Zeno of Citium

“ One day, some few years after the death of Aristotle, a short, lean, swarthy young man, of weak build, with clumsily shaped limbs, and head inclined to one side, was standing in an Athenian bookshop, intently studying a roll of manuscript. His name was Zeno, and he was a native of Citium, a Greek colony in Cyprus, where the Hellenic element had become adulterated with a considerable Phoenician infusion. According to some accounts, Zeno had come to the great centre of intellectual activity to study, according to others for the sale of Tyrian purple. ”

“ Zeno, Greek philosopher, the founder of Stoic philosophy, born at Citium, in Cyprus, son of a merchant and bred to merchandise, but losing all in a shipwreck gave himself up to the study of philosophy ”

“ This offer he declined but dispatched thither one of his friends, Persaeus, the son of Demetrius and a native of Citium, who flourished in the 130th Olympiad, [5] at which time Zeno was already an old man. According to Apollonius of Tyre in his work upon Zeno, the letter of Antigonus was couched in the following terms:
7. "King Antigonus to Zeno the philosopher, greeting.
"While in fortune and fame I deem myself your superior, in reason and education I own myself inferior, as well as in the perfect happiness which you have attained. ”

“ It seems to have been a sort of Greek Odessa. Zeno the Citiean, of Citium in Cyprus, is Zeno the founder of the Stoic philosophy. Sphserus was a philosopher of considerable reputation ; in the list of his works given by Diogenes Laertius, there is a book On the Spartan Polity, and an- other On Lycurgus and Socrates. Page 475. — A reverence still attends on fear. This is the end of a fragment quoted in Plato's Euthyphro, and said by the scholiast on the passage there to be taken from the Cypria or Cyprian Epics, attributed to the poet Stasinus, at one time thought to be Homer's. ”

“ But more grateful than this to his suspicious nature, was the conclusion he drew from the frank, fearless countenance and the simple faith of the Pretorian. Such a man might be invaluable, and he determined that he should not be uselessly butchered, if it could be profitably avoided. When Zeno stooped, and whisperingly reminded him of the fact of the existence of a door, but seldom used, and hidden by the curtain, immediately behind the position of Martialis, he assented eagerly to the suggestion, which, we have seen, was carried out successfully. ”

“ A simple, childlike, and eminently affectionate disposition, with little strength of intellect or perhaps originally of will, much more inclined to meditation, speculation, solitude, or friendship, than to active and public life, with a profound aversion to the pomp of royalty and with a rather strong natural leaning to pedantry, he had embraced the fortifying philosophy of Zeno in its best form, and that philosophy made him perhaps as nearly a perfectly virtuous man as has ever appeared upon our world. ”

“ The idea of Nature as it had grown up under the hands of Heracleitus, the Sophists, and Antisthenes, supplied Zeno with a ready-made mould into which his reforming aspirations could be run. The true Republic was not a pattern laid up in heaven, nor was it restricted to the narrow dimensions of a single Hellenic state. It was the whole real universe, in every part of which except in the works of wicked men a divine law was recognised and obeyed.46 Nay, according to Cleanthes, God’s law is obeyed even by the wicked, and the essence of morality consists only in its voluntary fulfilment. ”

“ That is not a promise.'
'Why should you trust the promise of a poor slave, sir? You would not believe a lady of Constantinople in the same case if she took oath on the four Gospels! Imagine any woman missing a chance of looking at another about whom she is curious!'
'Who is the other?' asked Zeno, not much pleased.
'She is young, and as fresh as spring. Her hair is like that of all the Venetian ladies——'
'Since you have seen her, why are you so anxious to see her again?'
'Ah! You see! It is she! I knew it! She is coming to-morrow with her father.'
'Well? ”

“ And so at length, without having either made any confession, or being convicted of anything, he was condemned to death with the spiritless partner of his sufferings. He was then led away to death, protesting against the iniquity of the times; imitating in his conduct the celebrated Stoic of old, Zeno, who, after he had been long subjected to torture in order to extract from him some false confession, tore out his tongue by the roots and threw it, bloody as it was, into the face of the king of Cyprus, who was examining him. ”

