Stobaeus
Ioannes (
Ιωάννης ὁ
Στοβαῖος). A Greek writer of uncertain date (probably about A.D. 500), who
derived his surname apparently from being a native of Stobi in Macedonia. Of his personal
history we know nothing. Stobaeus was a man of extensive reading, in the course of which he
noted down the most interesting passages; and to him we are indebted for a large proportion of
the fragments that remain of the lost works of the early Greek poets and prose-writers to the
number of 500. His work, which was a sort of anthology, was originally a single one, but in
course of time was divided into two, each having two subdivisions—
Eclogae
Physicae et Ethicae, which is edited by Gaisford
(1850) and Meineke
(1860-64); and the
Anthologion or
Florilegium,
edited by Gaisford
(1822-25), Meineke
(1856-57), and Wachsmuth and
Hense, 3 vols.
(Berlin, 1884-94).