Ο Ζήνων ανάμεσα στο Κίτιο και στην Αθήνα
JACQUES BRUNSCHWIG
Ο Ζήνων, γεννημένος στο Κίτιο, πέρασε το μεγαλύτερο μέρος της ζωής του στην Αθήνα. Η ιστορία του αποτελεί παράδειγμα πολιτισμικής και κοινωνικής ένταξης ενός μετανάστη. Πολλές ευνοϊκές συνθήκες έκαναν αυτή την επιτυχία εφικτή: ο εξελληνισμός της Κύπρου, η ύπαρξη μιας ευρέως διαδεδομένης Ελληνικής παιδείας, η κυκλοφορία και το εμπόριο βιβλίων (φαίνεται πως ο εκπολιτισμός του Ζήνωνα πραγματοποιήθηκε κυρίως μέσω βιβλίων), η ύπαρξη μιας ελεύθερης, ανταγωνιστικής φιλοσοφικής αγοράς, η έλλειψη του φαινομένου της ξενοφοβίας στην Αθήνα. Ο Ζήνων κατόρθωσε να ενταχθεί χωρίς να διακόψει τους αστικούς και συναισθηματικούς του δεσμούς με την πόλη της καταγωγής του. Έχω την γνώμη ότι επιλέγοντας να διδάξει στη Στοά, ένα δυσοίωνο μνημειακό χώρο για τους Αθηναίους, έδειξε πόσο λίγο ενδιαφερόταν για τις αντιξοότητες της τοπικής πολιτικής ιστορίας. Έχω τη γνώμη επίσης ότι η αρχική και προσωρινή του συμπάθεια για τον Κυνισμό, αυτή τη ριζικά αντι- κοινωνική ιδεολογία, ήταν πιο πολύ ένας πνευματικός πειραματισμός παρά ένας ολόψυχος προσηλυτισμός στο Κυνικό τρόπο ζωής. Tελικά, το ψήφισμα που ψηφίστηκε από τους Αθηναίους προς τιμή του δείχνει ότι η ένταξη του ήταν πράγματι επιτυχημένη, ίσως κάπως περισσότερο απ΄ όσο έπρεπεo αλλά πρέπει να λάβουμε υπόψη μας το στοιχείο της Αθηναϊκής αυτό- επιδοκιμασίας στην "πολιτικά σωστή" εικόνα που αποδόθηκε στο Ζήνωνα με το ψήφισμα αυτό.
Zeno between Kition and Athens
JACQUES BRUNSCHWIG
Zeno was born here: thanks to the organizers of the present conference, it is our privilege to be able to utter this sentence to-day, and to express thereby a true proposition. Zeno was born here, yes indeed; but he spent most of his life in Athens, speaking Greek and writing in Greek; he never visited his native city again, so far as we know; and in Athens he died, loaded with official honours. He was the son of a rich Cypriot merchant; it is quite likely that he was a Phoenician by his birth (one of his nicknames, in Athens, will be Phoinikidion1, “the little Phoenician”), and also, according to some scholars, by his mother tongue. He is, in an exemplary fashion, what would be called nowadays an “accultured person”. His story is, among other things, the story of an immigrant who successfully became fully integrated in his new cultural surroundings. This story has already been told and studied, of course, by nearly all of the historians of the Stoic school; however, the special subject I wish to deal with has been somewhat neglected, if I am not mistaken.2 Needless to say, I have absolutely no new pieces of evidence to bring into the discussion. I would only like to draw attention to some aspects of the evidence, which I believe have been hitherto largely ignored. Such is certainly not the case with two aspects of the subject that I shall leave aside, as far as possible: first, the much debated and slippery question whether the Stoic philosophy owes anything to
1 Diogenes Laertius (hereafter: DL) VII 3. See also Cic. Fin. IV 56 and (with distinctly xenophobic overtones) Tusc. V 34. 2 It has been sketched in a very short paper by Gabaude 1996: 11-14. Much more substantial is Yon 1997-1998, which my friend Christian Le Roy, Professor of Ancient History at the Paris - I University, kindly brought to my knowledge. 14 Jacques Brunschwig
Zeno’s supposedly "Semitic" origins; and secondly, the complex problem of Zeno’s philosophical curriculum before his founding the Stoic school.3 What primarily concerns me is to explore, at least cursorily, the combination of various favourable factors which Zeno met, both in Kition and in Athens, and which allowed him to become a star example of a successful integration. Perhaps there is still something to be learnt, even in our own days, from this story. But should we say from this story, or rather from this myth ? A general caveat is in order here. When we want to say anything about Zeno’s life, his way of life, his relationships with his native city and his adoptive city, we are obliged to rely, willy nilly, on the main source about these matters, namely Diogenes Laertius’ Life of Zeno in Book VII. The historical value of the information it provides, especially in matter of anecdotes, sayings, biographical details, etc., is of course highly debatable, especially as some of these informations are given in different and often incompatible versions. Here I shall not attempt to assess the value and likelihood of this information. Thus, I shall deliberately run the risk of telling, not the story, but at best the myth of a successful integration. Let us first come back to Kition. Diogenes (VII 1) describes Kition as "a Greek political entity (πÒλισµα •λληνικÒν) which had received Phoenician settlers", thus as a multi-ethnic society with Greek political institutions, apparently containing a predominant Greek population and a minor group of non-Greek settlers or descendants of settlers. This description, according to Pohlenz, the main supporter of Zeno’s "Semitismus", is an attempt to demonstrate Zeno’s Hellenism, and puts the facts of the matter upside down; actually, in the fourth century, the Greeks in Cyprus still had to fight for political and cultural domination against an active Semitic population, mainly concentrated in Kition.4 Some of
3 See David Hahm’s contribution to the present volume, and his 1992, as well as Mansfeld 1986. 4 See Pohlenz 1967: I, 25 and 26 n. 2. During the IVth century, "les Kitiens - “Phéniciens” de langue et de religion - sont les seuls vrais concurrents à Chypre des Salaminiens - qui se proclament “hellénophiles” (Yon 1997-1998: 169). Zeno between Kition and Athens 15
