JOANNES

STOBAEUS  , so called from his native place Stobi in Macedonia, the compiler of a valuable series 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 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 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)Beyµa-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 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 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, (186o–1864); Florilegium, ed . T . Gaisford (185o) ; A . Meineke (1855–1857), C .

Wachsmuth and O . Hense (1884–1894, and 1909) .