only the first that come to hand. As a contribution to the history of the philosophy of the Stoics, we first of all desire to mention the more eminent Stoics. The founder of the Stoic School is Zeno (who must be distinguished from the Eleatic); he belonged to Cittium, a town in Cyprus, and was born about the 109th Olympiad. His father was a merchant who, from his business visits to Athens, then, and for long afterwards, the home of Philosophy and of a large number of philosophers, brought with him books, particularly those of the Socratics, whereby a love and craving for knowledge was awakened in his son. Zeno himself travelled to Athens, and, according to some, he found a further motive to live for Philosophy, in that he lost all his possessions by a shipwreck. What he did not lose was the cultured nobility of his mind and his love of rational understanding. Zeno visited several sections of the Socratics, and particularly Xenocrates, a man belonging to the Platonic School, who, on account of the strictness of his morality and the austerity of his whole demeanour, was very celebrated. Thus he underwent the same ordeals as those to which the holy Francis of Assisi subjected himself, and succumbed to them just as little. This may be seen by the fact that while no testimony was given without oath in Athens, the oath was in his case dispensed with, and his simple word believed—and his teacher Plato is said often to have remarked to him that he might sacrifice to the Graces. Then Zeno also visited Stilpo, a Megaric, whom we already know about (Vol. I. p. 464), and with whom he studied dialectic for ten years. Philosophy was considered as the business of his life, and of his whole life, and not studied as it is by a student who hurries through his lectures on Philosophy in order to hasten on to something else. But although Zeno principally cultivated dialectic and practical philosophy, he did not, like other Socratics, neglect physical philosophy, for he studied very specially Heraclitus’ work on Nature, and finally came forward as an independent teacher in a porch called Poecile (στοὰ ποικίλη), which was decorated with the paintings of Polygnotus. From this his school received the name of Stoic. Like Aristotle his principal endeavour was to unite Philosophy into one whole. As his method was characterized by special dialectic skill and training, and by the acuteness of his argumentation, so he himself was distinguished, in respect of his personality, by stern morality, which resembles somewhat that of the Cynics, though he did not, like the Cynics, try to attract attention. Hence with less vanity his temperance in the satisfaction of his absolute wants was almost as great, for he lived on nothing but water, bread, figs and honey. Thus amongst his contemporaries Zeno was accorded general respect; even King Antigonus of Macedonia often visited him and dined with him, and he invited him to come to him in a letter quoted by Diogenes: this invitation,