CHAPTER XXVIII StoicismSTOICISM, while in origin contemporaneous with Epicureanism, had a longer history and less
constancy in doctrine. The teaching of its founder Zeno, in the early part of the third century B.C.,
was by no means identical with that of Marcus Aurelius in the latter half of the second century
A.D. Zeno was a materialist, whose doctrines were, in the main, a combination of Cynicism and
Heraclitus; but gradually, through an admixture of Platonism, the Stoics abandoned materialism,
until, in the end, little trace of it remained. Their ethical doctrine, it is true, changed very little, and
was what most of them regarded as of the chief importance. Even in this respect, however, there is
some change of emphasis. As time goes on, continually less is said about the other aspects of
Stoicism, and continually more exclusive stress is laid upon ethics and those parts of theology that
are most relevant to ethics. With regard to all the earlier Stoics, we are hampered by the fact that
their works survive only in a few fragments. Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, who belong
to the first and second centuries A.D., alone survive in complete books.
Stoicism is less Greek than any school of philosophy with which we have been hitherto
concerned. The early Stoics were mostly Syrian, the later ones mostly Roman. Tarn ( Hellenistic
Civilization, p. 287) suspects Chaldean influences in Stoicism. Ueberweg justly observes that, in
Hellenizing the barbarian world, the Greeks dropped what only suited themselves. Stoicism,
unlike the earlier purely Greek philosophies, is emotionally narrow, and in a certain sense
fanatical; but it also contains religious elements of which the world felt the need, and which the
Greeks seemed unable to supply. In particular, it appealed to rulers: "nearly all the successors of
Alexander--we may say all the principal kings in existence in the generations following Zeno--
professed themselves Stoics," says Professor Gilbert Murray.