Vitae philosophorum

Once when a young man was talking a good deal, he said, Your ears have slid down and merged in your tongue. To the fair youth, who gave it as his opinion that the wise man would not fall in love,

A Rhodian, who was handsome and rich, but nothing more, insisted on joining his class; but so unwelcome was this pupil, that first of all Zeno made him sit on the benches that were dusty, that he might soil his cloak, and then he consigned him to the place where the beggars sat, that he might rub shoulders with their rags; so at last the young man went away. Nothing, he declared, was more unbecoming than arrogance, especially in the young. He used also to say that it was not the words and expressions that we ought to remember, but we should exercise our mind in disposing to advantage of what we hear, instead of, as it were, tasting a well-cooked dish or well-dressed meal. The young, he thought, should behave with perfect propriety in walk, gait and dress, and he used continually to quote the lines of Euripides about Capaneus:

Large means had he, yet not the haughtiness
1. That springs from wealth, nor cherished prouder thoughts
2. Of vain ambition than the poorest man.[*](Supplices, 861-863.)

Again he would say that if we want to master the sciences there is nothing so fatal as conceit, and

One day at a banquet he was reclining in silence and was asked the reason: whereupon he bade his critic carry word to the king that there was one present who knew how to hold his tongue. Now those who inquired of him were ambassadors from King Ptolemy, and they wanted to know what message they should take back from him to the king. On being asked how he felt about abuse, he replied, As an envoy feels who is dismissed without an answer. Apollonius of Tyre tells us how, when Crates laid hold on him by the cloak to drag him from Stilpo, Zeno said, The right way to seize a philosopher, Crates, is by the ears:

According to Hippobotus he forgathered with Diodorus, with whom he worked hard at dialectic. And when he was already making progress, he would enter Polemo’s school: so far from all selfconceit was he. In consequence Polemo is said to have addressed him thus: You slip in, Zeno, by the garden door—I’m quite aware of it—you filch my doctrines and give them a Phoenician make-up. A dialectician once showed him seven logical forms concerned with the sophism known as The Reaper, and Zeno asked him how much he wanted for them. Being told a hundred drachmas, he promptly paid two hundred: to such lengths would he go in his love of learning. They say too that he first introduced the word Duty and wrote a treatise on the subject. It is said, moreover, that he corrected Hesiod’s lines thus:

He is best of all men who follows good advice: good too is he who finds out all things for himself.[*](Hesiod’s lines as they stand (Works and Days, 293 f.) run thus: He is best of all, who finds out everything for himself; that man too is good who follows good advice.)

The reason he gave for this was that the man capable of giving a proper hearing to what is said and profiting by it was superior to him who discovers everything himself. For the one had merely a right apprehension, the other in obeying good counsel superadded conduct.

When he was asked why he, though so austere, relaxed at a drinking-party, he said, Lupins too are bitter, but when they are soaked become sweet. Hecato too in the second book of his Anecdotes says that he indulged freely at such gatherings. And he would say, Better to trip with the feet than with

He showed the utmost endurance, and the greatest frugality; the food he used required no fire to dress, and the cloak he wore was thin. Hence it was said of him:

The cold of winter and the ceaseless rain
1. Come powerless against him: weak the dart
2. Of the fierce summer sun or racking pain
3. To bend that iron frame. He stands apart
4. Unspoiled by public feast and jollity:
5. Patient, unwearied night and day doth he
6. Cling to his studies of philosophy.

This man adopts a new philosophy.
1. He teaches to go hungry: yet he gets
2. Disciples. One sole loaf of bread his food;
3. His best dessert dried figs; water his drink.

By this time he had almost become a proverb. At all events, More temperate than Zeno the philosopher was a current saying about him. Poseidippus also writes in his Men Transported:

1. So that for ten whole days
2. More temperate than Zeno’s self he seemed.

And in very truth in this species of virtue and in dignity he surpassed all mankind, ay, and in happiness; for he was ninety-eight when he died and had enjoyed good health without an ailment to the

last. Persaeus, however, in his ethical lectures makes him die at the age of seventy-two, having come to Athens at the age of twenty-two. But Apollonius says that he presided over the school for fifty-eight years. The manner of his death was as follows. As he was leaving the school he tripped and fell, breaking a toe. Striking the ground with his fist, he quoted the line from the Niobe[*](Of Timotheus. See Nauck, T.G.F. p. 51.):

I come, I come, why dost thou call for me?

The Athenians buried him in the Ceramicus and honoured him in the decrees already cited above, adding their testimony of his goodness. Here is the epitaph composed for him by Antipater of Sidon[*](Anth. Plan. iii. 104.):

Here lies great Zeno, dear to Citium, who scaled high Olympus, though he piled not Pelion on Ossa, nor toiled at the labours of Heracles, but this was the path he found out to the stars—the way of temperance alone.

Here too is another by Zenodotus the Stoic, a pupil of Diogenes[*](Anth. Pal. vii. 117.):

Thou madest self-sufficiency thy rule,
1. Eschewing haughty wealth, O godlike Zeno,
2. With aspect grave and hoary brow serene.
3. A manly doctrine thine: and by thy prudence
4. With much toil thou didst found a great new school,
5. Chaste parent of unfearing liberty.
6. And if thy native country was Phoenicia,
7. What need to slight thee? came not Cadmus thence,
8. Who gave to Greece her books and art of writing?

O ye who’ve learnt the doctrines of the Porch
1. And have committed to your books divine
2. The best of human learning, teaching men
3. That the mind’s virtue is the only good !
4. She only it is who keeps the lives of men
5. And cities,—safer than high gates and walls.
6. But those who place their happiness in pleasure
7. Are led by the least worthy of the Muses.

