Stoic Philosophers: The Complete Guide, from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius
Stoicism was founded in Athens around 300 BC and flourished for five centuries, from a merchant’s school in a painted porch to the private notebook of a Roman emperor. It teaches that a good life comes from virtue and from focusing on what is in our power, and it asks us to meet everything else with calm and courage.
Below are more than 40 Stoic philosophers in the order they lived, grouped into the school’s three eras. If you only read three, read Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius: theirs are the only complete Stoic books that survive, and all three are free to read online.
Contents
- The Early Stoa: Zeno of Citium, Persaeus of Citium, Cleanthes of Assos, Chrysippus of Soli, Zeno of Tarsus, Aristo of Chios, Herillus of Carthage, Sphaerus of Borysthenes, Diogenes of Babylon, Antipater of Tarsus, Archedemus of Tarsus, Apollodorus of Seleucia, Boethus of Sidon
- The Middle Stoa: Panaetius of Rhodes, Mnesarchus of Athens, Dardanus of Athens, Hecato of Rhodes, Posidonius of Apamea, Gaius Blossius of Cumae
- The Roman Stoa: Athenodorus Cananites, Cato the Younger, Quintus Sextius, Seneca the Younger, Lucius Annaeus Cornutus, Chaeremon of Alexandria, Paconius Agrippinus, Thrasea Paetus, Persius, Lucan, Gaius Musonius Rufus, Helvidius Priscus, Euphrates of Tyre, Epictetus, Hierocles, Arrian of Nicomedia, Quintus Junius Rusticus, Apollonius of Chalcedon, Sextus of Chaeronea, Claudius Maximus, Cleomedes, Marcus Aurelius
- Before the Stoics
- Where to start reading
The Early Stoa: the founders in Athens (c. 300–130 BC)
Stoicism began in Athens around 300 BC, taught in a public colonnade, the Stoa Poikile or Painted Porch, which gave the school its name. Almost all early Stoic writing is lost; we know it through later summaries, above all Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Book 7.
Zeno of Citium
c. 334 – c. 262 BC · Founder of Stoicism
A merchant from Citium on Cyprus, Zeno came to philosophy after a shipwreck left him in Athens. He studied with the Cynic Crates and others, then began teaching in the Painted Porch around 300 BC. His followers were first called Zenonians, then Stoics. None of his books survive, including his famous Republic.
“This is the reason why we have two ears and only one mouth, that we may hear more and speak less.”
Diogenes Laertius, Lives 7.23 (Yonge translation)
Learn more: Wikipedia · Diogenes Laertius, Book 7 (free)
Persaeus of Citium
c. 307 – c. 243 BC · Student and housemate of Zeno
Zeno’s closest companion, who shared his house in Athens. Zeno sent him to the court of King Antigonus Gonatas of Macedon, where he became a royal adviser and later commanded the citadel of Corinth. He is said to have died when Aratus captured the city in 243 BC.
Learn more: Wikipedia
Cleanthes of Assos
c. 330 – c. 230 BC · Second head of the school
A former boxer who studied with Zeno for nearly twenty years while working nights drawing water to pay his way. He led the school after Zeno. His Hymn to Zeus is one of the few early Stoic texts that survives, and Epictetus taught his students to keep its opening lines ready at hand.
“Lead me, O Zeus, and thou O Destiny,
Cleanthes, quoted in Epictetus, Enchiridion 53 (Long translation)
The way that I am bid by you to go:
To follow I am ready.”
Learn more: Wikipedia
Chrysippus of Soli
c. 279 – c. 206 BC · Third head of the school
The great systematizer. Chrysippus wrote more than 700 books and turned Zeno’s ideas into a complete system of logic, physics and ethics. Ancient writers said that without Chrysippus there would have been no Stoa. Only fragments of his work survive.
