Chrysippus maintained that the good man is always happy and the
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bad man unhappy, and that the good man’s happiness differs in no way from God’s. On the question whether the soul survives death, there were conflicting opinions. Cleanthes maintained that all souls survive until the next universal conflagration (when everything is absorbed into God); but Chrysippus maintained that this is only true of the souls of the wise. He was less exclusively ethical in his interests than the later Stoics; in fact, he made logic fundamental. The hypothetical and disjunctive syllogism, as well as the word «disjunction,» are due to the Stoics; so is the study of grammar and the invention of «cases» in declension. * Chrysippus, or other Stoics inspired by his work, had an elaborate theory of knowledge, in the main empirical and based on perception, though they allowed certain ideas and principles, which were held to be established by consensus gentium, the agreement of mankind. But Zeno, as well as the Roman Stoics, regarded all theoretical studies as subordinate to ethics: he says that philosophy is like an orchard, in which logic is the walls, physics the trees, and ethics the fruit; or like an egg, in which logic is the shell, physics the white, and ethics the yolk.†Chrysippus, it would seem, allowed more independent value to theoretical studies. Perhaps his influence accounts for the fact that among the Stoics there were many men who made advances in mathematics and other sciences.
Stoicism, after Chrysippus, was considerably modified by two important men, Panaetius and Posidonius. Panaetius introduced a considerable element of Platonism, and abandoned materialism. He was a friend of the younger Scipio, and had an influence on Cicero, through whom, mainly, Stoicism became known to the Romans. Posidonius, under whom Cicero studied in Rhodes, influenced him even more. Posidonius was taught by Panaetius, who died about 110 B.C.
Posidonius (ca. 135-ca. 51 B.C.) was a Syrian Greek, and was a child when the Seleucid empire came to an end. Perhaps it was his experience of anarchy in Syria that caused him to travel westward, first to Athens, where he imbibed the Stoic philosophy, and then further afield, to the western parts of the Roman Empire. «He saw with his own eyes the sunset in the Atlantic beyond the verge of the
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* See Barth, Die Stoa, 4th edition, Sturtgart, 1922. †Ib.
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known world, and the African coast over against Spain, where the trees were full of apes, and the villages of barbarous people inland from Marseilles, where human heads hanging at the house-doors for trophies were an every-day sight.» * He became a voluminous writer on scientific subjects; indeed, one of the reasons for his travels was a wish to study the tides, which could not be done in the Mediterranean. He did excellent work in astronomy; as we saw in Chapter XXII his estimate of the distance of the sun was the best in antiquity. †He was also a historian of note—he continued Polybius. But it was chiefly as an eclectic philosopher that he was known: he combined with Stoicism much of Plato’s teaching, which the Academy, in its sceptical phase, appeared to have forgotten.
This affinity to Plato is shown in his teaching about the soul and the life after death. Panaetius had said, as most Stoics did, that the soul perishes with the body. Posidonius, on the contrary, says that it continues to live in the air, where, in most cases, it remains unchanged until the next world-conflagration. There is no hell, but the wicked, after death, are not so fortunate as the good, for sin makes the vapours of the soul muddy, and prevents it from rising as far as the good soul rises. The very wicked stay near the earth and are reincarnated; the truly virtuous rise to the stellar sphere and spend their time watching the stars go round. They can help other souls; this explains (he thinks) the truth of astrology. Bevan suggests that, by this revival of Orphic notions and incorporation of Neo-Pythagorean beliefs, Posidonius may have paved the way for Gnosticism. He adds, very truly, that what was fatal to such philosophies as his was not Christianity but the Copernican theory. ‡ Cleanthes was right in regarding Aristarchus of Samos as a dangerous enemy.
Much more important historically (though not philosophically) than the earlier Stoics were the three who were connected with Rome: Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius—a minister, a slave, and an emperor, respectively.
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* Bevan, Stoics and Sceptics, p. 88.
â He estimated that by sailing westward from Cadiz, India could be reached after 70,000 stades. «This remark was the ultimate foundation of Columbus’s confidence.» Tarn, Hellenistic Civilization, p. 249.
