in which he lived cannot be fixed with accuracy. He quotes no writer later than the early 5th century, and he probably lived around this time.

Career

The extracts were intended by Stobaeus for his son Septimius, and were preceded by a letter briefly explaining the purpose of the work and giving a summary of the contents. From this summary (preserved in Photius's Bibliotheca) we learn that Stobaeus divided his work into four books and two volumes. In most of the manuscripts there is a division into three books, forming two distinct works; the first and second books forming one work under the title Physical and Moral Extracts (also Eclogues; Greek: Ἐκλογαὶ φ�

σικαὶ καὶ ἠθικαί), the third book forming another work, called Florilegium or Sermones (or Anthology; Ἀνθολόγιον). As each of the four books is sometimes called Anthologion, it is probable that this name originally belonged to the entire work. The full title, according to Photius, was Four Books of Extracts, Sayings and Precepts (Ἐκλογῶν, ἀποφθεγμάτων, ὑποθηκῶν βιβλία τέσσαρα [Eklogon, apophthegmaton, hypothekon biblia tessara]). Modern editions have dropped these two titles and have reverted to calling the entire work the Anthology (Latin: Anthologium).

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 sections. From these and other indications it seems probable that what we have is only an epitome of the original work, made by an anonymous Byzantine writer of much later date. The didactic aim of Stobaeus's work is apparent throughout.

The first book teaches physics-in the wide sense which the Greeks assigned to this term-by 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 with Pythagoreanism. For part of the first book and much of the second, it is clear that he depended on the (lost) works of the Peripatetic philosopher Aetius and the Stoic philosopher Arius 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.

Achievements

• It is to him that we owe many of our most important fragments of the dramatists, particularly of Euripides.

Works

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  • Eclogarum Physicarum Et Ethicarum Libri Duo (1792) (Latin Edition)

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

  • Ióannou Stobaiou Anthologion (Greek Edition)

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

Religion

From his silence in regard to Christian authors, it has been inferred that he was not a Christian. His name, though, would rather indicate a Christian, or at least the son of Christian parents.