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Zeno of Tarsus
fl. c. 200 BC · Fourth head of the school
Chrysippus’ successor as head of the Stoa. He wrote little himself but, according to Diogenes Laertius, had a great many students.
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Aristo of Chios
fl. c. 260 BC · Student of Zeno
A dissenting pupil who argued that only ethics matters and dismissed logic and physics as useless. He held that everything except virtue and vice is strictly indifferent, a harder line than the mainstream Stoics took.
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Herillus of Carthage
3rd century BC · Student of Zeno
Another independent pupil of Zeno, Herillus taught that the goal of life is knowledge rather than virtue alone. His followers briefly formed their own group, but the mainstream Stoics rejected his view.
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Sphaerus of Borysthenes
c. 285 – c. 210 BC · Student of Zeno and Cleanthes
Sphaerus took Stoicism into politics as an adviser to King Cleomenes III of Sparta during his reforms, and later spent time at the Ptolemaic court in Alexandria.
Learn more: Wikipedia
Diogenes of Babylon
c. 230 – c. 150 BC · Head of the school
Head of the Stoa in the 2nd century BC. In 155 BC he went to Rome on the famous embassy of three Athenian philosophers, which gave many Romans their first taste of Greek philosophy. Cicero records his debates on business ethics with his pupil Antipater.
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Antipater of Tarsus
d. c. 130 BC · Head of the school
Diogenes’ successor. In a case preserved by Cicero (On Duties, Book 3), he argued that a merchant selling grain during a famine must tell buyers that more ships are on the way, against his teacher’s more lenient view.
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Archedemus of Tarsus
2nd century BC · Student of Diogenes of Babylon
A respected Stoic logician and ethicist, often cited alongside Antipater. Plutarch reports that he moved east and founded a Stoic school in Babylon.
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Apollodorus of Seleucia
2nd century BC · Student of Diogenes of Babylon
Author of widely used introductory handbooks on Stoic ethics and physics, which Diogenes Laertius cites repeatedly.
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Boethus of Sidon
2nd century BC · Student of Diogenes of Babylon
An independent thinker who broke with Stoic orthodoxy by rejecting the doctrine that the cosmos is periodically consumed by fire.
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The Middle Stoa: Stoicism reaches Rome (c. 130–50 BC)
In this period Stoicism softened some of its hard edges and found an audience among Rome’s ruling class.
Panaetius of Rhodes
c. 185 – c. 110 BC · Head of the school from 129 BC
A friend of the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus, Panaetius made Stoicism practical and appealing to Roman statesmen. His lost book On Duties was the model for Cicero’s De Officiis, one of the most read books in European history.
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Mnesarchus of Athens
c. 160 – c. 85 BC · Student of Panaetius
After Panaetius’ death, Mnesarchus and Dardanus led the Stoics in Athens together. Cicero mentions him as one of the leading philosophers of his youth.
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Dardanus of Athens
c. 160 – c. 85 BC · Student of Panaetius
Co-leader of the Athenian Stoics with Mnesarchus around 100 BC, at the time when the old schools of Athens were about to scatter during Rome’s wars with Mithridates.
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Hecato of Rhodes
fl. c. 100 BC · Student of Panaetius
Known mainly through Seneca, who quotes his sayings on friendship, fear and hope in the Letters to Lucilius.
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Posidonius of Apamea
c. 135 – c. 51 BC · Philosopher and scientist
A polymath who ran a school on Rhodes visited by Cicero and Pompey. He wrote on history, geography, astronomy and the tides, and estimated the size of the Earth, while giving Stoic psychology a richer account of the emotions.
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Gaius Blossius of Cumae
d. c. 130 BC · Student of Antipater
Adviser to the Roman reformer Tiberius Gracchus. After Tiberius was killed in 133 BC, Blossius joined the revolt of Aristonicus in Pergamon and died after its defeat.
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The Roman Stoa: the philosophers we still read (c. 50 BC – AD 180)
Nearly all the complete Stoic books that survive come from this period, which is why Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius are the names most people know.
