"Epicurus had been in Athens for five or six years when (about 300 B.C.) another philosopher there began to expound views that in some respects were diametrically opposed to his. This was Zeno of Citium. Not pleasure, but virtue, Zeno said, is the highest good; and not random combinations of atoms, but God's holy ordinance is what forms and sustains the world. Thus began the Stoic school of philosophy, so called because Zeno delivered his lectures in a colonnade known as the Stoa Poikile, or Painted Porch (which the artist Polygnotus had decorated with a fresco of the fall of Troy).
"Zeno [340-265 Marietta] was born in Citium on the island of Cyprus sometime around 336 B.C. He went to Athens in his early twenties, conceived a deep admiration for the Socrates of Xenophon's Memorabilia, and fell under the influence of first one and then another of the city's philosophers. Two of these made a particularly strong impression upon him. From Crates, a Cynic, he learned that even the penniless are kings if (like Socrates) they virtuously reign over their own passions, and that all persons, owing to their common humanity, are citizens of a city that encompasses the cosmos--a cosmopolis--where wisdom is the only law. Under Stilpo, a Megarian, he became acquainted with techniques of logic and with problems of knowledge, and he began to work out his own views on these subjects. Zeno's thoughts were shaped most of all, however, by the writings of a philosopher long dead, Heraclitus of Ephesus, who had said that the cosmos is sustained by an eternal fire in which there is a rational principle that governs the perpetual flux of events. This constituted for Zeno the metaphysical perspective from which he coordinated and developed the lessons of his teachers in Athens.
[Marietta mentions Crates (a Cynic), Xenocrates (head of the Academy 339-314BC), Polemo (Xenocrates successor at Academy), Diodorus Cronus (taught eristic dialecti )]
"In his personal life Zeno seems to have followed the Cynics in emulating to a fault the simple habits of Socrates. We are told that he wore a thin cloak in all seasons, dined upon water and uncooked food, was oblivious to illness, and so forth. He is said to have been swarthy in appearance and to have had a slightly twisted neck. Despite a harshness of manner for which he was notorious, or perhaps because of it, he was honored highly by Athenian officialdom as a beneficial influence upon the young. The consistency of his personal practice with his philosophical theory excited general acclaim. This included his death by suicide (in about 265 B.C.), a practice which, as we shall see, his theory by no means discouraged. The story is that Zeno, having tripped and broken a toe, interpreted the incident as a sign that God wished his life to end, and so hobbled home and killed himself" (Jordan 195-6).

"...But aside from a poem of Cleanthes' and a few fragments from Zeno and Chrysippus, none of the writings of these `Old Stoics' has survived. Information about them must be pieced together from scattered references in works of a later date, and it is usually impossible to tell from these who among Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus is to be credited with a given idea. Here the usual practice of referring to the early phase of Stoicism as if it were their joint production will mostly be followed. In Stoicism's last phase, during the first two centuries of the Roman Empire (from about 30 B.C. to 180 A.D.), it surpassed Epicureanism in popularity and attracted some gifted expositors whose works still exist" (Jordan 196).
II.LOGIC: The most important question for the Stoics is, “How do we arrive at truths of which we may be perfectly certain?” By logic the
`wise can protect himself from mere opinions. “The wise man never opines, never regrets, never is mistaken, never changes his mind” (Jordan 196).
"Knowledge begins with impressions (phantasiae of the senses, whereby the soul is imprinted with resemblances of objects--trees and horses, ships and people--in somewhat the same way as wax may be imprinted with a seal. Impressions to which the soul gives spontaneous `assent' as accurate resemblances of objects are called `apprehensive' (cataleptic) impressions--`apprehensive' in the sense that by grasping or apprehending them, the soul also grasps the objects from which they derive. These apprehensive impressions constitute the all-important criterion by which we may determine what truly exists and what does not. All our general concepts are built up, directly or indirectly, from apprehensive impressions; and all our knowledge consists of truths incorporating these concepts. One learns many concepts by being taught them, and others are formed by one's conscious effort; but there are concepts that every soul is naturally stimulated by sense impressions to form will-nilly--concepts for which Chrysippus borrowed the name `anticipations' from Epicurus--for example, the concepts of goodness, justice, and God. Wisdom, which alone is knowledge in the strict sense, entails a systematic ordering of propositions concerning apprehensive impressions, by which the propositions gain such force and clarity from being connected with one another that one's conviction of their truth becomes absolutely unshakable....
"The propositions that are systematized into knowledge are meanings (lekta) expressed by signs such as vocal sounds and written words....
"`This table is square,' expresses, to be more precise, a completemeaning, a meaning that may be either true or false and must be one or the other. `This table' and `square,' taken separately, express what the Stoics call incomplete meanings because by themselves they can be neither true nor false. The simplest complete meaning is a simple proposition, such as `this table is square,' which contains, as Aristotle said, just one subject term (`this table') and one predicate term (`square'). Complex meanings are formed when two different propositions, or two occurrences of the same proposition, are joined to make a compound proposition, for example, `this table is square, and this table is wooden.' SUMMARY:
A. impressions ("presentations")= beginning of knowledge when the soul is imprinted with the resemblance of objects B. apprehensive impressions = the soul "assents" to certain impressions as accurate They have a "peculiar mark": you know it when you see it.C. "anticipations" (Chrysippus borrows term from Epicurus)- concepts stimulated by sense impressions to form the foundation of knowledge (justice, goodness, God, etc.) D. From anticipations humans create lekta ("sayings," "meanings") in the form of symbols or words.E. Complete lekta are simple propositions. F. Complex lektaare compound propositions: conjunctive, disjunctive, and conditional propositions. It is with these compound propositions that Chrysippus would further the development of logic.III. PHYSICS

