Stoicism
Stoicism was a philosophical movement founded in Athens in the late fourth century BCE by Zeno of Citium. Although Stoicism was shaped by many philosophical influences (including the thought of Heraclitus), it was throughout its history an essential part of the mainstream Socratic tradition of ancient philosophy. Inspired as well by the Cynics (Zeno was taught by Crates, a student of Diogenes of Sinope), Stoicism developed alongside and in competition with Platonism and Aristotelianism over the next 500 years. For centuries it was the main rival to Epicurean thought as well. Virtually no works survive from the early period of the school's history. Yet its doctrines have been reconstructed with a fair level of reliability on the basis of later accounts, critical discussions by non-Stoics, and the surviving works of later Stoic writers.
History
When Zeno arrived in Athens, attracted from his home on Cyprus by Socratic philosophy, Plato's Academy was led by Polemo and was soon to make its historic shift away from what we now recognize as Platonism toward a form of skepticism under the leadership of Arcesilaus. Aristotle's legacy was still in the hands of Theophrastus, head of the Lyceum, though in the third century BCE the school would decline in philosophical power as it concentrated on more narrowly scientific problems.
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