=The New Schools――The Epicureans and the Stoics.= The Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics represent the dogmatic side of this period more truly than the Platonists and Aristotelians, for they give a radical expression to its social aspects. The Epicureans had less philosophical originality; but their doctrine had been born mature in their founder, and had in consequence a unity and compactness. Stoicism, on the other hand, was an eclecticism composed of the successive philosophizings of its champions through many centuries. Stoicism was represented by many independent and notable thinkers, while Epicureanism had only one original thinker,――its founder, Epicurus. Stoicism developed by changing its essentials, while Epicureanism could change only in its unessentials. Stoicism may be said to have been the characteristic philosophy of this period, from the fact that it was created and developed in Athens on the principles of Attic philosophy by men who had originated in the mixed races of the East, and by the fact that it was easily accepted and developed by the Romans. Consistent with the spirit of the Hellenic-Roman Period, it was by nature an eclecticism that became more eclectic; and as time went on its teaching approached that of the Academy and Lyceum (second century B. C.). Epicureanism, however, always remained Epicureanism. Both Stoicism and Epicureanism were centred at Athens. Epicurus opened his School in the Gardens in 307 B. C., and Zeno began his lectures in the Porch in 294 B. C. Both schools were introduced into Rome in the middle of the second century B. C., or just before the end of the Ethical Period. Epicureanism in Rome could easily be perverted into an excuse for the luxurious tendencies of the time, and since it advocated absolute government it voiced the feeling of the new Empire――of the Emperor and the people. As a philosophy it was opportune and popular and at the same time easily misunderstood. It made no demands upon its disciples. On the other hand, Stoicism was a discipline and demanded intellectual acumen. Its insensibility to art and culture was an insuperable obstacle to its progress in Greece, but on this account it found congenial soil in Roman society. It made rapid progress among the noble families, and was especially identified with those patrician reactionaries who stood for the old régime of the Republic.