STOBAEUS

Form: Ioannes.

Of Stobi in Macedonia. About 500 A.D. he composed, for the education of his son Septimius, a philosophical anthology in four books, from the extracts which he had made in the course of his extensive reading from more than 500 Greek poets and prose writers. It is of great value, as it includes numerous fragments of works now lost, and is particularly rich in quotations from the works of the Greek dramatists. The collection, which originally seems to have formed one whole work, has been separated into two distinct portions in the course of time: (1) The "physical, dialectical, and ethical eclogues" (or selections) in two books (imperfect at the beginning and end); and (2) the Florilegium, also in two books, on ethical and political subjects, the sections of which are in great part so arranged that each virtue is treated in connexion with its opposite vice.