ZENO OF CITIUM
Zeno of Citium (not to be confused with Zeno of Elias) was the founder of
the Stoic school of philosophy, which (along with its rival, Epicureanism)
came to dominate the thinking of the Hellenistic world, and later, the
Roman Empire, with some elements of Stoic thought even influencing early
Christianity. For a long time the stoics have had a bad press, Stoicism
being associated in the popular imagination with a grim and pessimistic
world-view, in contrast to the jolly Epicureans. Fortunately, however,
Stoicism is now being re-evaluated by groups as diverse as psychotherapists
and semioticians, and it is therefore frustrating that so little is known
of the original Stoic philosophy as taught by Zeno. None of Zeno's works
have survived; all we know of him is contained in a few quotations and
anecdotes in the works of his followers and critics. Most of these are
collected in Book VII of Diogenes Laertius' Lives of Eminent Philosophers,
from which the following information is taken.
Zeno was born in 333 B.C. in the town of Citium, a Greek colony which also
had a large Phoenician population; Zeno himself may well have had
Phoenician ancestry. For most of his youth he was a merchant, but, so the
story has it, at the age of thirty, he was shipwrecked while transporting
purple dye from Phoenicia to Peiraeus. While kicking his heels in Athens,
he frequented a bookshop, where he was drawn to the works of Socrates.
Asking the shopkeeper where men like Socrates could be found, he received
the reply "Follow that man." The man in question was Crates the Cynic, and
Zeno became his pupil, later commenting "I made a prosperous voyage when I
was shipwrecked."
Crates appears to have been a hard master. Zeno was overly conscious of
social propriety (a habit which he always found hard to shake, despite his
anarchistic views), and Crates attempted to cure this by making him carry a
pot of lentils through the streets of Athens. Like a Zen master, Crates
suddenly smashed the pot with his staff, and Zeno ran away in embarrassment
with lentil soup dripping down his legs and Crates calling after him: "Why
run away, my little Phoenician? Nothing terrible has befallen you!" It was
under Crates' tutelage that Zeno wrote his greatest work, the Republic.
Eventually Zeno began to teach in his own right, wandering up and down the
arcade of painted columns known as the "Stoa".
Zeno certainly seems to have inherited the Cynics' preference for gruff
speech and shocking behaviour. He was continually making fun of the fops of
Athens, commenting on a youth who was taking pains to avoid stepping in
some mud, that it was only because he couldn't see his reflection in it. Of
another, who was given to displays of rhetoric, he said "Your ears have
slid down and merged in your tongue." He attempted to avoid attracting too
many followers by associating with (according to Timon) "a crowd of
ignorant serfs, who surpassed all men in beggary", and was also in the
habit of asking passers by for small change. Despite this, he was held in
high esteem by the citizens of Athens, and was even given the keys to the
city. He was also invited to act as an advisor to King Anigonus of Macedon,
but he turned this down, sending his pupil Persaeus, instead.
Not much is known of Zeno's personal life. He appears to have continued his
interest in trade, though by all accounts his life was fairly frugal, his
main enjoyment being to sit in the sun eating figs and drinking wine. In
fact, contrary to the popular image of Stoicism, Zeno seems to have liked
his drink, commenting (presumably while staggering drunkenly) that it was
better to slip with the feet than with the tongue. He was not fond of being
waited upon (possibly due to the Cynics' and Stoics' opposition to
slavery), though it was said that he occasionally had a maid-servant wait
at his parties "in order not to appear a misogynist." He probably died in
261 B.C., striking the ground with his fist and quoting the line from
Niobe, "I come, I come, why do you call me?"
Most of what we know of Zeno's philosophy is extrapolation from later
Stoics, notably Epictetus. The Republic describes a Stoic Utopia of
rational citizens. It seems similar to the later Utopias of the Anarchists:
there is no money and it has no temples or lawcourts, these being
unnecessary for rational beings. Zeno, like all the Stoics, preached
equality of the sexes, and also claimed that men and women should dress
alike. Moreover, he said that no part of the body should be completely
covered, "modesty" being anathema to the early Stoics. He received
notoriety for his advocacy of what is generally referred to as "community
of women" or "community of wives", though a better term would probably be
"free love", since the former terms imply that women are commodities which
should be shared freely, and this would run counter to Stoic doctrine. In
general, the early Stoics were uninterested in sexual morality,
masturbation, homosexuality and prostitution all having been regarded as
acceptable, although most Stoics drew the line at adultery.
MORE ON...
http://neptune.spaceports.com/~words/zeno.html
