Editing Stobaeus (section)

==Work==
Stobaeus' anthology is a collection of extracts from earlier Greek writers, which he collected and arranged, in the order of subjects, as a repertory of valuable and instructive sayings.<ref name="mason"/> 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. The full title, according to Photius, was ''Four Books of Extracts, Sayings and Precepts'' (Ἐκλογῶν, ἀποφθεγμάτων, ὑποθηκῶν βιβλία τέσσαρα<!--ἐν τεύχεσι δυσί--> [''Eklogon, apophthegmaton, hypothekon biblia tessara'']).<ref name="eb1911"/> He quoted more than five hundred writers, generally beginning with the poets, and then proceeding to the historians, orators, philosophers, and physicians.<ref name="eb1911"/> The works of the greater part of these have perished.<ref name="mason"/> It is to him that we owe many of our most important fragments of the dramatists.<ref name="eb1911"/> He has quoted over 500 passages from [[Euripides]], 150 from [[Sophocles]], and over 200 from [[Menander]].<ref name="mason"/> It is evident from this summary, preserved in [[Photios I of Constantinople|Photius]]'s ''Bibliotheca''<ref>Photius, ''Cod.'' 167</ref> (9th century), that the work was originally divided into four books and two volumes,<ref name="eb1911"/> and that surviving manuscripts of the third book consist of two books which have been merged.<ref name="mason"/>

At some time subsequent to Photius the two volumes were separated, and the two volumes became known to Latin Europe as the ''Eclogae'' and the ''Florilegium'' respectively.{{sfn|Scott|Ferguson|1936|pp=82–85}} Modern editions have dropped these two titles and have reverted to calling the entire work the ''Anthology'' ({{langx|la|Anthologium}}).{{sfn|Scott|Ferguson|1936|pp=82–85}} 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: {{lang|grc|Ἐκλογαὶ φυσικαὶ καὶ ἠθικαί}}), the third book forming another work, called ''[[Florilegium]]'' or ''Sermones'' (or ''Anthology''; {{lang|grc|Ἀνθολόγιον}}).<ref name="mason"/> 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.<ref name="eb1911"/> Each chapter of the four books is headed by a title describing its matter.<ref name="mason"/>

===Introduction===
We learn from Photius that the first book was preceded by a dissertation on the advantages of philosophy, an account of the different schools of philosophy, and a collection of the opinions of ancient writers on geometry, music, and arithmetic.<ref name="mason"/> The greater part of this introduction is lost. The close of it only, where arithmetic is spoken of, is still extant.

===''Eclogues''===
The first two books consist for the most part of extracts conveying the views of earlier poets and prose writers on points of physics, dialectics, and ethics.<ref name="mason"/> The first book was divided into sixty chapters, the second into forty-six, of which the manuscripts preserve only the first nine.<ref name="mason"/> Some of the missing parts of the second book (chapters 15, 31, 33, and 46) have, however, been recovered from a 14th-century [[wikt:gnomology|gnomology]].{{sfn|Scott|Ferguson|1936|pp=82–85}}

His knowledge of physics — in the wide sense which the Greeks assigned to this term — is often untrustworthy.<ref name="eb1911"/> Stobaeus betrays a tendency to confound the dogmas of the early [[Ionian philosophy|Ionian philosophers]], and he occasionally mixes up [[Platonism]] with [[Pythagoreanism]].<ref name="eb1911"/> For part of the first book and much of the second, it is clear that he depended on the (lost) works of the [[Peripatetic school|Peripatetic]] philosopher [[Aetius (philosopher)|Aetius]] and the [[Stoicism|Stoic]] philosopher [[Arius Didymus]].<ref name="eb1911"/>

===''Florilegium''===
The third and fourth books are an anthology devoted to subjects of a moral, political, and economic kind, and maxims of practical wisdom.<ref name="mason"/> The third book originally consisted of forty-two chapters, and the fourth of fifty-eight.<ref name="mason"/> These two 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.<ref name="eb1911"/>