ABSTRACT

Stoicism, 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 .., was by no means identical with that of Marcus Aurelius in the latter half of the second century .. 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 .., alone survive in complete books.