BIBLID [1699-3225 (2023) 27, 67-114] ISSN 1699-3225
27, 2023, 67-114 •
CLEANTHES SOCRATICVS I: THE TEXTUAL
BACKGROUND TO SVF I.558-562 AND THEIR MEANING
University of Patras
jdimitrako@upatras.gr
Re-examining Cleanthes’ SVF I.557-62
by means of establishing textual relations
of them to their sources, I show that:
(i) I.557-8, unlike how H. von Arnim
construed them, have nothing to do with
moral philosophy, but are simply two
versions of exhortation to “philosophy”,
taken as freedom of thought and application
of reason to practical life, and (ii) Fr. I.558-
62 are directly and verbatim traceable back
to Socrates’ moral thought as known via the
corpus Platonicum plus Xenophon (1.558)
and via bare Plato (1.559-62) as well as to
Aristotle’s Protrepticus (Düring B53).
Cleanthes; Socratic ethics; exhortatio ad
philosophiam; source mining.
Fecha de recepción: 16/08/2022
Fecha de aceptación y versión nal: 25/09/2022
Reexaminando SVF I.557-62 de Cleantes
mediante el establecimiento de relaciones
textuales de dichos fragmentos con sus fuentes,
muestro que: (i) I.557-8, a diferencia de como los
interpretó H. von Arnim, no tienen nada que ver
considerada esta como libertad de pensamiento
y aplicación de la razón a la vida práctica, y (ii)
los fr. I.558-62 remontan directa y textualmente
al pensamiento moral de Sócrates conocido a
través del corpus Platonicum y de Jenofonte
al Protréptico de Aristóteles (Düring B53).
Cleanthes; ética socrática; exhortatio ad
philosophiam; estudio de fuentes.
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Fragments I.557-62 in Hans von Arnim’s Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta1
belong to the moral unit of the Cleanthes (ca. 331-230 BC) section (Fr. 552-
98). Fr. I.557-8 are taken by the editor as treating “de bono et honesto”, and
argue that fr. I.559 and I.560 have nothing to do with any branch or topic of
moral philosophy, but are simply two versions of exhortation to “philosophy”.
Further, I shall show that fr. I.558-62 can be directly traced back to Socrates’
thought as known via the corpus Platonicum plus Xenophon (I.558) and via
bare Plato (1.559-62), as well as to Aristotle’s Protrepticus. Moreover, based
on the literary fact that Cleanthes depended on concrete passages from Plato
and Xenophon and, as will be additionally revealed, on certain verses from
Homer, Alcaeus, and Theognis, I shall elucidate the content of the fragments
and draw certain related conclusions, both regarding each of the fragments
and Cleanthes as an author and thinker.
Throughout the study, I establish textual relations in the strict sense of
the term, namely I bring to light concrete dependence cases, and then draw
conclusions about the content of the passages, precisely on the basis of their
genetic relations. I accordingly re-translate and/or re-interpret certain of
these passages or resolve scholarly disagreement, foremost focusing on the
Cleanthean fragments mentioned above, and, when necessary, on certain other
Cleanthean fragments, too. In order to establish textual relations, my research
into sources is as exhaustive and accurate as technically possible in a printed
study. Texts are written on the basis of (previous and contemporary) texts,
number of passages —sometimes in the smallest possible quantity, i.e. two—
that deal with the same topic can hardly be taken as coincidence aequo animo
to pass by. In order to establish exclusivity, I sometimes quote and discuss
passages which look similar to Cleanthes’ but in fact, as demonstrated, are
not. Although this is a methodological issue deserving an analysis on its own,
it is quite useful to apply this general principle to particular cases such as
those examined here in detail and see what the results are.
In order to facilitate the reader to follow the way in which I compare and
genetically connect the texts, in the quotations I italicize each common word or
phrase and use numbers (or letters) in [square brackets] for verbal similarities and
numbers (or letters) in {braces} for similarities quoad sensum. Numbering starts
anew at § 3.1 and at § 3.2.
1 I. ab Arnim, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta. Volumen I: Zeno et Zenonis discipuli, Leipzig
1905; Volumen II: Chrysippi fragmenta logica et physica, Leipzig 1905; Volumen III: Chrysippi
fragmenta moralia – Fragmenta successorum Chrysippi, Leipzig 1905; Volumen IV, quo indices
continentur. Conscripsit M. Adler, Leipzig 1924 (hereafter: SVF, followed by volume number in
Latin and fragment number and/or page and line reference in Arabic). — Passages, Stoic or not, in
the footnotes are not accompanied by translation, unless translation is necessary for my argument.
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2.
I begin with I.559 and I.560. Closely connected to each other, they should actually
exhortationes ad philosophiam.
2.1.
[1a] [1b] [2] {1c}{a}, {3a} [3b]
{3c},
[4] [5a] [e] [6 e contrario
{7} [5b].
[8] {e} [g] [b] [f2]
{c} [d]
[9],
2.
Look not to opinion, (absurdly) wishing to become wise as if in a
twinkling of an eye,
And fear not the uncritically formed and rash opinion of the many;
For, it is not the multitude that has a sagacious, or just, or
temperate judgment;
3.
The fragment is preserved in Clement of Alexandria’s Stromata 5.3.17. Both
its point and the largest part of its wording can be exclusively —and thereby
safely— traced back to the following couple of Platonic passages:
2 O. Stählin, L. Früchtel, U. Treu, Clemens Alexandrinus. Zweiter Band: Stromata Buch I-VI,
Berlin 1985, 337.17-20; A. de Boulluec,
I: Introduction, texte critique et notes. Traduction de P. Voulet, Paris 1981, 52.2.4-9. Numbering
of words by means of letters facilitates comparison to the reception of the fragment by Clement of
Alexandria in Strom. 5.4.19.1-2, quoted in Appendix.
3The Anti-Nicene Fathers. Volume 2: Fathers of the Second Century: Hermes,
Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and Clement of Alexandria (Entire). Ed. A. Roberts, J. Donaldson.
Revised and Chronologically Arranged with Brief Prefaces and Occasional Notes by A. Cleveland
Coxe
devenir sage promptement” (de Boulluec, , 53) is not sustainable;
the participiumconditionale but causale. Cleanthes’ point is that it is wrong to think one
can become wise in short time (i.e. by simply swallowing received knowledge as, e.g., well-arranged
in a teaching curriculum); instead, one should devote oneself to serious thought as long as it will take
in order to get rid of the temerarious opinions of the vulgus, and only then embark upon searching for
the truth. Cf. Pl. Phdr.
unfrequent but quite acceptable (v. 1), regarded as a feature of the multitude’s mentality
and as resulting in holding wrong beliefs, cf. Ps.-Isocrates’ Ad Demonicum
” (B.G.
Mandilaras, Isocrates. Opera omnia. Vol. II, München-Leipzig 2003, 12).
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(i) Pl. Cri. 46C3-48D6; 49C11-D2:
[5a] {8}
[2].
[2]
{5a} {8}
[1a]. […] [2] [5b] {5a}
{10b} [1a] […].
{9} {9 e
contrario} [1a] […].
[2] [5b]
[5a].
[…]
{5a} {8}.
[…]
(1c e contrario
[4 e contrario
{5a} {8};
[10a]
Socr
even more terrors than at present, as children are frightened with
asking whether we were right when we always used to say that we
ought to pay attention to some opinions and not to others? […]
sensibly, just as I was saying now, that of the opinions held by men
some ought to be highly esteemed and others not. […]
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Socr. […] We ought to esteem the good opinions and not the bad
ones […].
Socr. […] If a man is an athlete and makes that his business, does
he pay attention to every man’s praise and blame and opinion or to
those of one man only who is a physician or a trainer?
Cri. To those of one man only.
Socr. Then he ought to fear the blame and welcome the praise of
that one man and not of the multitude.
[…]
Socr. And he must act […] as the one man who is his director and
who knows the business thinks best rather than as all the others think.
[…]
Socr. […] If he disobeys the one man and disregards his opinion
and his praise, but regards the words of the many who have no
special knowledge, will he not come to harm?
Cri. Of course he will.
Socr. […] Then in other matters […], particularly in questions of
right and wrong and disgraceful and noble and good and bad […],
ought we to follow and fear the opinion of the many or that of the
one, if there is anyone who knows about them, whom we ought to
revere and fear more than all the others?
Socr. […] Be careful, Crito, that you do not, in agreeing to this,
agree to something you do not believe; for I know that there are few
who believe or ever will believe this4.
(ii) Pl. La. 184D5-E9:
4 Tr. W.R.M. Lamb, Plato in Twelve Volumes. I: Euthyphro – Apology – Crito – Phaedo –
Phaedrus, Cambridge, MA-London 1914, 161-9 and 173. Cf. Pl. Ap.
[10] […], Cra.
386B3-6: “[10]”; Smp.
[4 e contrario]
[…]”; Euthd
R.
[10a]
Prt.
[5a] Alc. 2, 145A8-
9 and 146C8-9: “[…]
above passages cannot account for the diction of I.559; my numbering is simply meant to facilitate
comparison.
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5
[9]
[6].
Socr. What, Lysimachus? Are you going to join the side which gets
the approval of the majority of us? […] And you too, Melesias,
would do the same? […] […] Would you be guided by the majority
of us, or by the one who happened to have trained and exercised
under a good master? […] \Would you be guided by him alone
rather than the four of us? […] For a question must be decided by
knowledge, and not by numbers, if it is to have a right decision.6
[6] and [8] occur only in the passage from Laches7. In addition, it is only in
the passage from Laches that Cleanthes’ combination of [6] with [9] (“ […]
”) occurs. This suggests that, although the content of passage (ii) does not
Cleanthes used that, too8.
Socrates’ point is this. Everyone, even the so far unwise and never-to-become-
wise man, easily admits that the opinion held by the (never numerous) specialists
is more reliable than the opinion of the mass, however big the mass be. According
to Clement, Cleanthes applied this, taken as a general rule, to the issue of the
qualities of the divine. Presumably, to Cleanthes (and Socrates), the advantage of
the few who deserve attention by the truth-seeker consists in their being seriously
and meticulously engaged in their task. This stance enables them to free their
souls from the fear of censorship or opposition by the multitude and their minds
from and thereby to reach ; subsequently, this intellectual freedom
helps their followers to do the same.
What about one’s absurd “wish to quickly acquire wisdom” mentioned in
v. 1? It is probable that Cleanthes refers to the practice of promptly becoming
disciple of some of those teachers, who, according to Plato, simply complied
themselves to the views of the multitude, which, according both to (Plato’s)
Socrates and Cleanthes, one ought to critically scrutinize. This is the closest
parallel from the corpus Platonicum:
5 On vs. , see Plato, Rep. 5.477B4-9, 477E5-478A5 and 478A9-B2; 6.506C6-7;
7.533D5-6, 534A4-5 and 534C5-6.
6 Tr. W.R.M. Lamb, Plato. II: Laches – Protagoras – Meno – Euthydemus, London-Cambridge,
MA, 1924, 25-27.
7 On [8], i.e. , see also the passage from Plato’s Republic 6 discussed infra, which relates
to SVF I.559.
8 Did Cleanthes spot passages (i) and (ii) while studying Plato’s œuvre or use some Platonic
anthology, or a section from some anthology, relevant to the issue of these passages? In § 5.2, I shall
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(iii) Pl. R. 6.493A6-9:
[5a]
{5a} {8},
Socr. Each of those private individuals who work for a living, whom
beliefs of the majority of people which they promulgate whenever
9.
This passage forms part of Plato’s exploration (491D1 sqq.) into how a person
philosophically predisposed by nature () should be educated
( or ); according to Plato, the talented young man should by all
means and purposes be kept away from the sophists, who corrupt the souls of
their students (). Who are the sophists, and why does their teaching
corrupt? To answer this, the persona of Socrates likens the views, the wishes and
the wrath of the soul of the mass, taken as the arch-sophist or the worst educator of
all, to the desires of a very strong beast, and the “sophist”, in the literal meaning of
the word, to someone who has carefully studied the beast’s behaviour and transfers
this knowledge (called by him and conveyed by him as such) to his students.
Sophists teach them, in an absurd, pervert way (), that the criterion
of truth is what the beast thinks (
Such a teacher, Socrates argues, mistakes the nature () of the just ()
and the good ( or ) for the nature of compulsion (), i.e. for
what the beast forces the individual to think and do10. This crosses with
from Callicles’ speech in Gorgias, which is to be discussed below (§ 2.2.1), and
in Cleanthes’ I.560, v. 1, which reproduces it; is the same personality
as he who wants “” from I.559, v. 1, and his lack of freedom
consists in the fact that he from the outset aligns his thought and morality to that of
the all-powerful multitude, to the thoughts and wishes of which he is initiated by
the professionals called “sophists”, who provide him with false wisdom, i.e. false
beliefs and bad wishes (cf. “” vs. “” in 493B6-7; cf.
of this submission to the multitude as slavery (“[…]
”), which is tantamount to one not being a truly free man, regardless of
9 Tr. C. Emlyn-Jones, W. Preddy, Plato. Republic. Volume II: Books 6-10, Cambridge, MA-
London 2013, 37.
10 Pl. R. 6.493B6-C8.
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Socrates escalates his description of the slavery imposed by the multitude
on the gifted individual by adding that there are some even stronger means
of compulsion (
penalties such as exile, fees and even death (“
[…]
[…]”; 492D2-8). This crosses with
Cleanthes’ already discussed “” (I.559, v. 2); for one to dare use
one’s own mind and thereby hold views and having conducts laying beyond
the comfort zone of the mass, one should realize that reputation (ruined by
), wealth (ruined by penalties regarding , i.e. private property
and money) and even life itself (exterminated by various kinds of death
Still, one should not fail to see that Cleanthes’ noli timere, or preaching
of philosophical courage, goes against what Plato says in Republic, Bk. VI.
Plato stresses the almightiness of the multitude in order to argue that one would
in vain try to upbring a philosophical character in a rotten city, for example
in a democratic one; it is only in an ideal city that this would be feasible11.
Cleanthes, by contrast, does not place his philosopher in some ideal state; he
exhorts his addressee here and now to throw away the irrational beliefs of the
multitude and build up his own way of thinking and living. This is much closer
people to challenge all beliefs (see above the passage from Plato’s Crito) and
eventually endured the death penalty as the price for his behaving in the way he
thought it was the only proper one and for exhorting the others to do the same,
i.e. to examine their lives. As will be seen (§ 3.1), Cleanthes did not imply that
one should revolt against the legal entity called city or state; quite the contrary,
just like Socrates, he argued that laws ought to be obeyed by philosophers, too.
Still, Cleanthes does raise claim on the individual’s spiritual freedom, and it is
on account of philosophical arguments that he proclaims law-abiding behaviour
as proper — which is, yet once again, Socratic in spirit.
rd century
BC, when Cleanthes produced I.559, there were no Sophists in Athens anymore.
Hence, his implicit reference to teaching activities conformed with the views
of the multitude may concern Epicureanism or Aristotelianism. The former’s
11 See, e.g., J. Adam’s succinct note on 492E3 sqq. (The Republic of Plato. Volume II: Books VI-X
and Indexes Second Edition, with an Introduction by D.A. Rees, Cambridge 1963, 21). R.C. Cross
and A.D. Woozley (, New York 1964, 221) parallel
the passage from the Republic to Theaetetus depresses
and establishes in the youngsters’ souls (cf. M. Burneyat and M.J. Levett (tr.), The
Theaetetus of Plato. Revised by M. Burneyat, Indianapolis-Cambridge 1990, 300). A similar passage
from the Laws, Bk. VIII depicts, with heroic colours, the wise lawgiver as an exceptionally brave
man who would —yet once more, in an ideal situation— stand up alone and try to convince, solely
on rational grounds, the erring mass about the truth (835C3-8).
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acceptance of “pleasure” as the ultimate end in life presumably seemed to
him as complying with what the ordinary, unphilosophical man believed
about pleasure, whereas Aristotle’s view that possessing a considerable or
as well. SVF I.558 clearly opposed the former, and I.560 (see below, § 2.2)
clearly opposed the latter. Given that the Epicureans’ view of Socrates was
unambiguously negative (see below, § 3.1), Cleanthes’ recognizably positive
reception of Socratic moral ideas de facto turned against them.
The last sentence from Cleanthes’ I.559 quite probably derives from Theognis:
(iii) Thgn. I.150:
[10a]
[…] Excellence is allotted to few as their companion12.
The diction of the verse is exclusively similar to Cleanthes’ sentence, and its point
is in tune with what one might call Socrates’ egalitarian elitism: both of them avert
people from endorsing the mass opinions on the one hand, and in principle address
their exhortation for liberally using one’s own mind to everyone on the other.
I.559, v. 1 (“
{3a} [3b]
Possibly the philosophers say what is contrary to opinion, but
assuredly not what is contrary to reason13.
What is actually wrong, Cleanthes declares, is not disloyalty to the multitude,
but discarding reason. And reason is what Socrates declared to be his own criterion
of truth in the section from Crito which, as already shown, Cleanthes used in order
to produce SVF
see above § 2.1, i):
12 D. Young post E. Diehl, Theognis. Ps.-Pythagoras. Ps.-Phocylides. Chares. Anonymi Aulodia.
Fragmentum Teliambicum, Leipzig 19712, 10; tr. D.E. Gerber, Greek Elegiac Poetry from the Seventh
to Fifth Centuries BC, Cambridge, MA-London 1999, 195. This verse must have been the source of
Pl. R. 491A8-B2 quoted supra, n. 5.
13 Tr. W.A. Oldfather, Epictetus. With an English Translation. The Discourses as Reported by
Arrian, The Manual, and Fragments. Volume 2: Books III and IV, The Manual, and Fragments,
infra, n. 21.
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Pl. Cri. 46B4-6:
I am […] a man who follows nothing but the reasoning which on
consideration seems to me best14.
Let us focus on the qualities of , i.e. its being , and .
produced
by a person with , and . Evidently, these qualities
roughly coincide with three of the four cardinal virtues as grouped by Plato (and
the human soul, that is , the second with justice, and the third with the
virtue of the appetitive part of the human soul, i.e. with temperance15. Appetitus
itself is neither bad nor good; it becomes bad if lacking, or unregulated by,
, which is secured only by 16.
14 Tr. Lamb, Plato in Twelve Volumes. 161. Cf. Pl. Phd. 85C8-9: “[…]
declaration of the individual’s judgment as criterion of truth less arrogant or less “impious” than
Protagoras’ homo mensura maxim (see infra, § 3.1)? Because, unlike Protagoras, they admit that
some criterion exists which is objective and superior to the individual and that man ought to conform
his mind and life with it (see infra, § 3.1, n. 75).
15 Cf. Chrysippus, SVF
EN 6.1142b34-1143a8.
16 See SVF
enjoys moral autonomy and it is because of its presence
or absence that desire and pleasure become moral or immoral. Cf. Pl. Euthd.
Kleanthes van Assos, Bruxelles 1949, 215 n.
3; cf. A.A. Long, “Socrates in Hellenistic Philosophy”, Classical Quarterly 38, 1988, 150-71, at 156);
Men.
Physis und
Agathon in der alten Stoa, Berlin 1932, 28 n. 1, who has also pointed out Ly. 216D at 22 n. 1); Cra.
Laws 4.705D2-706A4. The idea occurs, in a
way particularly close to the passage from Plato’s Euthydemus just quoted, in fr. 2-4 (according to I.
Düring’s numbering: , Stockholm 1961, 46-8)
from Aristotle’s Protrepticus
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This is what Cleanthes says in a passage from his Hymn to Zeus, where he
But they on the contrary rush without regard to the good, each
others yet on indulgence and the pleasurable actions of the body17.
Unlike construing “” as meaning “without regard to the good”18
(this is not about , but about ), I think it means “immorally”,
“unfairly”, “with no honour”, “with no dignity”. The phrase occurs already in this
Johnson, Aristotle. Protrepticus or Exhortation to Philosophy (Citations, Fragments, Paraphrases, and
Other Evidence), 2017, 6-7, available at www.protrepticus.info/protr2017x20.pdf ). As will be seen (§
and are
traceable back to the above Platonic passages, whereas on see infra, § 2.2.1.
17 Cleanth. Hymn to Zeus 26-29 (SVF I.537, 122.22-23); J.C. Thom,
Translation, and Commentary, Tübingen 2005, 38; 41; tr. ibid, 130-
5). As far as greed is concerned, the almost exclusively Homeric ( 22.247; Od. 4.251; 14.31) is
not a full synonym of A Hellenistic Anthology. Selected and Edited,
Cambridge 1988, 135 ad loc.; cf. Thom,
A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect. Expanded Edition, Oklahoma 2012, 225 s.v.). Hence,
use of (wangles)’. A passage apparently close to Cleanthes’ is P. P.
/ Pindare. Pythiques (III, IX, IV, V).
Édition, introduction et commentaire, Paris 1967, 49). Yet, the point in Pindar’s lines is that the temptation of
riches is so strong that it made even Centaurus Chiron commit for their sake a medical act against the laws of
nature; Cleanthes, by contrast, deplores the lives of those enslaved to greed, who unceasingly use all sorts of
tricks in order to get richer and richer; for them, riches are not a circumstantial temptation, but the permanent
target in their lives. Besides, to Cleanthes, the wise man (unlike Centaurus Chiron) cannot slip into the state
of immorality (SVF I.568-569, 129.24-9). As far as licentiousness is concerned, in the Greek literature prior
to Cleanthes, a combination of the lexemes with the lexemes occurs only in
Plato’s description of the emergence of the tyrannic personality in R.
[…]”. Thom (, 38 ad loc.) parallels Cleanthes’
Rh. 1.1371b34. Yet, the
pleasure is presented neither with positive nor with negative connotation at all.
18 As rendered, e.g., by Thom (, 41; cf. op. cit., 128-30).
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passage from Plato’s Charmides: “[…]
” (163C1-3; “[…] if it had no connection with the honourable
[…]”)19. It also occurs in several authors in the same sense20.
Likewise, “ ”, which has practically the same meaning, must
have been yet another borrowing from Plato, in certain writings of whose the
phrase occurs and is described as the virtue of the pars concupiscibilis, its
opposite being 21.
What I have demonstrated so far enables us to assess A. Meineke’s inventively
emendatio of “’ (rumour). To him,
“
neque cum coniungi, quia non nisi in factis dictisve conspicitur”22.
Meineke was followed by a number of scholars, including H. von Arnim23. Yet, in point
19 Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Griechisch und
Deutsch. Zweiter Band, Berlin 1959, 312.2-5); tr. W.R.M. Lamb, Plato. With an English Translation.
VIII: Charmides – Alcibiades I and II – Hipparchus – The Lovers – Theages – Minos – Epinomis,
London-Cambridge, MA, 1927, 43.
20 See, e.g., Plu. Sert.
Chambry, Plutarque. Vies. Tome VIII: Sertorius – Eumène. Agésilas – Pompée, Paris 1973, 39); Brut.
Plutarque. Vies. Tome XIV: Dion – Brutus, Paris
1978, 143-4); Septem sapientium convivium
” (J. Defradas, J. Hani, R. Klaerr, Plutarque. Œuvres morales. Traités 10-14: Consolation
à Apollonios – Préceptes de santé – Préceptes de marriage – Le banquet des sept sages – De la
superstition, Paris 1985, 199; “[…] rulers that are content with safety without honour […]”; tr. F.C.
Babbitt, ,, London-Cambridge, MA, 1928, 355);
De Stoicorum repugnantiis along with the fair pleasure
[…]”; H. Cherniss, Plutarch. Moralia. Volume XIII - Part II, Cambridge, MA-London 1976, 472);
” (K. Jacoby, Dionysii
Halicarnasei Antiquitatum Romanarum quae supersunt, vol. IV, Leipzig 1905, 262.18-20; “[…] to
advise them of their interests regardless of the honourable course […]”; The Roman Antiquities of
Dionysius of Halicarnassus. With an English Translation by E. Gary on the Basis of the Version of
E. Spelman, in Seven Volumes. Volume VII: Books 11-20, London-Cambridge, MA, 1950, 289).
21 See Pl. Smp. […]”; Grg.
R. 4.430E4-5: “
J.D. Meerwaldt (“Cleanthea II”, Mnemosyne 5, 1952, 1-12, at 6). — By referring to Plato’s tripartite
distinction of the human soul, I do not imply that Cleanthes shared this doctrine. Cleanthes’ distinct
reference to the cardinal virtues in the passages discussed here does not necessarily imply that he
posited distinct seats in the human soul for each of them. See my forthcoming “Cleanthes Socraticus
II: The Textual Background to SVF I.570 and Its Meaning” in QUCC).
22 A. Meineke, Historia critica Comicorum Graecorum, Berlin 1839, XI-XII (“Cuius poematii
23 See, e.g., C. Wachsmuth, Commentatio II de Zenone Citiensi et Cleanthe Assio, Gottingae
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of fact, does occur, in various forms, in Greek literature24. And Plato, in
passage (i) (from Crito) quoted above, in distinguishing between what the wise and
what the unwise man holds, uses for the latter as well: “[…]
” (49D12). Likewise, refers both to true and false belief in Ps.-
Pl. Min. 314E7-315A2: “
[…]”25. And the fact that, as already shown, I.559
derives directly from two Platonic passages in the one of which (Cri. 47C-48D)
is found, clearly and safely disambiguates the meaning of the particular word and of
the point of the fragment, so that the emendation can be conclusively ruled out.
So far so good with I.559 — except for its “”,
which still remains to be accounted for as regards its textual source. To do so, one
should turn to the sources of I.560, whose core, as will be demostrated, coincides
with the point of I.559. It reads:
[12] {13} {1b} [2] [5b]
{1c},
{15} [16] {17}.
Lacks (spiritual) freedom everyone who looks to opinion
With the vain hope that he will obtain something good from it26.
1875, 8; I. ab Arnim, ad loc.; J.U. Powell, Collectanea Alexandrina: Reliquiae minores poetarum
Graecorum aetatis Ptolemaicae 323-146 A.C. epicorum, elegiacorum, lyricorum, ethicorum, Oxonii
1925, 230; M. Isnardi Parente, Stoici antichi, Torino 1989, 229 n. 106; D.C.N. Andrade Leite, Cleantes
de Asos. Uma introdução com traducão e notas. Versão corrigida (PhD thesis, Universidade de Sâo
Paulo), 2020, 132.
24 See, e.g., Plu. Alc. 16.6: “Plutarque.
Vies. Tome III: Périclès-Fabius Maximus. Alcibiade-Coriolan, Paris 1964, 134); (Ps.-?) Athenagoras,
De resurrectione ”
(W.R. Schoedel, Athenagoras. Legatio and De Resurrectione. Edited and Translated, Oxford 1972,
90; cf. N. Kiel,
Apologeten Athenagoras zugeschriebenen Auferstehungsschrift, Leiden-Boston 2015, 79-80; 83);
Lib. Decl. 16.14: “Libanii opera. Vol. VI: Declamationes
XIII-XXX, Leipzig 1911, 153.22).
25 A.C. Pearson had already objected to Meineke’s correction that “surely the words may mean
The Fragments of Zeno and Cleanthes,
with Introduction and Explanatory Comments
(ibid.). Yet, this passage from Ad seipsum is not about one’s opinions, but about one’s reputation; the
same holds for Ad seipsum
26 SVF The Ante-Nicene
Butterworth’s translation: “Slavish the man who vain opinion heeds, / in hope to light on any good
from that” (
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This evidently is a verbally close abridgment of I.559 (see above, § 2.1). “
”27 clearly corresponds to “”, and “” echoes
“” (on the latter, see infra, § 2.2.3).
Fr. I.560 is preserved in Clem. Al. Protr. 6.72.228 and Strom. 5.14.111.2 as the
concluding part of an eleven-verse long passage from some Cleanthean poem.
In the former work, it is prefaced as follows: “
” (“Cleanthes […] sets forth no genealogy of the gods, after the
manner of poets, but a true theology. He did not conceal what thoughts he had about
God”)29. In the latter, it is introduced as follows: “ [sc. Cleanthes]
[…]” (“And
the same, tacitly vilifying the idolatry of the multitude, adds […]”)30. H. von Arnim
thought that Clement “hos versus adjungit versibus de bono fr. 557, a quibus alieni
and discussed in § 4) on account of its (allegedly) considering reputation () as
a vain thing and I.562 on account of its declaring wealth vain, both reputation (or
glory) and wealth contrasted to “bonum et honestum”, which is supposed to be the
topic of the precedent small unit in SVF, that is of I.557-8 (“De bono et honesto”).
Denying —in opposition to how Clement quotes from the poem— that I.560 is the
continuation of I.557 is a corollary of von Arnim’s estimation that Clement mistook
a passage on theology (SVF I.557, p. 127,1: “…
…”) for a passage on ethics: “Errat Clemens, cum ad deum refert, quae de
honesto dicuntur”31. But is this assumption valid?
the Fragment of an Address Entitled “To the Newly Baptized”, Cambridge, MA-London 1919, 163).
27 On this meaning of , see, e.g., Pl. Lg.
following his lead […]”; tr. R.G. Bury, Plato. Laws. II, Cambridge, MA-London 1926, 477).
28 M. Marcovich, Clementis Alexandrini Protrepticus, Leiden-New York-Köln 1995, 108.13-14.
29 Clem. Al. Protr. 6.72.1 (Marcovich, Clementis, 108.1-3; tr. G.W. Butterworth, Clement, 161).
30 Clem. Al. Strom. 5.14.111.1 (Stählin et al., Clemens Clément
The Anti-Nicene Fathers. Volume 2, 994). Cf. Epicur., Ep ad
Menoeceum
Epicurus. The Extant Fragments, Oxford 1926, 82).
31 SVF III.127, ad l. 1. Pearson (The Fragments
(“In Clem. Alex. Protrept. vi. 72 […] the same two lines are cited as the conclusion of frag. 75, but
they are obviously distinct”) and declared that, in so doing, he follows A.B. Krische (“Clement’s
mistake in referring these lines to Cleanthes’ conception of the deity, when they really refer to the
ethical summum bonum, is obvious, and has been pointed out by Krische, p. 420 f. Krische thinks that
Die theologischen Lehren der Griechischen Denker. Eine Prüfung
, Göttingen 1840, 420-1). Most scholars follow this interpretation; see,
e.g., A.A. Long, D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers. Volume I: Translations of the Principal
Sources, London-New York-New Rochelle-Melbourne-Sydney 1987, 60; Thom, ,
121-2; W. Johncock, Stoic Philosophy and Social Theory, Cham 2020, 282. Cf. infra, n. 34. See,
however, M. Herrero de Jáuregui’s view that these Cleanthean verses refer to the “supreme Good”
but, because of their “hymnic style”, “Cleanthes’ philosophical poem is easily adapted as theology”
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Further scrutiny is in order here. Clement does not speak of honestum, i.e.
of 32, but of , i.e. bonum33
context but nevertheless in a terminologically consistent way, called God “
” (“the absolutely good nature”), this use of in superlative referring
to the coexistence of all good things within a single being called God34. In I.557,
the question “what sort of being the Good is (“;”)35 is
not about the nature of Good or God (e.g., whether it is material or spiritual
four Chrysippean Categories, but about its (qualities), which fall under the
second Chrysippean Category36. This probably implies that Cleanthes’ rich list
of the nomina divina (cf. his “”; above,
n. 34) should be foremost construed as predicated ad intra rather than ad extra
— even if certain of them look pretty well falling under the third Chrysippean
Category (). To be sure, Chrysippus’ fourfold Category system postdates
Cleanthes and thereby is not a safe guide to Cleanthes’ thought, and it is not
impossible that Cleanthes’ “” comprises relative predicaments, too. Be
that as it may, I would be inclined to think that a discussion of the nature of the
divine preceded Cleanthes’ analysis of as it came down to us in I.557,
which discussion had concluded that the divine —unlike the vicious deeds
attributed to the Olympian gods in vulgar theology as expressed in Homeric
and Hesiodean poetry and castigated at this section from the Stromata by means
of Xenophanes’ and Bacchylides’ anti-anthropomorphism37— is good38. This
conclusion then called for an enumeration of the properties of good — at which
point the citation of Cleanthes’ verses enters the stage.
(The “Protrepticus” of Clement of Alexandria: a Commentary [PhD thesis, University of Bologna,
2008], 207 ad loc.), who seems to elaborate on M. Pohlenz’s ambivalent account in La Stoa. Storia di
un movimento spirituale. Presentazione di G. Reale. Traduzione di O. De Gregorio. Note e apparati
di B. Proto, Milano 2005, 245.
32 See SVF
33 See SVF IV, 2a, s.v. Cf. von Arnim’s own phrase (“de bono”) in the statement quoted above.
34
from God” (SVF I.529, 120.15-18; tr. R.G. Bury, Sextus Empiricus, with an English Translation, in
Four Volumes. III: Against the Physicists – Against the Ethicists, Cambridge, MA-London 1936, 51,
SVF III.87 (22.3-10), which regards Chrysippus’ thought, presents as one of
the various aspects of
commensurate to the need it is used to satisfy”).
35 SVF I.557 (127.3).
36 See SVF II.369-404 (124-33).
37 Clem. Al. Strom. 5.14.109.1-110.1 (Stählin et al., Clemens, 400.6-401.6; de Boulluec, Clément
, 204-6). Cf. H. Maehler post B. Snell, Bacchylidis carmina cum fragmentis,
Stuttgart-Leipzig 1992, 106.
38 Cf. Pl. Phdr.Ti. 29E3-
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The passage was misconstrued as regarding virtue ethics by the majority of
the subsequent scholars, too39. Presumably, it was taken as averting people from
views formed by the average people are basically erroneous, and one ought not to
subject oneself to what people, who mostly err about what this or that person (truly
or apparently) is, think about him or her40. In fact, as we shall see below, I.560 is
an Aristotle-triggered adaptation of a particular Platonic passage, which amply
sheds light on its meaning. Further, in light of its textual background, which is to
be pointed out, I.560 is moral in nature only inasmuch as it deplores unphilosophic
life and, indirectly, exhorts to philosophy. Last, I.560 can be plausibly construed
as an epimythion41 (vv. 10-11 out of the eleven ones)
to the lofty description of the divine in SVF I.557, in the sense that Cleanthes
exhorts people to philosophy, taken as the opposite to, or the medicament for, their
rehashing traditional or trendy beliefs such as the mean, unworthy of the divine,
theological mass beliefs, however sanctioned by authorities such as Homer and
39 A.T. Watanabe, Cleanthes. Fragments. Text and Commentary (PhD thesis, University of
Illinois), 1978, 200-1 (F81); Andrade Leite, Cleantes
mistranslated as “mira a fama”). See also J.C. Thom’s misrendering of the point of the fragment:
“[…] a consideration of one’s reputation makes one dependent on others for one’s well-being. […]
Being intent on fame and glory therefore curtails the wise person’s moral independence and self-
, 134); this, although undoubtedly Stoic in tenor, is not what I.560
says. Likewise, R. Radice’s translation looks like trying at any, even grammatical, cost to bestow
the fragment a meaning on the presumption that Cleanthes speaks about striving for fame: “Chi
Stoici antichi.
Tutti i frammenti raccolti da H. von Arnim, Milano 1998, 251). To be sure, Thom remarks that
Gli stoici. Opere e
testimonianze. Volume primo, Milano 1989, 256), but the context in Clement is too vague to make
, 134 n. 424). In fact, contextualizing the word in light
of I.559 as well as of the Platonic passages which, as already shown, are Cleanthes’ direct sources,
safely disambiguates it. Cf. J. Dalfen’s proper rendering of the point Cleanthes makes at I.559: “In
einen hexametrischen Vierzeiler hat Kleanthes die Mahnung gefasst, sich nicht um die Meinung und
das Gerede der Menge zu ktimmer” (“Das Gebet des Kleanthes an Zeus und das Schicksal”, Hermes
99, 1971, 174-83, at 177).
40 Cf. J.C. Thom’s misleading interpretation of I.559 supra
by G. Hervetus: “Est sordidus et illiberalis, quisquis respicit ad opinionem, / tanquam ab illa quid
boni consecuturus”; “Servilis est qui opinionem respicit, / ut consecuturus aliquid per hanc boni” (T.
Flavii Clementis Alexandrini […] opera omnia […], Parisiis 1590, 70.58-59; 604.37-38). See also
J. Potter’s translations: “Illiberalis quisquis intentus stupet / opinionem, vel bonum ex illa petit”;
“Opinionem qui sequitur, haud liber est; / frustra inde quicquam stultus expectet boni” (
, vol. I,
Venetiis 1715, col. 62a7-8 = PG 8: 179A1-2; vol. II, Venetiis 1715, col. 715a25-26 = PG 9: 167B5-6).
See also J. Lipsius’ translation: “Ah vilis ille, opinionem qui adspicit / tanquam duce hac venturus
ad veri scopum” (Physiologiae Stoicorum libri tres, Parisiis 1604, fol. 21v; translation reproduced in
J.J. Brucker’s Historia critica philosophiae a mundi incunabulis ad nostram usque aetatem deducta.
Tomus primus, Leipzig 1742, 925). Presumably, Lipsius construed the “good” at this passage as the
good of the mind, i.e. the truth.
41 See Lipsius, Physiologiae Stoicorum, ibid.
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Hesiod they may look or even be. In other words, Cleanthes’ verses stand as a
general warning against the wrong way of forming beliefs, which warning, as
shown, is applicable, among others, to the issue of the divine.
Gorgias
Besides the above horizontal contextualization of I.560, a vertical one points to
the same interpretive direction. In the Greek literature available in the Thesaurus
Linguae Graecae data base42, the lexeme occurs with reference
to how one forms one’s opinions only once, i.e. in Plato’s Gorgias. Far from
coincidentally, besides this exclusive similarity, this Platonic passage exhibits
further similarities to I.560. At that point of the Platonic dialogue, the persona
of the Sophist Callicles was speaking about philosophy itself (from 484C5 on:
“” etc.; cf. 485A4: “” etc.)
and arguing as follows:
(i) Pl. Grg. 485C3-8:
{3a} [3b] {3c}
[12
e contrario
{3a} [3b] {3c} [18] [12 e contrario
{17} {15}
[16] {16} {17}.
For when I see philosophy in a young man I approve of it; I consider
it suitable, and I regard him as a person of liberal mind: whereas a
non-philosophizer I account as unfree, as someone who will never
43.
Callicles goes on by saying that, by contrast, overdoing this, namely keeping
philosophizing throughout one’s life, is deplorable44. Still, Callicles’ main point
was not what Cleanthes was interested in (or, perhaps, something Cleanthes
would agree with). What Callicles approved of is what Socrates did with young
persons, i.e. to awake their mind in order to scrutinise their own unfounded beliefs
—mainly, if not exclusively, borrowed from their social environment— so as to
clear the soil of their souls and implant in it true and certain convictions. Cleanthes
42 http://stephanus.tlg.uci.edu (last access: 12.4.2022).
43 This is an adaptation and combination of the translation by W.R.M. Lamb (Plato in Twelve
Volumes. III: Lysis – Symposium – Gorgias, Cambridge, MA-London 1925, 486) and T. Irwine
(Plato. Gorgias, Oxford 1979, 59). See also Pl. R.
44 Cf. Pl. Grg.
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Callicles’ central point was explicitly anti-Socratic suggests that Cleanthes simply
used these particular lines from Callicles’ speech as a testimonium Socraticum,
and one of vital importance, as he regards critique of traditional, popular ideas,
for example, of the features of the divine as what distinguishes philosophers from
non-philosophers45.
The passage from Gorgias
I.559, v. 1, too (see supra
and encompassed in their books as reported in Xenophon’s Memorabilia, Bk. IV
(which, as will be seen in § 3, is the main source of SVF I.558). This well-known
report regards how Socrates treated the young Euthydemus after his completion
of some Sophistic courses and alleged acquisition of “wisdom”:
I shall now describe how he [sc. Socrates] approached those who
held that they had obtained the best education and were proud
on account of their wisdom. For he learned that Euthydemus the
beautiful had collected many writings of the poets and of the
sophists who were held in the highest repute, and due to these held
himself to be already superior to his contemporaries on account of
wisdom and had great hopes of surpassing everyone in being able
to speak and take action46.
45 Cf. Pl. Phd.
R. 3.
[…]”; Phdr 256E5-6: “[…]
46 X. Mem. 4.2.1 (M. Bandini (ed.), L.-A. Dorion (tr.), Xénophon. Mémorables. Tome II, 2e partie:
Livre IV, Paris 2011, 4.1-8); A.L. Bonnette (tr.), Xenophon. Memorabilia, with an Introduction by C.
Bruell, Ithaca-London 1994, 113. Cf. L. Strauss, , Ithaca-London 1972, 94-6;
98. Strauss’ distinction between Euthydemus’ possession and study of celebrated books (
Socrates
for granted, seems strange to me; Euthydemus is not depicted as boastful for his riches, including
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The content of the passage is evidently close both to I.559 and I.560. Euthydemus
is depicted as passing himself for “wise” because of having swallowed the rich
content of certain celebrated writings by poets and Sophists (presumably as an
attendant of certain Sophistic courses). “” clearly corresponds to “”
from I.560, v. 2, which denotes the subjective —in fact, naive— nature of one’s
ambition to surpass one’s citizens, which is doomed to frustration. Likewise,
“” corresponds to “” from I.559, v. 1 (supra, § 2.1). Both words refer to
the absurdly short time span one may optimistically assign oneself for actually
becoming “wise” (“ […] ”) and thereby superior to the others
in skills and life; “” refers to this before one’s getting involved in such an
education process, whereas “” refers to the time span of the education process
after its completion. As already seen (§ 2.1, n. 3), to (Plato’s) Socrates, one ought
to cultivate one’s mind as long as it takes; there is no standard time span for this,
because it all depends on the actual state of mind of each individual upon starting
thinking seriously about one’s own beliefs.
Protrepticus
How did it historically turn out that Cleanthes adapted Callicles’ words from
Plato’s Gorgias quoted above (§ 2.2.1) into a succinct exhortatio ad philosophiam?
The clue seems to be this fragment from Aristotle’s Protrepticus:
{11}
[16]
possession and use of wisdom, and wisdom is among the greatest
goods. Nor should one […] not work hard […] for the purpose of
prudence. Indeed, it would be servile […] to attend to the opinions
terms of one’s own opinions, and […] not to show any concern
whatsoever for things honest47.
lot — at least as much as one could consume as a reader in a non-advanced age.
47 Hutchinson and Johnson, Aristotle. Protrepticus
, 70 (No B53); V. Rose, Aristotelis qui ferebantur librorum fragmenta,
Leipzig 1896, fr. I.52, 62.7-16. In the phrases I omit, Aristotle contrasts striving for making fortune
(), which is quite common, to neglect for acquiring wisdom through education (); on
the contrast, see Ps.-Pl. Clit. (or Protrepticus) 407B1-C7 (parallel noted by Hutchinson and Johnson,
ibid
Roman Socrates in Cic. 5.1, where raising oneself above the vulgar opinions in one’s environment is
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As Cleanthes’ mentor, Zeno, had read Aristotle’s Protrepticus48 and Cleanthes
had written a work entitled 49, it is highly probable that the disciple
had read this Aristotelian work.
Besides the evident content similarity of this fragment from Aristotle’s
Protrepticus to the passage from Gorgias, the diction is very close, too.
Both passages explicitly speak of . He who does not philosophise
is called by Callicles , and Aristotle, by using a synonym,
calls lack of philosophical spirit “”50. Last, to Callicles, the
unphilosophic man is never to achieve anything good (“ […]
[…] ”), and Aristotle says that he who does not philosophise does
not strive for any good thing at all (“ […]
Plutarque. Vies. Tome XII: Démosthène – Cicéron, Paris 1976, 70; cf. G. Daux, Delphes
, Paris
1936, 592).
SVF I.611 (136.23-5), preserved
by Musonius Rufus. The point is not, of course, that pain is “good” per se, but that decisively taking
exhortation to the young people not to be afraid of the negative reactions of the un-philosophical
average man (I.559; see supra
Dissertationum a Lucio
digestarum reliquiaeYale Classical Studies
10, 1947, 34.24-33).
48 SVF I.273 (62.31-3). Cf. Hutchinson and Johnson, Aristotle. Protrepticus, 3; F.H. Sandbach,
Aristotle and the Stoics, Cambridge 1985, 13.
49 SVF I.481 (107.13); I.567 (129.22-3).
50 This could have derived from the Pythagorean tradition; Pythagoras is attested to have said
Diogenis Laertii Vitae
philosophorum. Vol. I: Libri I-X, Stuttgart-Leipzig 1999, 577; T. Dorandi, Diogenes Laertius. Lives
of Eminent Philosophers, Cambridge 2013, 605), provided that this dictum is genuine or, if spurious,
was produced by some of his followers prior to Aristotle’s Protrepticus. Possibly anachronistically
speaking, this dictum regards two of the three principal vices of the pars concupiscibilis, namely
Mem. 1.1.16; M. Bandini (ed.), L.-A. Dorion (tr.), Xénophon. Mémorables. Tome I:
Introduction générale; Livre I, Paris 2000, 7; cf. op. cit
Xénophon. Mémorables. Tome II, 2e partie, 12). And Plato
Phd. 69A9-C3).
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”). Thus, it is quite probable that Aristotle’s lines are
partly an adaptation of the passage from Plato’s Gorgias.
What is even more interesting is that Cleanthes had quite probably noticed
Aristotle’s use of Plato pointed out above. I.560 (see above, § 2.2) restores
Aristotle’s “” to Plato’s (Socratic via Callicles) (v. 2)
as well as Aristotle’s (in plural) to Plato’s () (in singular) (v. 2).
And in I.559, v. 2 (see above, § 2.1), Cleanthes uses the phrase (cf.
in I.560, v. 1), which, in the form , Aristotle (“
”) had clearly borrowed from the section from
Plato’s Crito quoted above (§ 2.1) (“”), thus de
facto suggesting Cleanthes to read it as exhortatory in tenor, too.
2.2.3. , Alias Virtues
Having unfolded all the (extant) sources of I.559 and I.56051, we can
elucidate the meaning of “” in I.560, v. 2. In Callicles’ speech,
“ […]
presumably in the sense of something remarkable in public life; besides, this
Republic, Bk. VI52.
Protrepticus, however, this phrase from the passage from Gorgias changed
to . This may not be irrelevant to the fact that, in several
Platonic dialogues, the persona of Socrates calls this or that cardinal virtue
“”53 and that, as already seen (§ 2.2), Cleanthes construes the presence
or absence of (depending on the presence or absence of ) in
that secures the existence of the remaining cardinal virtues54 in one’s soul. And
51 To be sure, a considerable number of pieces that fall under the literary genre of protreptic
have been lost (see a list in D. Markovich, Promoting a New Kind of Education: Greek and Roman
Philosophical Protreptic, Leiden 2021, 261-2); so, establishing links by comparing the extant items
to one another cannot result in reconstructing the whole picture. Yet, between Aristotle and Cleanthes,
no other protreptic piece is recorded, and the time span is quite short to let us plausibly assume that
some missing link interfered for the production of I.560.
52 Pl. R.
53 Pl. Chrm.Grg.
[…]”; La. 192D8-9: “[…] Phd.
vs. in R. 2.364A-B, to be discussed below (§ 3.1).
The general or cardinal virtues are opposed to what Chrysippus was to call or
(SVF III.386, 391, 445 and 463; 94.6-7, 108.40-43 and 115.27), which can be traced back to Pl. La.
191D (see, e.g., Pohlenz, La Stoa, 299 n. 14).
54 Incidentally, I.556 has been construed as combating Epicurus’ subordination of the cardinal
virtues to pleasure (Epicur. Sent. 5; Bailey, Epicurus, 94; Ep. ad Menoeceum 132.7-13; Bailey,
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is what one acquires by philosophizing, to which Socrates, Aristotle,
and Cleanthes exhorted people. This relates to the fragments to be discussed
in § 3, which are directly relevant to these virtues.
What happened to the social or even political dimension of the Platonic Callicles’
, which is the opposite to the qualities of the Platonic Socrates’
? Aristotle’s adaptation of the relevant phrase could be interpreted both as
pursuing noble activities which secure good reputation in society and as cultivating
the cardinal virtues for one’s own sake. After all, to Aristotle —whose ethics regards
societal life indispensable for happy life—, the latter is a prerequisite for one to
achieve good things for the sake of one’s city. Cleanthes, for his part, views this in a
personal perspective; cultivating is tantamount to acquiring and exerting virtue
vice, this is primarily, if not exclusively, so for the very person who exerts virtue. Of
personal relation to the virtues, taken as , in what the persona of Socrates argued
in certain Platonic works. To Socrates, observing the law is not dictated by the need
of sustaining the community and fostering its prosperity; it is dictated by the proper
What we learn from the analyses of these passages is that neither the longer
extract from Cleanthes’ unknown poem (i.e. I.557) nor its last two verses (rather
SVF as a separate item) have to do with
ethics. Both I.559 and I.560 stand as cases of closely and meticulously extracting
certain Socratic ideas from four passages from four Platonic writings and putting
these ideas into verses, in which Cleanthes reproduces Socrates’ exhortatio ad
philosophiam in the context of his elitism55. The former fragment clearly exhorts
people in principle to distrust all current beliefs, despite their integration into
the teaching curricula and, based on their own mind, determine what is worth
embracing and what not; whereas the latter depicts the same theme the other
way round, namely it deplores those who pay homage to current beliefs as
Epicurus
Marcovich, Diogenis, 801.14-15; Dorandi, Diogenes, 814; parallel noted by Watanabe, Cleanthes,
195). In view of Cleanthes’ knowledge of Plato’s Gorgias, the fragment would rather be taken as
combating Callicles’ celebrated ideal of licentiousness as reported in Grg. 491E6-492A3. Cf. the use
Republic quoted infra, § 3.1, where the thought of another
Chrysippus, SVF III.76 (19.27-33).
55 Apparently, the reason why H. von Arnim included I.560 to the moral section of his Cleanthes
part was that he did so with I.558, whose I.560 forms part, and which, because it enumerates the
features of “good”, he regarded as pertaining to ethics.
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lacking freedom and doomed to fail in their lives. I.559 was composed of the
vocabulary of two passages from Plato’s Crito and Lysis, where Socrates exhorts
his interlocutors to courageously discard the beliefs of the ignorant multitude,
pay attention to what the few wise persons have to say on this or that matter and
Theognis where “virtue” is described as possessed only by few. Even Cleanthes’
reference to one’s frivolous belief that current education can make one a wise man
occurs in a passage from Plato’s Republic, Bk. VI, where it is argued that the ideal
philosopher should not subject himself to the current knowledge. The diction
of I.560 clearly shows that the fragment is an elaboration of Callicles’ succinct
description of how Socrates exhorted young men to seriously engage themselves in
philosophy in Plato’s Gorgias. Further, its diction shows that Cleanthes had taken
into account Aristotle’s so far unnoticed elaboration of the same Platonic passage
in his Protrepticus. Finally, Cleanthes’ in both fragments is tantamount to
acting virtuously, which results from following in life. This, too, can
be clearly traced back to a small number of passages where the Platonic Socrates
describes the cardinal virtues (secured by ) as .
The two fragments (I.559 and I.560) examined in § 2 stand as cases of Cleanthes’
tacit reception of a salient element of Socrates’ thought. I.558 stands as the only extant
case of Cleanthes’ explicit reception of Socrates. In I.560, it is the quite rare use of
that mainly betrays Cleanthes’ source (see above, § 2.2.1). In I.558, the key
in this direction seems to be the phrase “”.
The phrase suggests that what Cleanthes reports about Socrates occurred repeatedly in
his sources, which indicates that one should trace this back to Plato’s Socratic dialogues
and Xenophon’s reports about Socrates, or, perhaps, that Cleanthes reproduced some
source which reported that Socrates taught the view at stake repeatedly:
[2]
{3} [5]
{8} [6]
[11a-b] [8].
[…] Cleanthes, in Book II of his On Pleasure, says that Socrates time
and again taught that the just man and the happy are one and the same,
as having done an impious thing. For, those are in truth impious who
separate the useful from that which is right according to the moral law56.
56 Clem. Al. Strom. 2.22.131.3 (Stählin et al., ClemensThe Anti-
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N. Festa, appealing to SVF
inteso con riferimento alla legge naturale, identica al , alla ratio recta
summi Jovis”57. Yet, the set of fragments he refers to consists of testimonies about
Chrysippus (c. 280-207 BC), not about Cleanthes (or even Zeno). Further, no
verbal similarities of I.558 to those fragments are found. An exception is SVF
III.32358, where occurs: “[…]
”; still, the meaning of the passage is partly irrelevant and partly
contrary (on account of its repudiation of positive law) to what Socrates says.
As will be seen, what Cleanthes (rightly) ascribes to Socrates is the idea that
one ought to obey the laws of one’s city and that the implementation of this duty
should not be compromised for the sake of what one might construe as personal
interest, however plausible defending one’s own interests may seem to be,
especially in certain circumstances. What Chrysippus, for his part, discusses is
not the relation of the individual with the city one lives in, but the relation of the
various positive law systems, which vary according to place, time, and peoples,
with the natural law, which ideally ought to be enacted in the universal city,
i.e. across humans all over the globe. Strictly speaking, Chrysippus’ point goes
against what Socrates says; although they both appeal to a higher, objective moral
criterion for regulating one’s life and judging one’s acts regardless of current
criticizes the variety of local positive laws as additions to the only truly valid law
(i.e. natural law), which cause an undesirable tension between man as a citizen
of the world and man as a citizen of this or that state59. Admittedly, both Socrates
and Chrysippus ascribe the deviation of the part (i.e. of the individual and the
particular city respectively) from the whole (i.e. the city and the natural or world-
city respectively) to the moral defects of the former (avarice etc.); this, however,
does not cancel the fact that the very topic each of them discusses is not the same.
In the direction of detecting the actual sources and meaning of I.558, there follow
hopefully all the passages from the extant writings prior to Cleanthes in which the
Nicene Fathers. Volume 2
sources, i.e. Pl. R. 364A-B, is echoed in Plu. Mor.
[…]” (F. Fuhrmann, Plutarque. Œuvres morales.
Tome IX. Deuxième partie: Propos de Table: Livres IV-VI, Paris 1978, 19; cf. G. Giannantoni,
Socratis et Socraticorum reliquiae, vol. I, Napoli 1990, 178-9, Nos I C 480-2; Clement’s report
cannot be traced back to Plutarch’s). The editor remarks that “cette imprecation était rapportée par
Cléanthe” (Fuhrmann, Plutarque, 130). Yet, as will be seen in this paragraph, I.558 can be traced
back to a group of passages from Plato’s œuvre; therefore, it does not stand as an independent source
about Socrates or the Socratic tradition.
57 N. Festa, I frammenti degli Stoici antichi, ordinati, tradotti e annotati. II: Aristone – Apollofane
, Bari 1935, 171.
58 SVF III, 80.9. Cf. SVF III.324 (80.17-19).
59 SVF III.323 (80.11-13); cf., inter alia, R. Bees, Zenons Politeia, Leiden-Boston 2011, 93-4.
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in detail. In a nutshell, from the textual point of view, {3}, {4} and [5] occur only in
passage (i), [7] occurs only in passage (vii), and the exact form of [10] as well as the
exact form of [11] occur only in passage (iv). [6], opposed to [9], occurs in passages
(i), (ii), (iii), (v) and (vii). This, in combination with the fact that passages (i), (iv) and
passages (i) and (vii). Last, {8} corresponds only to a couple of phrases from passage
(iii), which thereby should be included to the sources of I.558.
Let us amplify this both from the textual and doctrinal point of view, duly
beginning with a passage already noticed by scholarship as Cleanthes’ source.
Memorabilia, 4.4 as parallel to I.55860. I expand her reference to paragraphs 4
sqq. to Ch. 4 in its entirety, so as to include two crucial phrases from paragraph 1
—that is “”, which announces the very topic of discussion61, and
“”, which accounts for Cleanthes’ “”— as well as comprise
Socrates’ description of laws as “divine” in origin, which accounts for Cleanthes’
report that, according to Socrates, transgressing civic law is “an impious act”:
(i) X. Mem. 4.4:
(Socrates)
[…]
- “[2], {3a} {4}
” {3b};
{3a} {4},62 {3b} […]. […] {4}
{8 e contrario} {4}, [2],
60 M. Isnardi Parente, Stoici antichi, Torino 1989, II, 223 n. 37.
61 Cf. X. Mem. 4.4.7 (Bandini and Dorion, Xénophon. Mémorables. II, 2e partie, 29.1).
62 Prima facie
putting this explicitly, Socrates is improving Hippias’ description of the stability of mind of his
have been talking about, unlike you, who still add things to what you hold about moral issues such
as justice’. Cf. the very similar point he makes in his discussion with Euthydemus: “Socr.
Euth.
Mem. 4.2.21; Bandini and Dorion, Xénophon. Mémorables. II, 2e partie, 12.16-22).
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[6]
- “
[11b e contrario
[11
e contrario] [6 e contrario]”.
[3a] {4}
{10 e contrario
{10 e
contrario
Furthermore, he [sc. Socrates] did not hide the judgment he had
concerning justice at any rate […]. And while he often spoke in this
manner with others too, I know that he once also had a conversation
of the following sort about justice with Hippias the Elean […]. And
[…] Hippias said […]:
- “Are you, Socrates, still saying the same things that I myself once
heard from you a long time ago?”
And Socrates said,
- “And what is even more terrible than this, Hippias — I not only say
always the same things but even say them about the same things.
[…] For I say that the lawful is just.”
“Are you saying, Socrates, that the same thing is both lawful and just?”
- “I am, for my part,” he said. […]
- “If so, then I do not perceive what sort of thing you are saying is
lawful and what sort is just.”
- “Do you know the laws of a city?”, he said.
- “I certainly do,” he said.
- “The one, then,” he said, “who partakes of political life according to
these is lawful, and one who transgresses them is lawless […]. Then
the lawful one is just, and the lawless one is unjust.” […]
- “For my part, then, Hippias, I show the same thing to be both lawful
and just […]”.
- “I, for my part,’ he said, “think that gods set down these laws for
held as law is to revere gods”63.
63 Bandini and Dorion, Xénophon. Mémorables. II, 2e partie, 26.17-36.7; tr. Bonnette, Xenophon.
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Evidently, Socrates’ point as reported by Xenophon is particularly close to
what Cleanthes attributes to Socrates. In addition, Xenophon’s “” clearly
lurks behind Cleanthes’ “”.
Further, how is Cleanthes’ diction as regards the opposite of or
, that is , to be accounted for? Taking Cleanthes’
explicit attribution of the idea he talks about to Socrates in its literal meaning
and looking for formulations of the idea in the corpus Platonicum (in most of
whose dialogues Socrates is the main interlocutor), the following crop of passages
emerges, where Sophistic conventionalism and relativism in social ethics and
political philosophy are reported and combated:
(ii) Pl. Tht.
[6 e contrario {10 e contrario},
[9 e contrario
[6 e contrario {10 e contrario},
homo mensura
Socr. Then consider political questions. Some of these are questions
is sanctioned by religion and what is not; and here the theory may
be prepared to maintain that whatever view a city takes on these
matters and establishes as its law or convention, is truth and fact
for that city […]. But when it is a question of laying down what is
The theory will again admit that here, if anywhere, one counsellor
is better than another; here the decision of one city may be more in
conformity with the truth than that of another. It will certainly have
thing is to its own interest, that thing will undoubtedly turn to be to
its interest. It is in those other questions I am talking about —just
and unjust, religious and unreligious— that men are ready to insist
Memorabilia, 128-33 (slightly changed so as to accord with the text as established by Bandini).
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that no one of these things has by nature any being of its own; in
respect of these, they say, what seems to people collectively to be
so is true, at the time when it seems that way and for just as long as
it so seems. And even those who are not prepared to go all the way
with Protagoras take some such view of wisdom64.
(iii) Ps.-Pl. Alc. I 113D1-E2; 116D3; 116E1:
[5
e contrario
, {8 e contrario}
{9} [6 e
contrario [6 e contrario
[9].
{8a}
{8b}
[…]
[9] {8
e contrario}.
[…]
[2] […] {8 e contrario
[9] […].
Alc. I think, Socrates, that the Athenians and the rest of the Greeks
rarely deliberate as to which is the more just or unjust course: for
they regard questions of this sort as obvious; and so they pass them
over and consider which course will prove more expedient in the
result. For the just and the expedient, I take it, are not the same,
committed, whilst others, I imagine, have had no advantage from
doing what was right.
Socr. What then? Granting that the just and the expedient are in fact
what is expedient for mankind, and why it is so? […]
Socr. Hence just things, Alcibiades, are expedient. […]
Socr. […] Just and expedient are the same […]65.
Passage (iii) looks like a re-elaboration of passage (ii). It says that the members
of this or that city, regardless of what they regard just, in a more or less unanimous
64 Tr. Burneyat, The Theaetetus, 299.
65 Tr. Lamb, Plato. XII, 135-7; 148.
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explicitly connected to Protagoras’ relativism66.
Furthermore, we have to account for Cleanthes’ description of immorally
equating justice to personal interest as “impiety”67. occurs in the
same context in a passage from Plato’s Laws which is close to passage (ii) (from
Theaetetus) and refutes some Sophists’ relativization of theological beliefs, which
was based on their being held “by convention” (“”):
(iv) Pl. Lg.
68[6], {9}
66 vs. holds pride of place in the celebrated Sophistic in spirit discussion
(; 5.84.3) between Athenians attacking and Melians defending as reported (in fact,
[3 e contrario]
{5 e contrario [3 e contrario
in Republic
364A), [4]
H.S. Jones, J.E. Powell, Thucydidis Historiae. Tomus posterior
the salient words does not imply that the passage was one of Cleanthes’ sources; it simply aims at
facilitating the reader to discern the similarities and see that Cleanthes did not use it.
67 F. Alesse (La Stoa e la tradizione socratica
Crito 51A2-C3 and Aeschines of
Sphettus’ report of Alcibiades’ celebrated impiety (Alcibiades, fr. 5; H. Dittmar, Aeschines von
Sphettos. Studien zur Literaturgeschichte der Sokratiker. Untersuchungen und Fragmente, Berlin
1912, 267). In fact, Cleanthes’ true sources are those pointed out in this paragraph.
68 The phrase is clearly an adaptation of Pl. R.
Emlyn-Jones, W. Preddy, Plato. Republic. Volume I: Books 1-5, Cambridge, MA-London 2013, 143),
or —which is the same— “kind of language about justice and injustice employed by both laymen and
poets” (tr. P. Shorey, Plato. The Republic, Cambridge, MA-London 21937, 131). In LSJ
III), the meaning of the word in the Republic passage is rendered as “ordinary private conversation”
poetry is the former’s prose style or its very privacy. The adaptation of 363E in the Laws sheds light
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[11a-b]”.
Ath.
about the gods is that they exist by art and not by nature,—by certain
each tribe agreed when forming their laws. They assert, moreover,
that there is one class of things beautiful by nature, and another
class beautiful by convention; while as to things just, they do
not exist at all by nature, but men are constantly in dispute about
them and continually altering them, and whatever alteration they
make at any time is at that time authoritative, though it owes its
existence to art and the laws, and not in any way to nature. All
these, my friends, are views which young people imbibe from men
of science, both private teachers and poets, who maintain that the
height of justice is to succeed by force; whence it comes that the
gods were not such as the law commands us to conceive them;
and, because of this, factions also arise, when these teachers
which consists in being master over the rest in reality, instead of
being a slave to others according to legal convention”69.
Yet another passage quite close to Cleanthes’, which is quite known as a
testimony to Protagoras’ relativism, reads in Plato’s Laws:
Laws
to and are called . Therefore, cannot refer to ordinary people. So, it can
but refer to those who, unlike poets, whose speech is public —presumably in the sense that their
products in principle address, and eventually are accessible to, everybody, e.g. by means of public
performance in the feasts of the city—, “speak” (), in the sense of producing authoritative
translation accordingly. (Incidentally, Bury rendered as prose-authors, presumably on account
of its contradistinction to . Even if it happens that has this meaning in some text I am
unaware of, the passage from the Laws where the passage from the Republic is adapted safely reveals
the meaning of the word.) Regardless, from the philosophical point of view, according to Plato in the
Republic (see supra, § 2.1), the Sophists simply integrated into their curriculum and handbooks the
Lg. 12.964C4-5:
supra, § 2.2.1. On as equivalent to , cf. the
Republic 6 quoted above.
69 Tr. Bury, Plato. Laws. II, 315. In the passage from Thucydides, too, quoted above (n. 66)
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(v) Pl. Lg. 4.716C1-D4:
[12] [10 e
contrario
70
[10 e contrario
[13 e contrario
[6 e contrario
Ath.: What conduct, then, is dear to God and in his steps?
[…] In our eyes God will be “the measure of all things” in the
highest degree — a degree much higher than is any “man” they
talk of. He, then, that is to become dear to such an one must
needs become, so far as he possibly can, of a like character;
and, according to the present argument, he amongst us. that is
temperate is dear to God, since he is like him, while he that is not
temperate is unlike and at enmity,—as is also he who is unjust,
and so likewise with the rest, by parity of reasoning71.
going against the morality prescribed by gods, and argues for identifying pious,
just and wise behaviour. To be sure, the persona of the “Athenian” in the Laws
is not Socrates; so, one can prima facie doubt that Cleanthes could take it as an
what is just. Yet, passage (v) formed the basis for the following passage from
Alcibiades I, where it is the persona of Socrates that presents justice and piety as
the “Athenian” said to what (Ps.-Plato’s) Socrates had said:
(vi) Ps.-Pl., Alc. I 134D1-2 and E4-5:
[2] […]
{10 e contrario} [12]. […]
{10 e contra
[12]. […] [6 e contrario
70 See Diels and Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Zweiter Band, 425.16. Cf. next
footnote.
71 Tr. R.G. Bury, Plato. Laws. I, Cambridge, MA-London 1926, 295-7. Bury (Plato. Laws. I, 295
n. 2) mentions Pl. Cra. 386A-B and Tht. 152A as passages parallel to the reference to Protagoras’
relativism in the Laws.
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Socr.: For you and the state, if you act justly and temperately, will
act so as to please God. […] And […] you will act with your eyes
turned on what is divine and bright. […] But if you act unjustly,
with your eyes on the godless and dark […]72.
“ ” clearly derives from “ ”
and “” (to god). Likewise, “
“”. It seems therefore that Cleanthes could construe passage (v)
persona says is evidently
consonant with what Xenophon reports about what Socrates held in passage
(i). And what Cleanthes probably drew upon the passage from the Laws is
the word and its silent but easily recognisable application to those
means boastfully introducing oneself as allegedly standing above what the
humble human condition, with its limited powers and rights, truly allows73
and establishing some sort of morality accounted for only in terms of one’s
own thought.
Last, we have to account for Cleanthes’ “”. Another Platonic passage,
which reports the Sophistic separation of justice from happiness and whose diction
crosses with certain of the above passages, adequately accounts for this:
(vii) Pl. R. 2.364A1-B2:
72 Tr. Lamb, Plato. XII
synekphorae, as it were, in the following 5th- and 4th-c. BC texts, too: Pl. Grg. 481A4-5: “[…]
[…]”;
”; Antiphon, 2.2.13: “[…]
Antiphontis et Andocidis Orationes,
Oxford 2018, 23.13). See also in Gorgias’ fr. 11a D-K, in E. Ba. 995 and 1015, Hel.
1148 and HFs 433 as well as in Ar. Th. 671. None of them exhibits any close similarities to SVF I.558.
73 Cf. Pl. Lg
De posteritate Caini
Philonis Alexandrini opera, II, Berlin 1897, 8.25-9.1).
R. Nickel (Stoa und Stoiker. Griechisch-lateinisch-deutsch. Auswahl der Fragmente und Zeugnisse,
Übersetzung und Erläuterungen. Band II, Düsseldorf 2008, 965), commenting on Panaetius’ fr. 62
(M. van Straaten, Panaetii Rhodii fragmenta, Leiden 1952, 18.1-11; cf. F. Alesse, Panezio di Rodi.
Testimonianze. Edizione, traduzione e commento, Napoli 1997, 55, No 105), plausibly traces it back
to Cleanthes’ SVF I.558. In view of the fact that Cleanthes’ reference to Socrates can be traced back
to the Platonic persona of Socrates, Nickel’s description of it as “Sokrates-Anekdote” should be
revised.
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{12 e contrario {5 e contrario}
[6] {6 e contrario
but hard and laborious, while licentiousness and injustice are pleasant,
easily acquired and regarded as shameful only by common repute.
just, and they readily call the wicked happy and honor them in public
and in private, provided that they are wealthy or have other resources.
Whereas those who are in any way weak and poor they dishonor and
despise, even while admitting that they are better than the others74.
At this point of the dialogue, the persona of Adimantus reports part of what
Thrasymachus (459 – late 5th c. BC) had said about justice. Cleanthes’ explicit
(true or apparent) position that these are two clearly distinct, if not opposing, things.
Likewise, regarding injustice merely as “ ” clearly corresponds to
Cleanthes’ ; at this phrase, passages (i) and (vii) cross75.
Further, the very title of Cleanthes’ lost work to which I.558 belongs, that is
reported that injustice serves pleasure and thereby happiness.
reported to attribute the view that it is injustice (and the remaining vices) rather
than justice (and the remaining virtues) that serve happiness to private teachers
and certain poets (“”76), namely, in this or
that form, to current beliefs. As has already been seen (§ 2.1), Cleanthes, like
Socrates, regarded current beliefs () wrong (or, in the best case, right only
by coincidence, i.e. right in an unfounded way), and, as is already known77 (and
will be further demonstrated in § 4), Cleanthes regarded not only ordinary views
but also poetic “wisdom” as standing in need of corrections.
74 Tr. Emlyn-Jones and Preddy, Plato. Republic, I, 143.
75 Socrates, in execrating the earliest thinker who separated the just from the useful, does not
seem to refer to the oldest Sophist who did so (who seems to have been Protagoras); he rather referred
76supra, n. 68.
77 On poetry as a partial deformation of ancient wisdom according to the founders of Stoicism
(deformation calling partly for allegoric interpretation and partly for emendation), see, e.g., Tieleman,
Galen and Chrysippus, 220-8.
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Two more Platonic passages express the same point with roughly the same diction:
(viii) Pl. R. 3.392C3-4:
[…] when we have discovered the nature of justice and the proof
78.
Passage (viii) does not shed any further light on Cleanthes’ lines. The following
one, however, does so. In Lg 2.660E2-663D5, the Athenian interlocutor argues
that, unlike what most people (
with apparent goods (such as health, beauty, wealth and power) and pleasant life
but with practising justice and conducting a virtuous life in general. In the course
of the Athenian’s argument against taking pleasure as the goal of life, a large
amount of Cleanthes’ vocabulary occurs:
(ix) Pl. Lg. 2.661E7-663D5:
[6 e contrario
[1 e contrario
[9 e contrario
[6]
{9},
{8b} […].
{8a} [6]
[6]
[8]
78 Tr. Shorey, Plato. The Republic. I, 225.
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[8 e contrario
[6 e contrario
[6 e contrario [1],
[6] [1 e contrario
[6 e contrario
{10}
Ath. Do you not think that if a man who is courageous, strong,
beautiful, and rich, and who does exactly as he likes all his life
long, is really unjust and insolent, he must necessarily be living a
Ath. And also a bad life? […]
Ath.
Ath. […] You oblige the poets to teach that the good man, since he
is temperate and just, is happy […].
[…] I should impose all but the heaviest of penalties on anyone
in the land who should declare that any wicked men lead pleasant
just […].
which the one is most pleasant, the other most just?’, If they replied
the two ought one to describe as the happier, those that live the most
that live the most pleasant life,’ that would be a monstrous statement
in their mouths. […] But if, on the other hand, he were to declare the
most just life to be the happiest, everyone who heard him would, I
suppose, enquire what is the good and charm it contains which is
superior to pleasure, and for which the lawgiver praises it. For, apart
from pleasure, what good could accrue to a just man?
So then the teaching which refuses to separate the pleasant from
the just helps, if nothing else, to induce a man to live the holy and
just life […]. […] Their notions of justice and injustice are illusory
pictures, unjust objects appearing pleasant and just objects most
unpleasant to him who is opposed to justice, through being viewed
from his own unjust and evil standpoint, but when seen from the
standpoint of justice, both of them appear in all ways entirely the
opposite. […] Undoubtedly, then, the unjust life is not only more
base and ignoble, but also in very truth more unpleasant, than the
just and holy life79.
79 Tr. Bury, Plato. The Laws. I
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does not occur in any of the passages from Xenophon and Plato
quoted above; applied to the just vs. unjust life, it occurs only in passage
(ix). This establishes dependence. Moreover, the central place of in
passage (ix) —which occurs in passage (vii), too (from the Republic, Bk.
II)— explains why the issue of sharply distinguishing between justice (
) and profit () —the latter popularly but wrongly taken as
equivalent to — was discussed by Cleanthes in a writing of his entitled
. How did Cleanthes take what the persona of the “Athenian”
argued for in the Laws as what Socrates held on the issue? He did so in the
same way as already seen above: if we assume, on the basis of his meticulous
exploitation of the passages from the corpus Platonicum quoted in this
paragraph, that Cleanthes had noticed the dependence of the (Ps.-) Platonic
Socrates in Alcibiades I on Laws, conflating the Athenian with Socrates was
in principle quite reasonable for him. After all, what the Athenian argues for
in Laws II, 660E2-663D5 is objectively quite close to what both the Platonic
Socrates and the Ps.-Platonic one (directly depending, as seen, on the
Platonic) argued in passages (i)-(viii), both regarding doctrine and diction.
Whom did Cleanthes oppose when rejecting pleasure as the essence of
happiness? SVF I.556 (126.32-4) reads: “
”80 (“If the
end or purpose of our lives consists in pleasure, then it is in vain that man
has been bestowed with prudence”). A.T. Watanabe81 suggested that this
argument “is directed against the Epicureans”, namely that Cleanthes combats
the Epicureans’ subordination of the cardinal virtues to the moral ideal of
“pleasure”82. In view of Cleanthes’ quite probable knowledge of Plato’s
Gorgias (see supra, § 2.2.1), the fragment would rather be taken as combating
Callicles’ exposition of licentiousness as the only true moral ideal83. So, if
it can be plausibly surmised that Cleanthes combated a philosophical trend
of his time, Watanabe’s opinion looks probable; still, if so, Cleanthes, as his
diction shows, formulated his moral anti-Epicureanism in anti-Sophistic and
Socratic terms. Indeed, I.556 implies that, to Cleanthes, enjoys
moral autonomy and it is because of its presence or absence that desire and
80 On pleasant feelings as by far inferior to virtue, cf. Chrysippus, SVF III.76 (19.27-33).
81 Watanabe, Cleanthes, 195.
82 Epicur. Sent. 5 (Bailey, Epicurus, 1926, 94); Ep. ad Menoeceum 132.7-13 (Bailey, op. cit., 90).
Diogenis,
801.14-15; Dorandi, Diogenes, 814; parallel noted by Watanabe, ibid.).
83 Pl. Grg.
Republic 2 quoted supra
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of to all the things that are commonly regarded “good”, including
pleasure, in several passages from the corpus Platonicum, some of which have
already been paralleled to I.55684.
In point of fact, it was quite reasonable for Cleanthes to do so. By combating
the Epicureans through Socratic morality, Cleanthes implied two things:
(i) That the Epicureans were fundamentally wrong in being the only
85.
It was shortly before, or roughly during, the time of Cleanthes’ philosophical
activity that one of Epicurus’ disciples, Colotes of Lampsacus (born probably in
320 BC), wrote and 86,
making Socrates his main target. To be sure, Colotes focused on the Socratic
method, which, as he argued, fatally opened the way for Scepticism87. Still,
84 Pl. Euthd.
Kleanthes van Assos, 215 n. 3); Men. 88C4-
SVF I.556 by Grumach, Physis und Agathon, 28 n. 1, who
has also pointed out Ly. 216D at 22 n. 1); Cra.
Lg. 4.705D2-706A4. Besides and , are
traceable back to the above Platonic passages. Further, the idea occurs, in a way particularly close to
the passage from Plato’s Euthydemus quoted above, in fr. 2-4 (according to Düring’s numbering in
his , 46-8) from Aristotle’s Protrepticus
Aristotle. Protrepticus, 6-7). As seen
(§ 2.2.2), Cleanthes had exploited this work.
85 See the recent survey by F. Javier Campos-Daroca, “Epicurus and the Epicureans on
Socrates and the Socratics”, in C. Moore, ed., ,
Leiden 2019, 237-65.
86 See Campos-Daroca, “Epicurus”, 246-8; T. Dorandi, “Colotes de Lampsaque”, in R. Goulet,
ed., Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques, III, Paris 1994, 448-50, at 449.
87 See E. Kechagia, Plutarch Against Colotes. A Lesson in History of Philosophy, Oxford
2011, 55-65.
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Colotes regarded Socrates’ method detrimental for ethical issues, too; for
instance, the fact that Lysis “ultimately leaves the reader in aporia with respect
to a crucial ethical matter”, i.e. friendship, was presumably a good reason
for Colotes to criticize Socrates’ way of investigation into the matter in the
dialogue88. In general, for Colotes, Socrates’ “sophistical” and “importune”
way of investigation of all ethical matters was inconclusive and thereby could
but lead one’s life to nowhere89.
Anti-Epicurean seems to be Cleanthes’ rehabilitation of Socrates’ law-
abide prescription, too. Epicurus, in a letter of his, addressing the question
“ ”
(“whether the sage who knows that he will not be found out will do certain
things that the laws forbid”), put in principle the “wise man” above the
restrictions of civic law: “ […]”; “not
to live in servitude to laws and men’s opinions […]”)90. Epicurus’ reply
marked sharp contrast to Socrates’ firm decision not to escape from prison
and die according to his city’s verdict.
(ii) Apart from aiming at restoring Socrates’ image as a respectable philosophical
as the “end” of life to the indecent morality of Sophists of the Callicles- and
Thrasymachus-type as known via Plato’s works.
it is evident that Socrates’ ethics, however one may reconstruct it, was far away
from the Epicureans’ ethical teachings.
3.2. I.561)
Yet another case of reception of Socrates’ ethics is I.561, which reads:
[1] {1} [3] {3}.
It is better for one to be mentioned in a way insulting for himself
than to insult others.
M. Isnardi Parente has plausibly noted that this is “ricalcato probabilmente
sul socratico (Cri. 49b segg., e altrove)”91. More
accurately, this Socratic maxim occurs in Gorgias:
88 Kechagia, Plutarch, 62.
89 Kechagia, Plutarch, 109; 111-15; 125-6.
90 Plu. Mor. 34.1127D5-7 (B. Einarson, P.H. De Lacy, Plutarch. Moralia. Volume XIV: That
Epicurus Actually Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible. Reply to Colotes in Defence of the Other
Philosophers. Is “Live Unknown” a Wise Precept? On Music, Cambridge, MA-London 1967, 164).
Cf. G. Arrighetti, Epicuro. Opere, Torino 19732, 164 (fr. 11.1).
91 Isnardi Parente, Stoici, 229 n. 108. Cf. Festa, I frammenti, 88; Alesse, La Stoa, 161.
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(i) Pl. Grg. 469C2; 473A5; 475C8-9:
{1} {2 e contrario
{3} {2 e contrario {1}.
is worse than being wronged. […] Doing wrong is fouler than
92.
Indeed, in the section from Crito
the source of the meaning as well as part of the diction of what Cleanthes says:
(ii) Pl. Cri. 50E10-51A1:
[3] {3} […].
[…] Nor answering them back if you were reviled […]93.
And it can hardly be coincidental that this moral exhortation belongs to the
section which, as already shown (§ 2.1), is the main source of Cleanthes’ I.559.
Further, as the exclusive diction similarity suggests, Cleanthes quite probably
combined the above Platonic passage with the following version of one of the
moral maxims attributed to Pittacus:
(iii) Pittacus, fr. 7:
Speak no ill of a friend, nor even of an enemy94.
92 Tr. Lamb, Plato. IIIop. cit. 509B1-2 and C6-7. See
SVFSVF III.328 (81.3-9).
93 Tr. Fowler (Plato in Twelve Volumes. I Grg. 482D83-E5
94 Apud D.L. 1.78 (Marcovich, Diogenis, 54.6-7; Dorandi, Diogenes Laertius, 114); tr. R.D.
Hicks, Diogenes Laertius. Lives of Emiment Philosophers, I, Cambridge, MA-London 1925, 79.
On the versions of the dictum, see M. Tziatzi-Papagianni, Die Sprüche der sieben Weisen. Zwei
byzantinische Sammlungen, Stuttgart-Leipzig 1994, 213 (No 7).
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As for “”, it can be accounted for in terms of its being the exact
contrary to (both grammatically and as regards its content) in the passages
from Plato’s Gorgias just quoted, where Socrates argued that wrongdoing is worse
than being treated unjustly.
Socrates was well aware that what he argued for went against how most people
thought95. Cleanthes, as his borrowing from a passage from Plato’s Crito shown above
suggests (§ 2.1), was aware of this, too. Further, it was quite natural for Cleanthes to
think so, as he believed that (true) philosophers do say things that sound strange (see
above, § 2.1), which is in tune with what Socrates, both as a thinker and as Plato’s
persona, time and again held about the opinions of the vulgus.
From the above the following picture emerges. In I.558, Cleanthes, in the context
of his argument that what happiness consists in is not “pleasure” but “virtue”, used
Xenophon’s report of Socrates’ discussion with Hippias of Elis on the moral status of
law-abiding attitude as his basic source96. Then, Cleanthes, taking —not implausibly—
own account several doctrinal and diction elements from almost all of the passages
from the corpus Platonicum where Socrates is reported to have propounded this
argument. In so doing, Cleanthes consciously took sides with Socrates against the
relativist Sophistic description of justice as human invention and subscribed to
Socrates’ idea that respecting civic law is a moral precept divine in origin, i.e. superior
to this or that individual’s morality. Presumably, Cleanthes, by arguing that observing
the law is morally imperative, did not argue that laws are right in all of their aspects
and details — which, after all, would be highly questionable in view of the obvious
defects and the very variety of the innumerable law prescriptions and prohibitions
even within a single city or state. Rather, what he had in mind was that, as a rule,
transgressing legislation is triggered by excessive wishes or anger, i.e. by passions,
which arise from the widely accepted but nevertheless erred, un-philosophical beliefs
about the nature of good and happiness. As for which passages — besides the basic
one, i.e. that from Xenophon’s Memorabilia— he relied upon in order to produce
his praiseful reference to what Socrates held on the issue, out of the nine relevant
ones in the corpus Platonicum he picked up diction elements from those occurring in
Republic, Bk. 2 and Alcibiades I as well as in Laws, Bks. 2 and 10. As for passages
(v) and (vi), as seen, the Ps.-Platonic one was based on the genuine one; so, Cleanthes
could take them as in fact saying one and the same thing. Further, passages (v), (vi)
95 Pl. Cri.
96 Given that Zeno of Citium, upon reaching Piraeus before arriving at Athens, had been
impressed by Bk. 2 of the Memorabilia (see SVF I.1, 3.20-2; cf., inter alia, M. Erler, “Stoic Oikeiosis
and Xenophon’s Socrates”, in T. Scaltsas, A.S. Mason, eds., Zeno of Citum and Its Legacy: The
Philosophy of Zeno, Larnaca 2002, 242–57, at 241-2), it is plausible to assume that Cleanthes was
exhorted by his mentor to read this work (or parts of, or excerpts from, it).
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and (viii) have actually nothing to add to the items exploited by Cleanthes; so, he
simply did not integrate anything from them to his own few lines on the issue. As for
I.561, it is, yet once more, a calque from Socrates’ argument against insulting (taken as
a sort of wrongdoing) in Plato’s Crito and Gorgias, probably embellished with some
wording from a similar moral precept by Pittacus.
I.562)
The Cleanthean fragments examined in § 2 and 3 are Socratic in provenance;
I.562 is not. Nevertheless, it is relevant to them, not simply because it belongs
it relates to the concept of from I.559, which has already been discussed
(see above, § 2.1). It reads:
[…] “
97.
This, according to Plutarch, who preserved it, is a paradiorthosis on E. El. 427-9:
[…] I behold that money has great power, for giving to guests, for
giving to save a body fallen into illness98.
Cleanthes replaces just a couple of words99. Firstly, he ironically substitutes
“” for “” (one of its subalternatives)100. It is not impossible that
97 Tr. F.C. Babbitt, Plutarch. Moralia. With an English Translation. Volume I: The Education of
Children. How the Young Man Should Study Poetry. On Listening to Lectures. How to Tell a Flatterer
from a Friend. How a Man May Become Aware of His Progress in Virtue, Cambridge, MA-London
98 M.J. Cropp, Euripides. Electra
probable that Cleanthes had read, in full or in part or via some anthology, Sophocles’ Electra, too;
for, it is only on its v. 1385 (P.J. Finglass, Sophocles. Electra, Cambridge 2010, 81) that, in the entire
TLG, the rare word , applied in Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus (see passage supra, § 2.1) to the
passionate glory-seekers, is found.
99 He probably did so by simply crossing them out on his copy of Euripides’ work (or
passage) and writing down his own replacements in the margins; see N. Georgantzoglou,
Mnemosyne 56, 2003, 728-32.
100 Cf. E., El.Euripides. Electra, 28).
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in the copy with the Euripidean tragedy (or with the Euripidean passage) which
he used, the variant occurred. However, because is the meaning
of the base version of (in feminine), it is quite probable that his copy
read “”, which presumably triggered his tart humour. This is, for instance,
answered Socrates’ question about how she earned her livelihood, as reported
generous, that’s my livelihood’”)101.
Still, the relevant chapter from Xenophon’s Memorabilia cannot account
herself to anybody as a typical prostitute102, for she selects her friends, but
mainly because Socrates is presented as trying to help Theodote become a
better (whatever this may mean) hunter of “friends”103, not prevent her rich
and enslaved to lust visitors from becoming her “friends”. In the extant
literature prior to Cleanthes, the phrase occurs only once, in
one of Alcaeus’ fragments:
/ ⸏
⸏
What one gives to a prostitute might as well be thrown into the
waves of the grey sea. (If anyone) does not know this, (it is in my
power) to persuade him: if a man keeps company with prostitutes,
these things happen to him: he must inevitably after the business
the extreme of misery … soul … (weeps?) with tears; but she (?)
… to weep (?)… another (man?) … whoever … the cold wave (of
Hades carries?)104.
101 X., Mem. 3.11.4 (Bandini and Dorion, Xénophon. Mémorables. Tome II, 1e partie: Livres II-
III, 101.15-17; E.C. Marchant (tr.) and O.J. Todd (tr.), J. Henderson (rev.), Xenophon. Memorabilia.
Oeconomicus. Symposium. Apology. Cambridge, MA-London 20132
Socrates’ reformulation of her reply: “[…] op. cit. 3.11.5; Bandini
and Dorion, op. cit., 101.19).
102 See Strauss, , 87.
103 Strauss, , 85-9.
104 Alc., fr. 117b, ll. 26-39 (E.-V. Voigt, Sappho et Alcaeus. Fragmenta, Amsterdam 1971, 224;
D.A. Campbell, Greek Lyric. I: Sappho and Alcaeus, Cambridge, MA-London 19902, 289-91).
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Despite the badly fragmentary state of the text, it is clear that the poet’s
point is that spending for having sex does not contribute to happiness but
results in misery, or, perhaps, is simply part of a miserable life. And, in the
last lines, there is probably a reference to death. Likewise, the latter half of
Cleanthes’ paradiorthosis refers to one’s death: Cleanthes replaces
(i.e. to intervene so as to restore something damaged or injured to its previous,
integer state) with its opposite, (i.e. to intervene so as to dispatch
something damaged or injured)105.
Secondly, , which Cleanthes chose among a variety of words with
roughly the same meaning, might be meant to be an allusive contradistinction
to (i.e. to have continuous bodily contact with somebody by means of
repeated movements), which is implicitly present in “”, being
106. marks the end of life,
which comes after the impossibility for one to feel the pleasure of (or
) a prostitute or by her anymore107.
105 The earliest extant occurrence of these verbs opposed to each other is in Menander (342/341-
;
” (Epitrepontes 1090-6; “Do the gods assign each
one of these destruction or salvation individually? […] It brings us down […], but it’s the salvation
of another”; S. Ireland, Menander. The Shield (Aspis) and The Arbitration (Epitrepontes), Oxford
2010, 198-9). On as meaning fatally worsening one’s disease, see, e.g., App., BC 5.6.59:
sick, and it was thought that she had willingly let herself become victim of her disease […]”; tr.
H. White,
Books III, Part II-V, Cambridge, MA-London 1913, 477). The word is used metaphorically, too; see,
e.g., Clem. Al., Protr.
of current beliefs has got worse by vainglory into the bargain […]” (Marcovich, Clementis, 147.2-3;
106 See, e.g., Ar., V. 739-40 and 1342-4: “[…]
, Oxford 1971, 83;
M.
P.
,
SVF I,
60.6-20); Ar., Ach.
, Oxford 2004, 57; cf. 347 ad loc.); Ps.-Hp.,
De Semine, Nat. Puer., Morb. 1.2 and 4.1: “
Hippocrate. Tome XI: De la génération – De la nature
– Des maladies IV – Du foetus de huit mois, Paris 1970, 44; 46).
107
SVF I.574, 130.18-20; cf., inter alia, R. Brouwer, “Why Human Beings Become Bad.
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Based on the sources of I.562, one can d0educe the point of Cleanthes’
adaptation of the Euripidean verses from Electra as follows. In vv. 421-32,
the persona of the peasant arranges the issue of providing his rich visitors
with food for one day. Echoing Theognis’ 1.719-28108, he says that the
something he is able to secure for the sake of his unexpected visitors. On the
other hand, echoing some of Solon’s words addressed to Croesus as reported
by Herodotus, he admits that, should he be rich, he would enjoy both the
advantage of entertaining when being healthy and of restoring his health when
109.
neither to happiness nor to misery)110, sweeps away all the previous positive
assessments of wealth, including the moderate ones, and attacks the one from
Euripides’ Electra. To Cleanthes, thinking, like the persona of the peasant
two principal vices, namely, licentiousness (the vice of the appetitive power of
our soul) and cowardice (the vice of the irascible power of our soul). Excessive
wealth goes as a rule hand-in-hand with lascivity, as money is easily spent for
the sake of bodily pleasures when one is healthy and capable of tasting them,
thinking thereby that this is what happiness consists in. Furthermore, in the long
run, perpetually using money in this unwise way (i.e. in a way that increases
to pain. In that case, when illnesses occur (which is not up to one to avoid),
the pain caused by them is taken as evil —unlike Zeno’s doctrine that this is
111—, and misery establishes itself in the human soul. One,
Cleanthes implicitly goes on, having come into such a deplorable situation,
becomes so unhappy that, by having recourse to money again (which, in tune
The Early Stoic Doctrine of Double Perversion”, 5, 2020, 61-82, at 72-3). Cf. supra, § 3.1.
108 Young post Diehl, Theognis, 45; see Cropp, Euripides. Electra, 127. Even the positive
assessment of riches in Electra 427 is clearly a quite close adaptation of the Theognidean verses
which precede vv. 719-28:
Thgn. I.717-18 E. El. 427
{1} , / [3]
{2} {5} {5} [4] {6} (D.
Young post E. Diehl, ibid.).
“ {1} {2} [3]
[4] {5} {6}”.
109 Hdt. 1.32.6, ll. 456-63 (N.G. Wilson, Herodoti Historiae. Tomus prior libros I-IV continens,
Oxford 2015, 20; parallel noted by Cropp, ibid.).
110 SVF I.190 (47.19-24).
111 SVF I.190 (47.25).
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with his wrong mental habit, is the only thing one deems useful), makes the only
available option: he pays in order to rid himself of misery by means of getting
rid of his very life, which is the last service that wealth —till the last moment
wrongly construed by him as a great good— can render him.
This looks like implicitly accepting some sort of loose connection between
the principal vices, somehow mirroring the doctrine of the concatenatio virtutum
principalium. Just as he who has got one virtue (e.g., )
possesses them all112, so he who has got one vice —in the case of I.562,
intemperantia, whose presence in one’s soul is infallibly indicated by avarice, i.e.
one’s considering wealth as good, pursuing it and putting it in the service of one’s
passions— is in principle vulnerable to all113. This idea looks like an expansion
of the doctrine of
well-known moral rigorism, which does not leave room for anything between
virtue and vice114. Clearly, Cleanthes does not say that having one vice implies
possessing them all; as seen (§ 2.1), he says that each of the vicious men has a
propensity for a concrete vice. Still, as it is the presence or absence of
that stands in the root of having or lacking all virtues and makes one or
not, lacking implies potentially having any vice, the appearance of this
of the general passions presumably depending on circumstances external to the
soul itself, such as health or sickness and wealth or poverty, as implied in I.562.
The point of Cleanthes’ ironic paradiorthosis
riches and the pleasure they provide placed outside the sphere of happiness. His
paradiorthosis was probably made with recurrence to some verses from Alcaeus;
considered poetic literature partly converging to, and partly diverging from,
112 This doctrine is explicitly held by Chrysippus (SVF II.349, 121.7; III.275, 67.44-5). As
known, the idea appears already in Plato’s Protagoras 392E2-4 (see, e.g., G. Vlastos, “The Unity of
Virtues in the Protagoras”; Study No 10 in G. Vlastos, Platonic Studies, Princeton 1973, 221-69).
113 Could Cleanthes have been inspired by Plato’s view that extreme riches are incompatible
) with one’s
being morally integer () in Lg.Non liquet
passage onto Cleanthes’ possible sources of inspiration. Still, a mere paradiorthosis
114 SVF I.566 (129.17-18).
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truth115. For Cleanthes, discerning between what is right and what is wrong in
the morality expressed by poets is possible only by means of philosophizing, as
I.559 and I.560 exhorted people to do. On the other hand, the very confection
of a paradiorthosis of a verse as well as the very production of poetic items by
Cleanthes himself shows that he was quite at ease with putting poetic speech in
the service of the task of expressing and disseminating truth and morality. In this
sense, Cleanthes’ pieces of poetry can be seen as instances of paradiorthosis of
Greek poetry in general; he put the verse form in the service of the right doctrinal
content116, by replacing the errors on the divine, man, morality etc. contained in
Greek poetry with (philosophical) truth. This is, for instance, what he did in his
Hymn to Zeus, which, as has been revealed to a large extent by scholarship, is full
of allusions to the wording and ideas from previous poetic works.
It has been repeatedly remarked that the ethics of the early Stoics were
consonant to the “Geist des Sokrates”117. As shown here, as far as Cleanthes is
concerned, this is more true and certain than established so far: Cleanthes, both
in his single explicit appeal to Socrates’ authority and in the several cases of
implicitly adopting Socrates’ ideas, was directly based on the littera Socratis, so
to speak, namely on certain texts by Xenophon and Plato, which he meticulously
used as sources for producing certain of his own texts of ethics.
Cleanthes arrived at Athens probably in 281/280 BC118. From the philological
corpus Platonicum suggests that, by the mid-3rd century BC, which is his ,
not be implausible to think that these instances were not the only ones among the
Stoics and, perhaps, among the authors of other philosophical sects. After all,
confecting anthologies goes back to the 5th century AD; Hippias is reported to have
, and, as has been
demonstrated119, this work was quite probably one of Chrysippus’ sources regarding
115 See, e.g., Pl. Lg.
116 See, e.g., Tieleman, Galen and Chrysippus, 220.
117 M. Pohlenz, Die Stoa: Geschichte einer geistigen Bewegung, Göttingen 19927 (19491), 120.
118 C. Guérard and F. Queyrel, “Cléanthe d’Assos” (No 138), in R. Goulet, ed., Dictionnaire des
philosophes antiques, Paris 1994, II, 409.
119 See J. Mansfeld, “Aristotle and Others on Thales, or the Beginnings of Natural Philosophy (With
Some Remarks on Xenophanes)”, Mnemosyne 38, 1985, 109-29, at 126; G.E. de Gante Dávila,
s
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Greek poetry. Likewise, a well-known passage from Plato’s Laws reports the existence
of collections of maxims thematically arranged, used for educational purposes120.
Assuming that Cleanthes used such collections is rather necessary for accounting cases
such as his I.559 (see above, § 2.1). Drawing some vocabulary almost exclusively
from Crito (45C3-48D6; 49C11-D2) and slightly enriching it with only a couple
of words occurring in a thematically similar passage from Laches (184D5-E9) can
close —even next— to the former in some anthology rather than that he picked up
this couple of words from Laches after reading through the corpus Platonicum and
locating the passage. Assuming that Cleanthes took pains in making such a pre-work
for producing all of his Plato-based texts and bringing together passages from the
corpus Platonicum some of which have not so far been noticed as parallels (or as
sources for each other) by modern scholarship is tantamount to say that he confected
a private, so to speak, anthology standing at the backstage of every single case of
this type, which looks, however one may trust the report about Cleanthes’ proverbial
laboriousness121, rather absurd.
Be that as it may, from the above detailed examination of the Cleanthean
passages it is clear that texts, especially Atticizing texts, were literally written on
the basis of Attic texts and that their content can be safely discerned only after
detecting their text sources as accurately and certainly as possible122.
120 Pl., Lg.
as a Reading Practice”, in G. Reydams-Schils, ed., Thinking Through Excerpts: Studies on Stobaeus,
Turnhout 2011, 9-22).
121SVF I.463, 103.7).
122
confected, perhaps for educational purposes, by Cleanthes himself? I am referring to his lost work
entitled (SVF I.481; 107.38). D.M. Searby, in his recent list of ancient (Hellenistic in
their majority) writings in whose titles the word occurs, includes Cleanthes’ writing, although
he remarks that “the title attributed to Cleanthes was surely not a collection of chreiai but a treatise
about chreiai in one of the senses of the word” (“The Fossilized Meaning of Chreia as Anecdote”,
Mnemosyne
However, it may have been the case that the title that came down to the unknown source of Diogenes
formula . with the equally common in work titles genitive followed by the number of
books a writing was divided to, which, in the case of Cleanthes’ collection of , was one (like,
e.g., Demetrius of Phaleron’s ; F. Wehrli, Demetrios von Phaleron, Basel 19682, 22.3, fr. 74,
item 45) and, as a consequence, some time in the long run of the tradition from Cleanthes to Laertius
was excised. With regard to work titles, mominative and . were sometimes alternatives
and at any rate equivalent; see, e.g., Cleanthes’ (and others’) (SVF I.481; 107.22). whose
.
And Chrysippus’ does not refer to a subject
(SVF II.13; 9.13-14) treats of.
John A. Demetracopoulos114
ExClass 27, 2023, 67-114 http://dx.doi.org/10.33776/ec.v27.7698
To my knowledge, so far it has passed unnoticed that Clement, in his Stromata,
alludes to I.559 at the opening paragraph of the chapter next to the one where the
fragment is preserved (see supra, § 2.1):
[b] {c}
[…] [f1-2] {a}
For intelligence or rectitude this great crowd estimates not by
truth, but by what they are delighted with. And they will not be
pleased with other things, but with what is like themselves; […]
not having understanding, or the undazzled and keen vision of the
contemplative soul123.
These lines are an explanation of Clement’s previous line: “[…]
” (“[…] let us [sc. the Christians] treat them
[sc. the Hellenes] as they are capable of hearing”). Let it be noted that Clement, unlike
Cleanthes, who exhorts people to investigate into the truth on their own, appeals to
the ignorance of the people in order to justify the cryptic or allusive or allegorical
expression of the real truth to the masses, which is used both in the Jewish, pagan and
Christian tradition. For Clement, it is not that one has more chances to convince the
average man by using what one’s addressee is already familiar with; rather, one has
no chance to pass on him the truth in its genuine form at all, and this entails that one
should only address the multitude in oblique ways.
as well? Non liquet
in the four verses which Clement does quote, namely that most individuals let
themselves be subjected to established opinions (“
”), whereas he who aspires for wisdom ought fearlessly, i.e.
despite the fact that he will most probably displease and even irritate people,
[…]”)124.
Of course, even if conceded that this is what happened with the title of Cleanthes’ writing, no tangible
evidence suggests that we should answer the above question in the positive.
123 Clem. Al., Strom. 5.4.19.1-2 (Stählin et al., Clemens, 338.29-23; de Boulluec, Clément.
Stromate V
The Ante-Nicene
124 This study is a fruit of my participation in the online seminar for the production of an annotated
Modern Greek translation of Cleanthes’ extant fragments, organized and conducted by Dr. Maria
Protopapas-Marneli, Director of the Research Centre for Greek Philosophy, The Academy of Athens
(2020/21-2021/22). I am grateful to the organizer and the numerous participants for helping and
inspiring me throughout my exploration. My gratitude to Dr. Charalambos Dendrinos (Director, The
Hellenic Institute, Royal Holloway, University of London), too, for patiently improving my English.
