ABSTRACT
The early history of Stoicism has reached us entirely through the Greek language, and is bound up with the history of Greek literature and philosophy. Although the Homeric poems include representations of gods and men corresponding to the epoch of national gods and to other still earlier stages of human thought, nevertheless they are pervaded by at least the dawning light of the period of the world-religions. To Prodicus we owe the well-known tale of Hercules at the parting of the ways, when Virtue on the one hand, and Pleasure on the other, each invite him to join company with her. It was in the atmosphere of sophistic discussion, not free from intellectual mists, but bracing to the exercise of civic and even of martial virtue that Socrates of Athens. With the school founded by Phaedo of Elis we are not concerned; the consideration of Plato and Aristotle and their respective followers.