Athenodorus Cananites
c. 74 BC – AD 7 · Teacher of Augustus
A Stoic from near Tarsus who tutored the young Octavian, the future emperor Augustus, and later reformed the government of his home city.
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Cato the Younger
95 – 46 BC · Roman senator
Rome’s model of Stoic integrity. Cato opposed Julius Caesar to the end and took his own life at Utica rather than accept Caesar’s pardon. Seneca and later Stoics held him up as the closest thing to a living sage.
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Quintus Sextius
1st century BC · Founder of the Sextian school
Founder of a short-lived Roman school that blended Stoic and Pythagorean ideas. Seneca admired him and describes, in On Anger (3.36), Sextius’ habit of reviewing his own conduct every night before sleep, the origin of the Stoic evening review.
Learn more: Wikipedia
Seneca the Younger
c. 4 BC – AD 65 · Philosopher, statesman, playwright
Born in Corduba (Córdoba, Spain), Seneca became tutor and then chief adviser to the emperor Nero, and one of the richest men in Rome. Accused of joining a plot against Nero, he was ordered to take his own life in AD 65. His Letters to Lucilius and essays such as On the Shortness of Life are the most readable Stoic writing we have.
“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 13.4 (Gummere translation)
Learn more: Wikipedia · Letters to Lucilius (free) · What Seneca really meant by this line
Lucius Annaeus Cornutus
1st century AD · Teacher of poets
From Leptis Magna in North Africa, Cornutus taught the poets Persius and Lucan and was exiled by Nero. His surviving handbook explains Greek myths as allegories of Stoic physics.
Learn more: Wikipedia
Chaeremon of Alexandria
1st century AD · Scholar and tutor of Nero
A Stoic from Alexandria who worked as a priestly scholar of Egyptian religion and wrote on hieroglyphs. He was one of the tutors of the young Nero, alongside Seneca.
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Paconius Agrippinus
1st century AD · Roman senator
Exiled by Nero in AD 66. Epictetus (Discourses 1.1) tells how, while the Senate was still deciding his case, Agrippinus noted it was the hour for his exercise and cold bath and went off to take them. When the news came that he was condemned, he asked only whether it was exile or death, and on hearing it was exile, calmly set off. Epictetus held him up as a model of equanimity.
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Thrasea Paetus
d. AD 66 · Roman senator
The leader of the Stoic opposition to Nero. Thrasea walked out of the Senate rather than join the flattery after Nero murdered his mother, and wrote a life of Cato. Condemned in AD 66, he took his own life with calm, talking philosophy to the end.
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Persius
AD 34 – 62 · Satirist and poet
A young poet trained by his teacher Cornutus, whose six satires attack vice and hypocrisy from a Stoic point of view. He died at 27; Cornutus edited his poems for publication.
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Lucan
AD 39 – 65 · Epic poet
Seneca’s nephew and a student of Cornutus. His epic Pharsalia on the civil war between Caesar and Pompey makes the Stoic Cato its true hero. Like his uncle, he was forced to take his own life after the conspiracy against Nero in AD 65.
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Gaius Musonius Rufus
c. AD 20/30 – c. 101 · Teacher of Epictetus
Called by some “the Roman Socrates”, Musonius taught that philosophy is practice, not talk. He argued that women should study philosophy too, and was exiled more than once, including to the barren island of Gyaros. His lectures survive in summaries by his students.
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Helvidius Priscus
d. c. AD 75 · Roman senator
Thrasea’s son-in-law, famous for his refusal to be silenced. Epictetus tells the story (Discourses 1.2) of Helvidius telling the emperor Vespasian that he would still speak his mind in the Senate, even if it cost him his life. It did: he was exiled and executed.
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Euphrates of Tyre
c. AD 35 – 118 · Student of Musonius
A celebrated lecturer whom Pliny the Younger praised warmly in his letters for his eloquence and gentle manner.