“ Plutarch scoffs at him, “he is not vexed with torments, or burnt with fire, foiled by his adversary, sold of his enemy: though he be wrinkled, sand-blind, toothless, and deformed; yet he is most beautiful, and like a god, a king in conceit, though not worth a groat. He never dotes, never mad, never sad, drunk, because virtue cannot be taken away,” as [776] Zeno holds, “by reason of strong apprehension,” but he was mad to say so. ”

“ At Constantinople, for sixty years, there went on a succession of bloody tumults and fierce revolutionary conspiracies which continually shook the imperial throne and disorganized every part of society, all turning upon the theological question of one nature or two in the incarnate Son of God. The Emperor Zeno "after a vain attempt to obtain the opinions of the chief ecclesiastical dignitaries, without assembling a new Council, a measure which experience had shown to exasperate rather than appease the strife, Zeno issued his famous Henoticon, or Edict of Union. ”

“ He was as plain in his dress as he was frugal in his habits,--a man of great decorum and propriety of manners, resembling noticeably in his life and doctrines the Chinese sage Confucius. And yet this good man, a pattern to the loftiest characters of his age, strangled himself. Suicide was not deemed a crime by his followers, among whom were some of the most faultless men of antiquity, especially among the Romans. The doctrines of Zeno were never popular, and were confined to a small though influential party. ”

“ Turning to me, Zeno the Great was in the midst of saying that, though bereft of his scrapbook of clippings and his set of photographs, he hoped to be eternally consigned to perdition—his meaning if not his exact phraseology—if anybody got away with the even more precious belongings yet remaining to him, when nearing sounds of hurrying feet and many shrill voices from without caused him to break off. ”

“ If I fall you will be relieved from an expensive and troublesome friend; if, with divine permission, I succeed, I shall govern in your name and to your glory.’
Zeno had not been sufficiently powerful to prevent Odoacer from taking the title of ‘Patrician’, but he had never liked the ‘barbarian upstart’ who had dared to depose an emperor. He had also begun to dread the presence of the restless Ostrogoths so close to Constantinople, and warmly appreciated Theodoric’s arguments in favour of their exodus. ”

“ Zeno had withdrawn more into the centre, and saluted the appearance of Plautia with an obeisance of extreme deference. It partook of the profound humility offered to an oriental potentate, and had the dexterous Greek searched the world through he could not have found a more perfect incarnation of haughtiness than in the youthful beauty before him, who trod the earthen floor of the hovel in her deshabille, as if she were a Semiramis clad in splendour and stepping to her throne of state. ”

“ Reading the Ephesian doctrine with the eyes of a Cynic, and the Cynic ethics in the light of Heracliteanism, he came to formulate his distinctive theory of the universe far in advance of either. In taking this immense stride and identifying the Cynic “reason,” which is a law for man, with the “reason” which is the law of the universe, Zeno has been compared with Plato, who similarly extended the Socratic “general notion” from the region of morals—of justice, temperance, virtue—to embrace all objects of all thought, the verity of all things that are. ”

“ And he answered and said unto him, “Whilst thou wast speaking my will would not consent to my coming, but when I saw that thou wast doing the work of monks, that is to say, repenting, then I rejoiced and came.”
272. On one occasion when the old man Zeno was walking in Palestine, he became weary, and he sat down by the side of a cucumber bed to eat; and his thought said to him, “Take a cucumber and eat, for of what value is one cucumber?” And he answered and said to his thought, “Those who steal go to torment; try thy soul, then, and see if it be able to endure the torment.” ”

“ The Stoic School was so called from the Painted Portico (stoa) at Athens, where its founder Zeno, the Cyprian, taught for fifty-eight years (318-260 B.C.) . It was based on high moral principles, but was not free from errors. Duty was all in this philosophy; virtue alone, happiness. Mastery of self, contempt alike for pleasure and pain, were leading doctrines.
Fate governed the world, even God himself. Yet Zeno did not allow this doctrine to excuse shortcomings or interfere [Pg 254] with individual responsibility. ”

