Reconstruction
Zeno of Citium
c. 334–262 BCE
PhilosophyEthicsAncient GreekPhoenician
A merchant from Cyprus who, after a shipwreck, began teaching in the painted colonnade and founded Stoicism.
Reconstruction. Reconstructed from ancient descriptions; no reliable likeness survives.
Why they still matter
Stoicism became the working philosophy of the Roman world and returns in every anxious century.
The world they thought in
Hellenistic Athens; his school is named after the stoa where he taught.
The questions they worked on
Fate and control
What is up to you?
Take this further
Ponderers is the historical layer. A rabbit hole brings the same question into what people are arguing about now.