Note 30 — Chapter III · HISTORY OF THE STOICS UNTIL THE END OF THE SECOND CENTURY B.C.

C. Chrysippus and the later Stoics. (1) Chrysippus. It was therefore fortunate for Stoicism that Cleanthes was followed in the presidency of the School by a man of learning and argumentative power like Chrysippus.30 In the opinion of the ancients, Chrysippus was the second founder of Stoicism.31 Born32 in the year 280 B.C.,33 at Soli in Cilicia,34 after being a pupil of Cleanthes35 and it is said even of Zeno36 himself, he succeeded, on the death of Cleanthes, to the conduct of his School.37 He is also said to have attended the lectures of Arcesilaus and Lacydes, philosophers of the Middle Academy;38 whose critical methods he so thoroughly appropriated, that later Stoics accused him of furnishing Carneades with the necessary weapons for attacking them,39 by the masterly manner in which he raised philosophical doubts without being able to answer them satisfactorily. This critical acuteness and skill, more than anything else, entitle him to be regarded as the second founder of Stoicism.40 In learning, too, he was far in advance of his predecessors, and passed for the most industrious and learned man of antiquity.41 Independent in tone, as his general conduct and intellectual self-reliance42 often proved,43 he deviated from the teaching of Zeno and Cleanthes, as might be expected, in many respects.44 Still, the fundamental principles of the system were not altered by him; only their intellectual treatment was perfected and deepened. In fact, the Stoic doctrine was expanded by him with such completeness in details, that hardly a gleaning was left for his successors to gather up.45 In multitude of writings46 he exceeded Epicurus;47 their titles, and a comparatively small number of fragments, being all that have come down to us.48 With such an extraordinary literary fertility, it will be easily understood that their artistic value is not very high. The ancients are unanimous in complaining of their careless and impure language, of their dry and often obscure style, of their prolixity, their endless repetitions, their frequent and lengthy citations, and their too frequent appeals to etymologies, authorities, and other irrelevant proofs.49 But by Chrysippus the Stoic teaching was brought to completeness; and when he died, in the year 206 B.C.,50 the form was in every respect fixed in which Stoicism would be handed down for the next following centuries.