To understand stoicism, an inquiry was made of its original meaning related to an ancient Greek philosophical school founded by Zeno of
Citium; (6) the term has evolved in its meanings until reaching a modern understanding associated to the attitude that consists in hiding emotions and laconism.
of
Citium and named after the stoa, or portico, where he taught.
Zeno of
Citium, a Greek, founded the Stoic school of philosophy in Athens around 300 BCE.
Stoic philosophers, such as Zeno of
Citium and Sphaerus, used the Aristotelian concept of phantasia in their epistemological discourses.
Child is reprimanded for using a crayon to enhance one of her classicist cousin's pair of marble busts of the two Zenos (of Elea and of
Citium):
Zeno of Elia, not to be confused with Zeno of
Citium, the Stoic, but rather the purported inventor of the dialectic, the reductio ad absurdum or proof by contradiction, who in Aristotle's Physics , according to Simplicius, argued, "If there are many, they must be as many as they are.
Indeed, as Goodway shows, Ward asked Berlin to write a piece for Anarchy on Zeno of
Citium (he gracefully declined but expressed his admiration for Anarchy).
If Diogenes of Sinope was the inventor of cosmopolitanism as a concept, Zeno of
Citium, the founder of Stoicism, was its first theorist.
Stoicism, influenced by teachings of the Cynics and originated with the philosopher Zeno of
Citium, emphasized the idea that humanity was a part of nature and that goodness could be found by cooperating with nature or "the Law of the World." (ii) This pure view of man in nature offered by Zeno was later transformed by the Roman Stoics such as Seneca, Plutarch, and Marcus Aurelius as a result of the "pragmatic" concerns of life and living in societies.