Zeno of Citium: Founder of Stoicism
Table of Contents
1 Zeno was:
- the son of Mnaseas, or Demeas
- a native of Citium, in Cyprus, which is a Grecian city, partly occupied by a Phœnician colony.
2 He had his head naturally bent on one side, as Timotheus, the Athenian, tells us, in his work on Lives.
Apollonius, the Tyrian, says that he was thin, very tall and dark.
Chrysippus says in volume 1 of his Proverbs that someone once called him an Egyptian Clematis.
He had fat, flabby, weak legs, on which account Persæus, in his Convivial Reminiscences, says that he used to refuse many invitations to supper; and he was very fond, as it is said, of figs both fresh and dried in the sun.
3 He was a pupil of Crates, then of Stilpon and Xenocrates for ten years, as Timocrates relates in his Life of Dion, then of Polemo.
But Hecaton, and Apollonius, of Tyre, in the first book of his essay on Zeno, say that when he consulted the oracle, as to what he ought to do to live in the most excellent manner, the God answered him that he ought to become of the same complexion as the dead, on which he inferred that he ought to apply himself to the reading of the books of the ancients.
Accordingly, he attached himself to Crates in the following manner.
Having purchased a quantity of purple from Phœnicia, he was shipwrecked close to the Piræus; and when he had made his way from the coast as far as Athens, he sat down by a bookseller’s stall, being now about thirty years of age. And as he took up the second book of Xenophon’s Memorabilia and began to read it, he was delighted with it, and asked where such men as were described in that book lived; and as Crates happened very seasonably to pass at the moment, the bookseller pointed him out, and said:
“Follow that man.” From[260] that time forth he became a pupil of Crates; but though he was in other respects very energetic in his application to philosophy, still he was too modest for the shamelessness of the Cynics. On which account, Crates, wishing to cure him of this false shame, gave him a jar of lentil porridge to carry through the Ceramicus; and when he saw that he was ashamed, and that he endeavoured to hide it, he struck the jar with his staff, and broke it; and, as Zeno fled away, and the lentil porridge ran all down his legs, Crates called after him, “Why do you run away, my little Phœnician, you have done no harm?” For some time then he continued a pupil of Crates, and when he wrote his treatise entitled the Republic, some said, jokingly, that he had written it upon the tail of the dog.
4 Besides his Republic, he also authorerd the following:
- a treatise on a Life according to Nature
- a treatise on Appetite, or the Nature of Man
- a treatise on Passions
- a treatise on the Becoming
- a treatise on Law
- a treatise on on the usual Education of the Greeks; one on Sight; one on the Whole; one on Signs; one on the Doctrines of the Pythagoreans; one on Things in General; one on Styles; five essays on Problems relating to Homer; one on the Bearing of the Poets. There is also an essay on Art by him, and two books of Solutions and Jests, and Reminiscences, and one called the Ethics of Crates. These are the books of which he was the author.
5 But at last he left Crates, and became the pupil of … for twenty years.
VI. He used to walk up and down in the beautiful colonnade called the Peisianactium, also called ποικίλη, from the paintings of Polygnotus.
There he delivered his discourses, wishing to make that spot tranquil. In the time of the thirty, nearly 1,400 of the citizens had been murdered there.
VII. His pupils were called Stoics
They were first called Zenonians, as Epicurus tells us in his Epistles.
Eratosthenes in book 8 of his treatise on the Old Comedy writes that before Zeno’s time, the poets who frequented this colonnade (στοὰ) had been called Stoics.
But now Zeno’s pupils made the name more notorious.
The Athenians had a great respect for Zeno, so that they gave him the keys of their walls, and they also honoured him with a golden crown, and a brazen statue.
This was also done by his own countrymen, who thought the statue of such a man an honour to their city.
The Cittiæans, in the district of Sidon, also claimed him as their countryman.
VIII. He was also much respected by Antigonus, who, whenever he came to Athens, used to attend his lectures, and was constantly inviting him to come to him.
But he begged off himself, and sent Persæus, one of his intimate friends, who was the son of Demetrius, and a Cittiæan by birth, and who flourished about the hundred and thirtieth olympiad, when Zeno was an old man.
The letter of Antigonus to Zeno was as follows, and it is reported by Apollonius, the Syrian, in his essay on Zeno.
TO ZENO THE PHILOSOPHER, GREETING.
“I think that in good fortune and glory I have the advantage of you; but in reason and education I am inferior to you, and also in that perfect happiness which you have attained to. On which account I have thought it good to address you, and invite you to come to me, being convinced that you will not refuse what is asked of you. Endeavour, therefore, by all means to come to me, considering this fact, that you will not be the instructor of me alone, but of all the Macedonians together. For he who instructs the ruler of the Macedonians, and who leads him in the path of virtue, evidently marshals all his subjects on the road to happiness. For as the ruler is, so is it natural that his subjects for the most part should be also.”
TO KING ANTIGONUS, GREETING.
“I admire your desire for learning, as being a true object for the wishes of mankind, and one too that tends to their advantage. And the man who aims at the study of philosophy has a proper disregard for the popular kind of instruction which tends only to the corruption of the morals. And you, passing by the pleasure which is so much spoken of, which makes the minds of some young men effeminate, show plainly that you are inclined to noble pursuits, not merely by your nature, but also by your own deliberate choice. And a noble nature, when it has received even a slight degree of training, and which also meets with those who will teach it abundantly, proceeds without difficulty to a perfect attainment of virtue. But I now find my bodily health impaired by old age, for I am eighty years old: on which account I am unable to come to you. But I send you some of those who have studied with me, who in that learning which has reference to the soul, are in no respect inferior to me, and in their bodily vigour are greatly my superiors. And if you associate with them you will want nothing that can bear upon perfect happiness.”
So he sent him Persæus and Philonides, the Theban, both of whom are mentioned by Epicurus, in his letter to his brother Aristobulus, as being companions of Antigonus.