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Epictetus
c. AD 50 – c. 135 · Teacher at Nicopolis
Born enslaved in Hierapolis (in modern Turkey) and lame for most of his life, Epictetus studied with Musonius Rufus, gained his freedom, and taught in Rome until the emperor Domitian expelled the philosophers around AD 93. He then opened a school at Nicopolis in Greece. He wrote nothing himself; his student Arrian recorded his teaching in the Discourses and the short Enchiridion (Handbook).
“Of things some are in our power, and others are not.”
Epictetus, Enchiridion 1 (Long translation)
Learn more: Wikipedia · Discourses and Enchiridion (free)
Hierocles
2nd century AD · Philosopher
Best known for his image of human concern as a series of circles, from self to family to city to all humanity, and his call to draw the outer circles inward. Part of his Elements of Ethics survives on papyrus.
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Arrian of Nicomedia
c. AD 86 – after 146 · Student of Epictetus
We owe Epictetus to him. Arrian wrote down his teacher’s lectures as the Discourses and condensed them into the Enchiridion, then went on to be a Roman governor and the author of the best surviving history of Alexander the Great.
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Quintus Junius Rusticus
c. AD 100 – c. 170 · Teacher of Marcus Aurelius
The teacher Marcus Aurelius thanks most warmly in Book 1 of the Meditations, above all for lending him his own copy of Epictetus’ Discourses. He served twice as consul and as prefect of Rome.
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Apollonius of Chalcedon
2nd century AD · Teacher of Marcus Aurelius
A Stoic summoned to Rome by the emperor Antoninus Pius to teach the young Marcus. In the Meditations Marcus credits him with teaching freedom of will and steady purpose.
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Sextus of Chaeronea
2nd century AD · Teacher of Marcus Aurelius
A nephew of the biographer Plutarch. Marcus kept attending his lectures even after becoming emperor, and in the Meditations thanks him for the example of a life lived according to nature.
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Claudius Maximus
2nd century AD · Teacher of Marcus Aurelius
A Stoic senator and governor of Africa whom Marcus remembers in the Meditations for his self-control, cheerfulness and ability to do hard work without complaint.
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Cleomedes
dates uncertain (1st – 4th century AD) · Astronomer
Author of a Stoic astronomy textbook, The Heavens, which preserves Eratosthenes’ famous measurement of the Earth’s circumference.
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Marcus Aurelius
AD 121 – 180 · Roman emperor, 161–180
The philosopher-king. Marcus ruled the Roman Empire through plague and years of war on the Danube frontier, and wrote private notes to himself in Greek, never meant for publication. We know them as the Meditations, probably the most widely read book of Stoic philosophy today. He is counted as the last of Rome’s “Five Good Emperors”.
“In the morning when thou findest thyself unwilling to rise, consider with thyself presently, it is to go about a man’s work that I am stirred up.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.1 (Casaubon translation)
Learn more: Wikipedia · Meditations (free) · Discipline over motivation, the Stoic way
Before the Stoics: who shaped them
The Stoics saw themselves as heirs of Socrates, above all his claim that virtue is the only true good. Their other great influence was the Cynics: Antisthenes, a companion of Socrates; Diogenes of Sinope, who lived in a jar to prove how little a person needs; and Crates of Thebes, Zeno’s first teacher. These were not Stoics, but Stoicism is hard to imagine without them.
Where to start reading
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations: short entries you can read in any order. The best first book.
- Epictetus, Enchiridion: the whole Stoic method in about 30 pages.
- Seneca, Letters to Lucilius: warm, practical letters on fear, time, friendship and death.
New to the philosophy itself? Start with our introduction to Stoicism.
Portraits: images from Wikimedia Commons (public domain unless credited). Where no ancient portrait survives, we say so rather than invent one. Quotations are from public-domain translations (Yonge, Long, Gummere, Casaubon).