Zeno of Citium(334–262/1 Bce)
Zeno, creator of the philosophical system that became known as Stoicism, was born probably in 334 BCE in Citium, a coastal settlement in southeastern Cyprus, whih was largely Hellenized by that time. His family may well have been of Phoenician origin (as was a significant minority of the population). At the age of twenty-two, he left for Athens. There he spent the next decade or so studying philosophy with various teachers. In time a group formed round Zeno himself; and because these "Zenonians" met in a public colonnade named the Painted Stoa, they came to be called Stoics. Zeno evidently established a prominent position in Athenian society. In his later years Antigonus Gonatas, the Macedonian monarch, attempted without success to attract him to his court, while the Athenians themselves voted him public honors in both life and death, particularly because of the exemplary moral example he had set. "More self-controlled than Zeno" became the benchmark phrase. He died in 262/1 BCE.
Zeno's philosophical hero was Socrates. The Stoics, so Philodemus tells us, were prepared to be known as "Socratics"; and Stoicism is best understood as a theoretical articulation of Socrates' intellectualist ethics, buttressed by a monistic metaphysics that is at once materialist and pantheist.
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