A. "In the infinite void of the universe there is a solitary ball of matter. The outer layer of the ball is a fiery aether which contains stars. Inside the aether there is a sphere of planets, then a sphere of air and another of water, and then the earth, which is at the center of everything. The world is NOT the product of chance (Epicureans) but of an ordering mind, or reason! Only matter exists. Its permanent form is fire. Fire ("god," "Zeus," "Providence," "Nature," "King of Kings," or the "Divine Logos") modifies itself so that it has an active and passive self. This is pantheism!

B. Human souls are matter (fire). Spermatikoi logoi (“seminal reasons" "rational seeds") are the seed ideas that give rise to the things of the world and a rational order to the world and is the substance of the world (Marietta 154). “God is the substance of the world as well as the divine providence that makes all things work out for the good” (Marietta 154).
NOTE: The Stoics disagreed about whether the soul survived death or not: Marcus Aurelius did not (the spark of the divine reunited with the Divine Logos) while others thought they did survive until the great conflagration that ended that particular world.IV. ETHICSA. apathia avoidance of useless agitation over what one cannot prevent and useless longing for what one cannot count on (Marietta 151): health, pleasure, beauty, strength, wealth NOR death, disease, pain, poverty. The goal is indifference, or apathia, to what one cannot change; i.e., what counts is the person’s attitude toward things. Motivation alone is of moral significance” (Marietta 151). Good (virtue) = justice, prudence, courage, temperance; bad (vice) = injustice, foolishness. (“Some of the Stoics said that certain morally indifferent things can be preferred. If circumstances allow, one prefers health to illness” (Marietta 151). B. autárchia: independence, self-sufficiency=goes along with concept of apathia.
C. proficients Between the foolish and the wise are “proficients,” persons who are making progress toward wisdom and who thereby merit the title of “proficients.” Proficients cannot attain virtue, but "appropriateness," i.e., they can follow the advice of the wise. So Stoics wrote a vast literature of detailed moral advice. Achieving wisdom is a conversion experience: it happens with suddenness when the only concern becomes living in harmony with the Divine Logos.
D. Bad emotions v. good emotions One should avoid irrational passions such as appetite (anger, intense sexual desire, craving, love of riches and honor), fear (shame, superstition, dread), distress (malice, envy, jealousy, pity, grief, sorrow, worry), and pleasure. Good emotions include kindness, generosity, warmth, affection, respect, cleanliness, delight, sociability, cheerfulness. “Problems of personality, such as proneness to illness, irascibility, malevolence, and a quick temper, are the effects of wrong beliefs about what is important, what should and should not be sought. They are related to faulty judgment. Epictetus said that it is not things themselves that disturb people, but their judgments about things” (Marietta 153).
E. Monotheism and popular morality Stoics used the allegorical method to sanction myths of the people. They were monotheists but thought the masses needed to believe in the gods to sanction popular morality (cf. the deist founding fathers of America).
F. Fate & freedom: Everything is the result of an infinite series of causes. This led some to believe in astrology, augury, dream interpretations ecstatic prophesies, and divination. Yet freedom still exists. Fate is an auxiliary cause: “A person’s own nature and actions affect the results of external causation” (Marietta 157). “Freedom, therefore, is not the power to alter our destiny but rather the absence of emotional disturbance” (Stumpf 114). Actions are fixed, emotions are not.
G. Evil: What is the cause of evil in a universe supposedly ruled by a benevolent Divine Logos? For Cleanthes evil is caused by humans choosing fame, riches or the joys of the flesh, so God doesn't really control everything; He just oversees the general stuff. For Chrysippus good and evil are contraries –can’t have one without the other; many good things necessarily have some features that aren’t advantageous (e.g., delicate construction of the head that makes us easily injured).
H. suicide considered it a duty in circumstances that prevented living a virtuous life, as in situations in which the bulk of one’s circumstances are not in accord with nature. There was some approval of suicide on behalf of one’s country or friends, or if one falls victim to unduly sever pain, mutilation, or incurable illness….R. D. Hicks thinks that the tradition that Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus committed suicide might account for the impression that the Stoics were generally supportive of suicide” (Marietta 154).
I. Natural Law Theory: nature is not only ruled by physical laws but it is permeated by a moral order as well. Our human civil codes are valid and just only if they conform to the natural law (reason).
J. Duty Romans developed Stoic concept of duty: "...Greek ethical theory placed very little emphasis on the notion of duty. Generally, even the most exalted, altruistic ethical advice was intimately tied up with one's own self-interest and the pursuit of the good life. The Stoics, however,....taught that we must do some things simply because they are right" (Lawhead 98).SUMMARY: Happiness is the good flow of life, harmony with the Divine Logos (nature, reason, natural law). Humans always do what they think is right; therefore knowledge is virtue. Contrary to Aristotle, no one is a slave by nature: brotherhood of man.