ABSTRACT
Nestling near the beginning of John of Stobi’s vast Anthology, — as part, indeed, of his very first chapter, which has as its subject (very properly) “That God is the creator of all beings, and that he administers the universe by reason of his providence; and of what substance he is” —we find an intriguing passage from an unidentified Platonist on the subject of God. The passage lacks its lemma, and its immediate surroundings do not afford much clue as to its provenance. The first 23 passages in the chapter are poetic, culled in all probability by Stobaeus from some previous anthology. These are followed by a short sequence of passages in prose: first, a tiny passage (24), also missing its lemma, giving a definition of God as nous, and that in turn as phronêsis, and then as Zeus, by reason of the fact that ‘from him we have the gift of life (zên)’; — an allusion to Plato’s Cratylus (396Α), which is indeed quoted just below (27). Before that, however, we have a short extract from Porphyry On Statues (25), and then one from Chrysippus, also making use of the etymology of Zeus from zên.
