Zeno of Citium
Zeno of Citium founded Stoicism, the school that shaped Roman moral thought and much of Christian ethics after it. Born around 334 BC at Citium on Cyprus, he was probably of Phoenician descent and worked as a merchant in purple dye. The tradition holds that he was shipwrecked near Athens around 312 BC, losing his cargo. Wandering into a bookshop, he heard a reading from Xenophon's memoirs of Socrates, asked where such men were to be found, and was pointed at the Cynic philosopher Crates walking past. He later said he had made a prosperous voyage when he suffered shipwreck. He studied under Crates and others for years and began teaching around 301 BC in the Stoa Poikile, the painted colonnade in the agora, from which the school took its name. It was a public place rather than a private garden, which suited a philosophy that held engagement in public life to be a duty. His teaching divided philosophy into logic, physics and ethics. The universe is governed by a rational principle, the logos, and everything that happens follows from it; virtue consists in living in agreement with nature, meaning in accordance with that reason. Nothing outside a person's own judgement — health, wealth, reputation, life itself — is genuinely good or bad, so the wise are undisturbed by circumstances. He argued that all people share in reason and are therefore citizens of a single community, which was a departure from Greek assumptions about barbarians and slaves. The Athenians voted him a golden crown and a public tomb. He died around 262 BC.
- Lived: 334 BCE – 262 BCE
- Nationality: Greek
- Roles: philosopher
