Abstract

The Stoic School was started in the final decade of the fourth century before the Christian era, by a certain Zeno: not the earlier Eleatic paradox-monger, but a native of the Cypriot city of Citium, and thus usually distinguished as ‘Zeno of Citium’. His date of birth is unknown – probably around the 330s BCE – but his death can be dated with fair confidence to 262 BCE, when the school that he had founded came under the leadership of his student and successor, Cleanthes of Assos. Cleanthes was succeeded thirty years later by the greatest of the Stoic line, Chrysippus of Soli.