On Fate 189
also do not act correctly or have correct opinions or hold stable beliefs
or get benefit because of fate, but instead the claim that fate is the cause
of everything goes up in smoke. And someone who says that Chrysippus
did not make fate the sufficient cause of these things but only the initiating
cause will also prove that he is in contradiction with himself where he
extravagantly praises Homer^39 who speaks about Zeus, "So accept what-
ever he sends to each of you, of evil" or of good; and Euripides^40 [who
says], "0 Zeus, why then should I say that miserable men have any
intelligence? For we depend on you and do whatever you happen to
think."
(1056c) And Chrysippus himself writes many things in agreement with
these views and finally says that nothing, not even the smallest thing, is
in any state or motion otherwise than according to the reason of Zeus,
who is the same as fate.
Again, then, the initiating cause is weaker than the sufficient and is
feeble when it is dominated by other causes which impede it, but by
claiming that fate is an unconquerable, unhinderable, and unswerving
cause, he calls it Unturning, Inevitable, Necessity, and Firmly Fixed
(since it sets a limit on everything).
Should we, then, say that assents are not in our power, and neither
are virtues, vices, (1056d) [morally] perfect actions, and [moral] errors;
or should we say that fate is deficient and that the Firmly Fixed is
indeterminate and that Zeus' motions and dispositions are unfulfilled?
For some of these result from fate being a sufficient cause, some from
it merely being an initiating cause. For if it is a sufficient cause of all
things it destroys what is in our power and the voluntary, and if it is
initiating, it ruins the unhinderable and fully effective character of fate.
For not once or twice but everywhere, and especially in all his treatises
on physics he has written that there are many hindrances to particular
natures and motions, but that there are no obstacles to the nature and
motion of the universe as a whole.
Hippolytus Philosophoumena 21 (= Dox. Gr.
571.11-16, SVF 2.975)[11-92]They [Zeno and Chrysippus] support the claim that everything hap-
pens by fate by using this example. It is as though a dog is tied behind
a cart. If he wants to follow, he is both dragged and follows, exercising
his autonomy in conjunction with necessity. But if he does not wish to- Iliad 15.109.
- Suppliants 734--6, slightly altered.