Philosophy
c. 330 to c. 230 BCE, Assos to Athens
The Stoa’s second head, who added ‘with nature’ to the goal of life, wrote the one surviving hymn of the early Stoa, and proved his philosophy as a penniless water-carrier.
Start learning Cleanthes →Cleanthes wrote the one long text to survive whole from the early Stoa, the Hymn to Zeus - a poem that is also a physics, praising the logos that steers all things by law, casting the wicked as those who flee the common…
Cleanthes made one small addition to Zeno’s definition of the goal of life - the words ‘with nature’ - and in doing so fixed the compass of Stoic ethics for centuries: to live well is to live in agreem…
In four lines of verse that became the most quoted words of the early Stoa, Cleanthes prays to be led by fate - and adds that if he refuses, he will be dragged anyway. The prayer locates human freedom not in escaping de…
Cleanthes gave Stoic physics its vivid body: the soul is a warm, fiery breath, a spark of the cosmic fire; all things are held together by tonos , the inward tension of that breath; the ruling mind of the whole world ha…
Cleanthes drew water by night and studied by day, was mocked as slow and called ‘the ass’ - and became head of the Stoic school and ‘a second Heracles.’ His laborious life was itself an argument:…
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