Cleanthes, Zeno’s successor as head of the Stoic school, emphasizes the religious
side of the Stoic doctrine in his Hymn to Zeus.
Most glorious of immortals, honoured under many names, all-powerful for ever,
OZeus, first cause of Nature, guiding all things through law,
Hail! For it is just for all mortals to address you,
Since we were born of you, and we alone share in the likeness
Of deity, of all things that live and creep upon the earth.
So I will hymn you and sing always of your strength.
For all the cosmos, as it whirls around earth,
Obeys you, wherever you lead, and it is willingly ruled by you.
For such is the power you hold in your unconquerable hands:
The two-forked, fiery, ever-living thunderbolt.
For all the works of nature are accomplished through its blows,
By which you set right the universal reason, which flows
Through everything, mixing divine light through things great and small.
Nothing is accomplished in this world save through you, O Spirit,
Neither in the divine, heavenly, ethereal sphere, nor upon the sea,
Save such as the evil accomplish on their own in their ignorance.
(William Cassidy, Prayers from Alexander to Constantine,
edited by Mark Kiley, Routledge, 1–16)The Stoic wise man, ruled by reason, will be indifferent to the passions (apathetic)
and independent of the vagaries of fortune (having self-rule, autarcheia) in the
knowledge that pleasure is not a good, and pain and death are not evils, a doctrine
that in its logical conclusion led to the belief there could be circumstances which
justified suicide. As to happiness:
Those things are called indifferent, which have no influence in producing either
happiness or unhappiness; such for instance, as riches, glory, health, strength, and
the like; for it is possible for a man to be happy without any of these things; and
also, it is upon the character of the use that is made of them, that happiness or
unhappiness depends.
(Diogenes Laertes, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, 7, 104)The first duty is virtue.
Among the virtues some are primary, and some are derived. The primary ones are
prudence, manly courage, justice, and temperance. And subordinate to these, asPHILOSOPHY 211