Athens, in a remote garrison town in Afghanistan, archaeologists have recovered evidence of an interest
in Aristotelian philosophy.
To those generalizations let there be added a puff. Scholars sometimes dismiss the Hellenistic
philosophers as epigoni, men of a silver age whose lustre could not match the golden gleam of Plato and
Aristotle. That is mistaken. The gleam did not fade; in some parts it glowed more brightly than before.
The period produced work of the utmost brilliance.
After Plato's death in 347 the Academic coterie continued to philosophize, under the successive guidance
of Speusippus (d. 339), Xenocrates (d. 314) and Polemo (d.c.276). Aristotle's school likewise survived:
Theophrastus (d. c. 287) carried on his work, and Theophrastus was followed by Strato of Lampsacus. But
on Strato's death (c. 269) the school ran out of power, and for most of the Hellenistic period Aristotelian
philosophy was a thing of the past - a thing of influence, but devoid of life.
Platonism too died. The Academy lasted as a school until the first century B.C., but the Hellenistic
Academicians, although they claimed to be the true heirs of Socrates and Plato, maintained none of the
doctrines which we take to be constitutive of Platonism. When Arcesilaus of Pitane (d. c. 242) became
head of the school in about 270 he converted the Academy to scepticism. The New Academy was a new
school. Under its two greatest leaders, Arcesilaus and Carneades of Cyrene (c. 219-129), it developed a
wholly negative and critical mode of philosophizing.
Constructive philosophy in the Hellenistic age was located neither in the Lyceum nor in the Academy but
at two new sites, the Garden of the Epicureans and the Porch of the Stoics.
Epicurus was born of Athenian parents on the island of Samos in 341. He eventually settled in Athens in
307, where he taught until his death in 271. The philosophy to which he gave his name can be
summarized thus: in ethics, hedonism - pleasure is the sole good; in physics, atomism - the universe
consists of minute corpuscles moving in empty space; in logic, empiricism - all our knowledge is
grounded ultimately on experience and perception.
Epicureans were notoriously conservative: they did not slavishly repeat their master's words, yet they
refrained from doctrinal innovation. In the first century B.C. the Roman poet Lucretius (below, pp. 479
ff.) composed his De rerum natura, an exposition of Epicurean thought. In his eyes Epicurus was 'the
father, the discoverer of things', and his poem follows Epicurus with fidelity. Lucretius was not
resuscitating a superannuated philosophy: the system he admired and delineated was still vividly alive.
The Porch, like the Garden, was at Athens, but none of its major figures was Athenian. Zeno (c. 333-262),
the founder of the school, hailed from Cyprus. He came to Athens in c. 310, where he established a school
in the Stoa Poikile - the 'Porch'. His mantle was assumed, and his views were developed, by Cleanthes of
Assus (d. c. 232); and Cleanthes' successor Chrysippus (d. c. 206), who also came to Athens from Asia
Minor, transmuted Stoicism into a comprehensive and systematic philosophy - it was said that 'if
Chrysippus had not existed, the Stoa would not have existed either'.