Cleanthes of Assos

“ What the position of Cleanthes really was, in the sphere of religion, we can never fully ascertain; we possess his teaching only in fragments, and we cannot properly judge a thinker by the disjecta membra of his philosophy. But we seem to discover in Cleanthes, when we read his hymn [6] (was it written in early, middle, or later life?) , a genuinely religious man, “bent on giving a theological interpretation of the world, and breathing a pions submission to the world-order which it is refreshing to feel and come in contact with” (Davidson, The Stoic Creed, p. 27) . ”

“ In Cleanthes' hymn, as generally in Stoicism, the world is permeated by Reason, which is ethical, not merely intellectual. The emphasis on κοινός should not be overlooked. The great masters of Stoicism were cosmopolitan in their outlook, as they were in origin. The κοινωνία of the Universe is a familiar thought with them; all men share in the universal reason of God (the world-soul) , subject to a common law and a common citizenship. ”

“ ARGUMENT OF THE HYMN. [1]
(1) Cleanthes feels himself akin to the divine, and therefore worthy to hold communion with it; (2) he expresses his admiration for, and submission to, the divine order of the world; (3) he recognizes that the moral evil in the world is the result not of fate but of man’s freewill; (4) he prays God to free human souls from ignorance ”

“ Cleanthes seems here to be endeavouring to interpret the Cynic formula, “live agreeably to nature” (ὁμολογουμένως τῇ φύσει ζῆν) . But in his hands it gets an added meaning, for in nature (φύσις) —whether the nature of things or man's inward nature—the Stoic doctor finds a common reason (λόγος) and a common law (νόμος) . ”

“ The hymn is throughout inspired by the consciousness that it is one spiritual power which penetrates and controls the Universe, and is the source of every work done under the sun, “except what evil men do in their folly.” ”

“ Ritter-Preller, 28. κεραυνός was a semi-oracular word for fire: “The peculiar kind of matter forming, as it were, the body of the Logos, Her. believes to be fire” (Adam, Religious Teachers of Greece, p. 223) . ”

“ Sayce, Gifford Lectures, 1902, p. 329) ; similarly Egyptian theology saw in the various gods mere forms of one divinity (for example, Nu=Temu=Rā. As Rā was the father of the gods, every god in the Egyptian pantheon represents some phase of him, and he represents every god: Budge, Egyptian Religion, chap. iii) . ”

“ For the attitude of Plotinus towards Stoicism consult Inge, The Philosophy of Plotinus, vol. i. There is a brief, but valuable, discussion of Stoicism in its connexion with Christian ethics and theology in Lake and Foakes-Jackson’s The Beginnings of Christianity, part i., pp. 246 sqq. (1920) . ↑ “So live with men as if God saw you; so speak with God as if men heard you” (Lightf., Essay on “St. Paul and Seneca,” Philipp.,6 pp. 279 sqq.) . ↑ Which may be regarded as a summary of his whole theology. ”

“ Observe how the author of 4 Maccabees would enlist the Stoic doctrine in the service of Jewish philosophy.
13. διὰ πάντων φοιτᾷ: Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey, (a Presence) “that rolls thro' all things.”
14. ὕπατος: often in Homer as an epithet of Zeus.
15. Cf. John i. 3. For δαῖμον cf. Bacchyl. iii. 37, ὑπέρβιε δαῖμον (of Zeus) .
16-18. Nature is here put under the immediate government of the deity.
17-20. Evil is not directly due to God, but a necessary accompaniment of the process by which He created the world out of Himself. Cleanthes appears to argue somewhat as Browning would do: cf. ”

“ Deor. i. 36, Zeno naturalem legem divinam esse putat eamque vim obtinere (=ἐνεργεῖ) recta imperantem prohibentemque contraria. Heraclitus was the first to identify the law of nature with the will of God: frag. 91, τρέφονται πάντες οἱ ἀνθρώπινοι νόμοι ὑπὸ ἑνὸς τοῦ θείου. This view was adopted by the Roman jurists (cf. Cic. de Legg. ii. 8, “law is no device of man”) ; and Wordsworth in his Ode to Duty has made the thought current coin—“stern daughter of the voice of God, O Duty!” Cleanthes is several times referred to in Cic. ”