“ At length the potter received the signal to retire, and Zeno was instructed to retain him in the villa until further notice. One old man at table had kept his peace, watching all and hearing all, with knitted brows and pursed mouth. He was one of the philosophers whose company was so much affected by the Emperor, and his profession was the abstruse science of astrology, a pursuit whose attributes of mystery and superstition especially recommended it to his master’s favour.
‘Look how rapt in meditation is our worthy Thrasullus,’ remarked Sejanus, with ill-concealed raillery ”

“ With the analogue of this contention also we are familiar in modern times. Cicero allows that there would be something in it, if the selection of the true philosopher did not above all things require the philosophic mind. But in those days it was probably the case, as it is now, that, if a man did not form speculative opinions in youth, the pressure of affairs would not leave him leisure to do so later.
The life span of Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, was from B.C. 347 to 275. He did not begin teaching till 315, at the mature age of forty. ”

“ Zeno the philosopher, fearing that when his body was put to dolorous and horrible torments, he should be forced even against his will to bewray and disclose some secret plot, bit off his tongue with his own teeth and spit it in the tyrant's face. ”

“ In short, the things which Zeno has called estimable, and worth choosing, and suitable to nature, they call goods; but they call that a happy life which consists of those things which I have mentioned, or, if not of all, at least of the greatest number of them, and of the most important. But Zeno calls that the only good which has some peculiar beauty of its own to make it desirable; and he calls that life alone happy which is passed with virtue. ”

“ As a philosopher he is usually called a Stoic. In one sense this appellation is correct. When he places himself under any banner it is always that of Zeno. Nevertheless it would be a great error to regard him as a Stoic in the sense in which Brutus, Cato, and Thrasea, were Stoics. Like all the greatest Roman thinkers he was an Eclectic; he belonged in reality to no school. He was the successor of such men as Scipio, Ennius, and Cicero, far more than of the rigid thinkers of the Porch. ”

“ CHAPTER XVI. To return to Plautia, whom we left on the way from Tucca’s cottage to the villa Jovis, in the stormy, gray dawn.
Her litter was set down at a side door of the palace, and Zeno, the steward, stood by to hand her out. His proffered courtesy was loftily ignored, so he turned on his heel and led the way inside.
Not a living soul was to be seen; it was, doubtless, before the usual hour for any one of the Imperial household to be astir about the duties of the day.
The Greek brought them into a small peristyle close at hand. ”

“ At the age of twelve years he embraced the rigid system of the Stoics, which taught him to submit his body to his mind, his passions to his reason; to consider virtue as the only good, vice as the only evil, all things external as things indifferent. 46 His meditations, composed in the tumult of the camp, are still extant; and he even condescended to give lessons of philosophy, in a more public manner than was perhaps consistent with the modesty of sage, or the dignity of an emperor. 47 But his life was the noblest commentary on the precepts of Zeno. ”

“ This struck terror into the whole assembly; and one of the deputies, named Zeno, who had acquired a great degree of influence, by his judicious course of conduct in life, and by having been always an avowed supporter of the interests of the Romans, with tears besought Quinctius, and the other ambassadors, "not to impute to the state the madness of an individual. Every man," he said, "was answerable for his own absurdities. As to the Magnetians, they were indebted to Titus Quinctius and the Roman people, not only for liberty, but for every thing that mankind hold valuable or sacred. ”

“ You have often said that God made all things, and that no cause can produce an effect unlike itself. From hence it will follow, not only that the world is animated, and is wise, but also plays upon the fiddle and the flute, because it produces men who play on those instruments. Zeno, therefore, the chief of your sect, advances no argument sufficient to induce us to think that the world reasons, or, indeed, that it is animated at all, and consequently none to think it a Deity ”