Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living From Zeno to Marcus Aurelius

At the turn of the second century BC, Stoicism was a hundred years old. Zeno’s teachings had passed to Cleanthes and then Chrysippus. They had survived the provocations and doubters and attacks from other schools.

But now what? Who would be next?

One of the central beliefs of Stoicism is the idea that history is cyclical. That the same thing happens again and again and again. We are not so special, they would say. We are interchangeable pieces, role players in a play that has been playing since the beginning of time.

Very little makes this clearer than the fact that the next leader of Stoicism, starting a new century, would in a way be starting us back at the beginning. For he too was named Zeno.

After Chrysippus’s successful consolidation of the school, the choice of who would take up the mantle after him was his to make. As Chrysippus’s family had originated in Tarsus and he had risen to such acclaim, he must have drawn the interest of many fellow Tarsians. One of these Tarsian students, Dioscurides, about whom little is known except that Chrysippus had dedicated at least six works to him that spanned twenty-one volumes, was the presumptive heir. But Dioscurides was likely too old or infirm, or perhaps he died.

He did, however, have a son, and that son was Zeno of Tarsus. We hear from the Christian writer Eusebius that this second Zeno didn’t put too much stock in the idea of reincarnation:

It is held by the Stoic philosophers that the universal substance changes into fire, as into a seed, and coming back again, from this completes its organization, such as it was before. And this is the doctrine which was accepted by the first and oldest leaders of the sect, Zeno, and Cleanthes, and Chrysippus. For the Zeno who was the disciple and successor of Chrysippus in the School is said to have doubted about the conflagration of the universe.

Perhaps it was too on the nose for him. But we should not draw from this doubt or disagreement that he was another Aristo. He was, most likely, not a revolutionary or a disruptor. He was not even an ardent defender. But he may have been exactly what the philosophy needed at that time—a maintainer, an administrator, just agreeable enough to calm things down and then become established. Sometimes history—just like life—calls for a fighter, then sometimes it calls for someone with a steady bearing, an even hand, and a calming presence. Sometimes a moment calls for a star; sometimes it calls for something humbler.

Courage isn’t always rushing into the fray. Sometimes it’s endurance. Sometimes it’s looking inward. We have each of these abilities inside us, the Stoics believed, and it was a matter of matching the right virtue to the right moment. We must do our duty, whatever it is.

So it went with the second Zeno. When he quibbled with doctrine, they were minor cavils. In some places he sided with Cleanthes, in others with Chrysippus. But he does not seem to have had an ego. He didn’t thrive on conflict, though we can assume that when trouble knocked on his door it found him home (he published a book titled Against Hieronymus of Rhodes). He did not need the limelight, he did not need to write hundreds of books or hold big lectures. Zeno of Tarsus was a man who was boring enough—and wrote just little enough—to smooth over the ripples and conflicts of his day and pass the philosophy on to the next generation.

The first Zeno carved out new territory. Chrysippus threw punches and blocked some too. The second Zeno didn’t need to do any of that. Stoicism was well established, and had been now for decades. It was a boat that floated, a philosophy with thousands of practitioners spread across Greece. What the second Zeno needed to do was stabilize and carry on.

The timing could not have been more critical.

Greece was on the decline. Rome was on the rise. And Stoicism would be leaving the cradle of democracy and standing to meet the needs of a growing power. We don’t know when Zeno of Tarsus died, but he was succeeded by Diogenes of Babylon, another student of Chrysippus, a transition that would be marked by the rise of Roman power.

It would also usher in the golden age of Stoicism, when the Republic and philosophy met and merged, and then the Republic would become empire.

That Zeno of Tarsus would be mostly forgotten—remembered like so many important people as, at best, a transitional figure? Well, that’s something a Stoic can’t care about. What mattered is that he did his job when it needed to be done.