Greece & Rome · c. 334–262 BCE
Zeno of Citium
Merchant from Cyprus who founded Stoicism in Athens
Taught that happiness is a smoothly flowing life in agreement with nature, which is the same as living virtuously. His lost Republic imagined a community of the wise without temples, law courts or money.
Life and thought
Zeno came from Citium on Cyprus, a city with a large Phoenician population, and is said to have been a merchant. By ancient anecdote he arrived in Athens after a shipwreck, read Xenophon’s memoir of Socrates in a bookshop and asked where such men could be found; the bookseller pointed to the Cynic Crates. He also studied with Stilpo and the Platonist Polemo, and around 300 BCE began teaching in the Painted Porch (Stoa Poikilē), which gave the Stoics their name. None of his books survives.
Zeno joined Cynic ethics to a full theory of the world. Virtue is the only good and vice the only evil; health, wealth and reputation are “indifferent”, though some are naturally preferred. The goal is to live in agreement with nature, which is rational and divine throughout, so living rationally and living virtuously come to the same thing. He divided philosophy into logic, physics and ethics, a scheme later Stoics kept. His lost Republic imagined a community of the wise with no temples, courts or coinage.