â
The above account of Posidonius is mainly based on Chapter III of Edwyn Bevan Stoics ¡ and Sceptics.
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Seneca (ca. 3 B.C. to A.D. 65) was a Spaniard, whose father was a cultivated man living in Rome. Seneca adopted a political career, and was being moderately successful when he was banished to Corsica ( A.D. 41) by the Emperor Claudius, because he had incurred the enmity of the Empress Messalina. Claudius’s second wife Agrippina recalled Seneca from exile in A.D. 48, and appointed him tutor to her son, aged eleven. Seneca was less fortunate than Aristotle in his pupil, who was the Emperor Nero. Although, as a Stoic, Seneca officially despised riches, he amassed a huge fortune, amounting, it was said, to three hundred million sesterces (about twelve million dollars). Much of this he acquired by lending money in Britain; according to Dio, the excessive rates of interest that he exacted were among the causes of revolt in that country. The heroic Queen Boadicea, if this is true, was heading a rebellion against capitalism as represented by the philosophic apostle of austerity.
Gradually, as Nero’s excesses grew more unbridled, Seneca fell increasingly out of favour. At length he was accused, justly or unjustly, of complicity in a wide-spread conspiracy to murder Nero and place a new emperor—some said, Seneca himself—upon the throne. In view of his former services, he was graciously permitted to commit suicide. ( A.D. 65).
His end was edifying. At first, on being informed of the Emperor’s decision, he set about making a will. When told that there was no time allowed for such a lengthy business, he turned to his sorrowing family and said: «Never mind, I leave you what is of far more value than earthly riches, the example of a virtuous life»—or words to that effect. He then opened his veins, and summoned his secretaries to take down his dying words; according to Tacitus, his eloquence continued to flow during his last moments. His nephew Lucan, the poet, suffered a similar death at the same time, and expired reciting his own verses. Seneca was judged, in future ages, rather by his admirable precepts than by his somewhat dubious practice. Several of the Fathers claimed him as a Christian, and a supposed correspondence between him and Saint Paul was accepted as genuine by such men as Saint Jerome.
Epictetus (born about A.D. 60, died about A.D. 100) is a very different type of man, though closely akin as a philosopher. He was a Greek, originally a slave of Epaphroditus, a freedman of Nero and
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then his minister. He was lame—as a result, it was said, of a cruel punishment in his days of slavery. He lived and taught at Rome until A.D. 90, when the Emperor Domitian, who had no use for intellectuals, banished all philosophers. Epictetus thereupon retired to Nicopolis in Epirus, where, after some years spent in writing and teaching, he died.
Marcus Aurelius ( A.D. 121-180) was at the other end of the social scale. He was the adopted son of the good Emperor Antoninus Pius, who was his uncle and his father-in-law, whom he succeeded in A.D. 161, and whose memory he revered. As Emperor, he devoted himself to Stoic virtue. He had much need of fortitude, for his reign was beset by calamities—earthquakes, pestilences, long and difficult wars, military insurrections. His Meditations, which are addressed to himself, and apparently not intended for publication, show that he felt his public duties burdensome, and that he suffered from a great weariness. His only son Commodus, who succeeded him, turned out to be one of the worst of the many bad emperors, but successfully concealed his vicious propensities so long as his father lived. The philosopher’s wife Faustina was accused, perhaps unjustly, of gross immorality, but he never suspected her, and after her death took trouble about her deification. He persecuted the Christians, because they rejected the State religion, which he considered politically necessary. In all his actions he was conscientious, but in most he was unsuccessful. He is a pathetic figure: in a list of mundane desires to be resisted, the one that he finds most seductive is the wish to retire to a quiet country life. For this, the opportunity never came. Some of his Meditations are dated from the camp, on distant campaigns, the hardships of which eventually caused his death.
It is remarkable that Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius are completely at one on all philosophical questions. This suggests that, although social circumstances affect the philosophy of an age, individual circumstances have less
