"The goal of life is living in agreement with nature."
Life and Thought
Zeno of Citium was a Greek philosopher and the founder of the Stoic school in Athens. By emphasizing a life in accordance with nature, virtue, reason, and self-control, he established one of the most influential philosophical traditions of the ancient world, which impacted ethics, politics, and later thought in the Greek and Roman worlds.
Zeno of Citium was born around 334 BCE in the city of Citium on Cyprus. In his youth, he traveled to Athens, where he studied philosophy. Zeno was influenced by the teachings of philosophers such as Socrates, the Cynics, and the Megarian school, and eventually founded his own philosophical school in Athens; a school later known as Stoicism, because he and his followers taught philosophy at the Stoa Poikile (the Painted Porch).
Zeno's thought was founded on the belief that the goal of human life is to attain virtue and harmony with nature. In his view, true happiness lies not in wealth, pleasure, or social status, but in wisdom and moral virtue. The Stoics believed that one must distinguish between what is within one's control and what is beyond it, and maintain tranquility by accepting the rational order of the universe.
Few of Zeno's writings have survived, and most of his views are known through reports by later writers like Diogenes Laërtius and the works of later Stoics. He philosophized in the fields of logic, physics, and ethics, and his philosophical system became the foundation for the expansion of Stoicism in the Hellenistic period and later in the Roman world.
Zeno of Citium died around 262 BCE. His ideas were continued by philosophers such as Cleanthes and Chrysippus, and later influenced thinkers like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius.