Zeno of Citium and the Founding of the Stoa

Zeno of Citium (c. 334–c. 262 BCE), from a Greek city on Cyprus, came to Athens around 312 BCE, by tradition after a shipwreck. Reading about Socrates in a bookshop, he asked where such men could be found, and the bookseller pointed to Crates the Cynic. Zeno studied with Crates and others, then around 300 BCE began teaching in the Stoa Poikile, the 'Painted Porch' in the Athenian Agora, which gave his followers their name: Stoics.

Zeno kept the Cynic belief that virtue is the only true good but built it into a full system of logic, physics and ethics, often compared to an egg or a garden. His successors Cleanthes and especially Chrysippus developed the system further. The school's openness, teaching in a public space, and its universal ethics helped make Stoicism the most influential philosophy of the Hellenistic and Roman world, attracting students from slaves to emperors.