We have ourselves mentioned the manner of Zeno’s death in the Pammetros (a collection of poems in various metres):

The story goes that Zeno of Citium after enduring many hardships by reason of old age was set free, some say by ceasing to take food; others say that once when he had tripped he beat with his hand upon the earth and cried, I come of my own accord; why then call me?[*](Anth. Pal. vii. 118.)

So much then concerning his death.

Demetrius the Magnesian, in his work on Men of the Same Name, says of him: his father, Mnaseas, being a merchant often went to Athens and brought away many books about Socrates for Zeno while still a boy.

Hence he had been well trained even before he left his native place. And thus it came about that on his arrival at Athens he attached himself to Crates. And it seems, he adds, that, when the rest were at a loss how to express their views, Zeno framed a definition of the end. They say that he was in the habit of swearing by capers just as Socrates used to swear by the dog. Some there are, and among them Cassius the Sceptic and his disciples, who accuse Zeno at length. Their first count is that in the beginning of his Republic he

Again, in the Republic, making an invidious contrast, he declares the good alone to be true citizens or friends or kindred or free men; and accordingly in the view of the Stoics parents and children are enemies, not being wise. Again, it is objected, in the Republic he lays down community of wives, and at line 200 prohibits the building of temples, lawcourts and gymnasia in cities; while as regards a currency he writes that we should not think it need be introduced either for purposes of exchange or for travelling abroad. Further, he bids men and women wear the same dress and keep no part of the body entirely covered.

That the Republic is the work of Zeno is attested by Chrysippus in his De Republica. And he discussed amatory subjects in the beginning of that book of his which is entitled The Art of Love. Moreover, he writes much the same in his Interludes. So much for the criticisms to be found not only in Cassius but in Isidorus of Pergamum, the rhetorician. Isidorus likewise affirms that the passages disapproved by the school were expunged from his works by Athenodorus the Stoic, who was in charge of the Pergamene library; and that afterwards, when Athenodorus was detected and compromised, they were replaced. So much concerning the passages in his writings which are regarded as spurious.

There have been eight persons of the name of Zeno. First the Eleatic, of whom more hereafter; the second our present subject; the third a Rhodian

Of the many disciples of Zeno the following are the most famous: Persaeus, son of Demetrius, of Citium, whom some call a pupil and others one of the household, one of those sent him by Antigonus to act as secretary; he had been tutor to Antigonus’s son Halcyoneus. And Antigonus once, wishing to make trial of him, caused some false news to be brought to him that his estate had been ravaged by the enemy, and as his countenance fell, Do you see, said he, that wealth is not a matter of indifference?

The following works are by Persaeus:

Ariston, the son of Miltiades and a native of Chios, who introduced the doctrine of things morally indifferent; Herillus of Carthage, who affirmed knowledge to be the end; Dionysius, who became a renegade to the doctrine of pleasure, for owing to the severity of his ophthalmia he had no longer the nerve to call pain a thing indifferent: his native place was Heraclea; Sphaerus of Bosporus; Cleanthes, son of Phanias, of Assos, his successor in the school: him Zeno used to compare to hard waxen tablets which are difficult to write upon, but retain the characters written upon them. Sphaerus also became the pupil of Cleanthes after Zeno’s death, and we shall have occasion to mention him in the Life of Cleanthes.

And furthermore the following according to Hippobotus were pupils of Zeno: Philonides of Thebes; Callippus of Corinth; Posidonius of Alexandria; Athenodorus of Soli; and Zeno of Sidon.[*](Perhaps an error for Zeno of Tarsus.)

I have decided to give a general account of all the Stoic doctrines in the life of Zeno because he was the founder of the School. I have already given a list of his numerous writings, in which he has spoken as has no other of the Stoics. And his tenets in general are as follows. In accordance with my usual practice a summary statement must suffice.[*](Laertius adheres to his plan of arranging doctrine under two heads: (1) a general or summary, (2) a particular, treatment; cf. inf. vii. 48 κεφαλαιωδῶς κατὰ μέρος. Here follows a valuable and full doxography, extending to § 160, collected from various sources; §§ 49-83 come from Diocles. The classification is roughly as follows: divisions of Philosophy, §§ 39-41; Logic, §§ 42-83; Ethics, §§ 84-131; Physics, §§ 132-160.)

Philosophic doctrine, say the Stoics, falls into three parts: one physical, another ethical, and the third logical. Zeno of Citium was the first to make this division in his Exposition of Doctrine, and Chrysippus too did so in the first book of his Exposition of Doctrine and the first book of his Physics; and so

These parts are called by Apollodorus Heads of Commonplace; by Chrysippus and Eudromus specific divisions; by others generic divisions.

Philosophy, they say, is like an animal, Logic corresponding to the bones and sinews, Ethics to the fleshy parts, Physics to the soul. Another simile they use is that of an egg: the shell is Logic, next comes the white, Ethics, and the yolk in the centre is Physics. Or, again, they liken Philosophy to a fertile field: Logic being the encircling fence, Ethics the crop, Physics the soil or the trees. Or, again, to a city strongly walled and governed by reason.

No single part, some Stoics declare, is independent of any other part, but all blend together. Nor was it usual to teach them separately. Others, however, start their course with Logic, go on to Physics, and finish with Ethics; and among those who so do are Zeno in his treatise On Exposition, Chrysippus, Archedemus and Eudromus.