Zeno of Citium

Reading notes

• Ad Familiares 9.22 §1 this was the view of Zeno

  Zeno of Citium (c. 334-262 BC), founder of Stoicism, held that the wise man should call each thing by its own plain name, since indecency lies in neither the act nor the word. This whole letter is Cicero's playful examination of that Stoic doctrine of frankness of language (parrhesia), prompted by Paetus having used a blunt word in a previous note.

• On the Ends of Good and Evil §2.17 That is Zeno's point

  Zeno of Citium (c. 334-262 BC), founder of the Stoic school. Cicero attributes to him the simile, anticipated by Aristotle, that rhetoric is like the open palm and dialectic like the closed fist.

• On the Ends of Good and Evil §3.5 Zeno, their founder

  Zeno of Citium (c. 334-262 BC), founder of the Stoic school, famous for coining a large technical vocabulary. Cicero presents Latinizing this terminology as the central difficulty of expounding Stoicism in Latin.

• On the Ends of Good and Evil §3.51 what Zeno called \textit{[Greek: proēgmenon]}

  Proēgmenon ('preferred') and its opposite apoproēgmenon ('rejected') are Zeno's coinages for indifferents that nonetheless have or lack natural value. The royal-court analogy in the next section explains the metaphor of 'advancement.'

• On the Ends of Good and Evil §4.56 that little Phoenician of yours

  A jibe at Zeno of Citium, founder of Stoicism, whose hometown on Cyprus was a colony of Phoenician origin; Cicero calls him 'Poenulus,' a diminutive evoking Plautus's comedy of that name. The Stoics are addressed as Zeno's 'clients' from Citium.

• On the Ends of Good and Evil §5.79 when by Zeno this is delivered grandly, as though from an oracle

  Zeno of Citium, founder of Stoicism, held that virtue alone suffices for happiness because the honourable is the only good. Cicero grants the Stoic system is at least internally consistent.

• On the Ends of Good and Evil §5.88 the same thing in another manner

  A phrase from Roman legal pleading meaning to restate a claim in different terms. Cicero charges that Zeno merely renamed the Old Academy's doctrine and so cannot escape the same charge of inconsistency he levels at others.

• On the Nature of the Gods §2.20 as Zeno used to do

  Zeno of Citium (c. 334-262 BC), founder of Stoicism, famed for compressing arguments into tight syllogisms. Balbus contrasts Zeno's terse proofs with his own fuller exposition, then quotes several of them.

• On the Nature of the Gods §2.57 Zeno, then, defines nature

  Zeno's famous definition of nature as "a craftsmanlike fire proceeding methodically to creation" (ignis artificiosus). This identifies the divine, providential, world-shaping fire that pervades all things.

• Orator: To Marcus Brutus §113 Zeno, indeed, the founder of the Stoic discipline

  Zeno of Citium illustrated the difference between dialectic and rhetoric with his hand: the closed fist for the compressed reasoning of dialectic, the open palm for the broad sweep of eloquence.

• Tusculan Disputations §1.19 To Zeno the Stoic the soul seems to be fire

  Zeno of Citium (335-263 BC), founder of Stoicism, who held the soul to be a warm, fiery breath (pneuma). One of the rival physical accounts of the soul that Cicero will argue all leave death no evil.

• Tusculan Disputations §5.34 Zeno of Citium, a kind of newcomer and obscure artificer of words

  Zeno of Citium (c. 334-262 BC), founder of Stoicism, here dismissed as a coiner of novel terms whose doctrine that only virtue is good Cicero traces back to Plato's authority.