Zeno of Citium

“Happiness is a good flow of life.”

Dear Classical Wisdom Kids,

There are few philosophers more important than Zeno of Citium. While he is not normally a household name (he should be!) he is, in fact, the founder of one of the most influential philosophical schools of all time. His life and ideas have inspired emperors, slaves, famous football players and presidents alike.

So please enjoy today’s article on Zeno of Citium and discover the origins of Stoicism!

Classical Wisdom Kids Members, we’ll send out the PDFs, activities and games soon. In the meantime, make sure to check out this week’s postcard from Florence and see what Frida and Owly are up to!

All the best,

Anya Leonard

Founder and Director

Classical Wisdom and Classical Wisdom Kids

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Zeno of Citium

“Happiness is a good flow of life.” 

By Sean Kelly

Zeno of Citium was an important philosopher. When he was young, he went to visit the Oracle at a place called Delphi. She was an important priestess who could tell the future. The Oracle was famous for her mysterious answers to questions, where the meaning wouldn’t be clear until a long time after. This is exactly what happened to Zeno…

Zeno asked her how he should best live his life. She gave him a strange and confusing answer, about getting in contact with the dead. Spooky! 

Before he became a philosopher, he was a merchant like his father, someone who bought and sold things. One of the main things he bought and sold was purple dye, which was very expensive in those days. He had to travel a lot for his job, and one night, he was caught in a storm. He was shipwrecked up on the shore. All of his cargo had been lost or destroyed in the storm. He was very lucky to survive! 

He had landed in Athens, one of the most important cities in ancient Greece, and its capital city in modern times.

As he went through the city, he picked up a book about Socrates, a very wise philosopher who had lived many years before him. This was what the Oracle had been talking about! He was so impressed by Socrates and his teachings, that he asked if there was anyone like that he could meet. 

Just then a man called Crates happened to be passing. The man in the bookshop pointed him out to Zeno, who went to meet him. Crates was a philosopher too, and he became a teacher and friend of Zeno’s.

Crates and his wife Hipparchia were both the kind of philosophers called Cynics. The word had a very different meaning then than it does now. Back then, being a Cynic meant wanting to live closer to nature. In fact, the word ‘cynic’ meant ‘dog’! (Although it doesn’t mean that now.)

Zeno was inspired by the Cynics but also had new ideas of his own, so he started his own school of philosophers.

They used to meet at a place called the Painted Porch, or Stoa Poikile in ancient Greek. Their type of philosophy became known as Stoicism because of this.

Stoicism focused on how people could best live their lives. Over the years, they became very famous. One of their most popular ideas for helping people was getting them to focus on the difference between the things they could control and the things they could not. By releasing certain things were out of their control, they could live at peace with them. At the same time, it encouraged them to change the things that they could control in their lives.

ship in a storm

The Stoics also taught that the way you look at things is often more important than the things themselves.

Zeno’s own life reflected this Stoic idea. Someone could look at the loss of the purple dye as a complete disaster! Yet Zeno didn’t see it that way. Something that seemed bad actually led him to philosophy, which made him very happy. 

As Zeno himself famously said, “I made a prosperous voyage, when I suffered a shipwreck.”

Famous Sayings

Zeno had many famous sayings. Here are just a few of them:

“Happiness is a good flow of life.” 

“All the good are friends of one another.”

“We have two ears and one mouth, so that we should listen more than we say.”