ABSTRACT
At some time in the middle of the fourth century BC — we are not sure of the exact year — there was born in Cyprus of a Phoenician trading family a boy called Zeno. He grew to manhood and settled in Athens. But his contemplative nature ill-fitted him for the commercial life. He wished rather to teach others the philosophical principles which he had thought through as a tightly knit ethical system. So in 306 BC he gathered a group of young men who would learn from him to the gaily coloured covered porch of his house. In this poikele stoa Zeno expounded his philosophy — Stoicism as it came to be called.