Pohlenz’s historical arguments seem to be serious.5 But he has apparently somewhat overestimated his case: as a matter of facts, works of art of Greek style, or even imported from Greece, have been found in Larnaca-Kition and its area, as well as a number of bilingual inscriptions, both public and private.6 According to Marguerite Yon, "il est évident que des groupes sociaux chypro- phéniciens comme celui dont était issu Zénon devaient pratiquer normalement la langue grecque, à la fois comme langue d’échanges commerciaux et comme langue de culture".7 Zeno’s Greek acculturation thus seems to have begun largely before he reached the shores of Greece proper. Much has been built on the basis of his father’s name, Mnaseas. This name is mentioned several times in DL VII.8 It is generally agreed that Mnaseas is a hellenized version of Semitic names like Manasse or Menahem. If that is true, the conclusion to draw would be, of course, that Zeno’s father was a Phoenician; but also, and much more importantly in my opinion, that he was already a hellenized Phoenician.9 Of course, we cannot know whether
5 For instance, he points out that an uninterrupted series of Phoenician tyrants governed Kition until 312. On the linguistic level, he mentions a funeral monument dedicated by two brothers with Phoenician names to their father, called Menexenos: the linguistic evolution was not onesidedly favourable to Hellenism. According to Yon 1997-1998: 166, n. 2 et 3, the latest archaeological and epigraphical evidence confirms that local coins and official inscriptions were written in Phoenician until 254 at least. 6 See Yon 1997-1998: 170. 7 Yon 1997-1998: 170. 8 §§ 1, 10, 11, 31; in the first passage, an alternative version, Demeas, is also mentioned. 9 “C’est un des noms grecs qui apparaissent le plus fréquemment dans l’onomastique des Phéniciens grécisés de l'époque hellénistique” (Masson 1969: 692-693). Perhaps, however, Zeno’s father “se désignait comme Mnaséas en grec, et comme Menahem en phénicien” (Yon 1997-1998: 172); hence, it would be normally expected that a Greek author like Diogenes Laertius only mentions his Greek name. However, in another case (admittedly a bit different), Diogenes is able to mention both names, the local one and the Greek one (see IV 67: the Carthaginese Hasdrubal first taught philosophy in his fatherland and in his own language, and later became famous, as pupil and successor of Carneades, under the name of Cleitomachus). 16 Jacques Brunschwig
Mnaseas was the first of his lineage to have settled in Cyprus and to have adopted a hellenized version of his name (like so many modern European immigrants who changed their names when arriving in the United States); but that is fairly unlikely, given his belonging to the class of well-off merchants. Moreover, Mnaseas’ hellenization is sufficiently proved by the fact that he gave his son a distinctly Greek name, "Zeno".10 In any case, it seems pretty certain that the process of hellenization, in Zeno’s family, was earlier than Zeno himself. Now let us have a look on a more special point, namely Zeno’s encounter with Greek philosophy. As is well known, there are various rival accounts of the story in DL VII. According to Demetrius the Magnesian, the source of Diogenes VII 31, Mnaseas was a merchant; he often went to Athens, and he brought away from there many "Socratic books" for Zeno while he was still a boy living in Kition. According to this version, then, "
10 Yon 1997-1998: 172, supposes that Zeno, like his father, could have borne both a Greek theophoric name (Zeno, derived from Zeus) and some Phoenician theophoric name, e.g. derived from the name of Baal, the Phoenician god standardly put into equivalence with Zeus. But, as she says herself, that is no more than a hypothesis. If such had been the case, I surmise that one would expect to hear about it through some ancient author, only too happy to stress Zeno’s “exotic” origin in that way. 11 Hahm 1992: 4090. Zeno between Kition and Athens 17 characteristically philosophical desire to know what he should do to reach the best life, consulted an indeterminate oracle12, at an indeterminate moment of his youth. The god’s response was that he should "take on the complexion of the dead". Zeno interpreted this answer as meaning that he should read the works of the ancients. Which he did: perhaps his Pythagorica and his Homeric Problems, mentioned in the list of his works (DL VII 4), and possibly an Exegesis of Empedocles (falsely attributed to Zeno of Elea)13, are traces of these readings, as well as his Politeia, which is likely to have been written, at least in part, as an answer to Plato’s Republic (as Plutarch says, Stoic. repugn. 1034 e).14 However different all these versions are, what is striking in all of them is that each one, in its own way, stresses the bookish character of Zeno’s acculturation;15 maybe it is the effect (or the cause ?) of his typically and permanently awkward relationship to orality (he prefers short utterances to lenghty discourses,16 he is fond of speaking with gestures and using postural metaphors,17 he appreciates silence above all)18. For him, the royal road to philosophy seems to have been the written language. External conditions were necessary for that to be possible: without the existence of a large and strong Greek cultural area, based first on a widespread Greek literacy, and secondly on the circulation and trade of written philosophical works, in Athens and far away outside Athens, such a phenomenon would have been hardly conceivable. Once settled in Athens, Zeno seems to have been accepted by his
12 Not necessarily Delphi, as is often assumed without argument. 13 See Owen 1983: 1-2, n. 1 and 2. 14 See Christopher Rowe’s contribution to this volume. 15 See the probably significant parallel between Zeno the Phoenician and Cadmos, who also "came thence and gave to Greece her books and art of writing", in the epigram composed on Zeno by Zenodotus the Stoic, ap. DL VII 30. 16 DL VII 18, 20, 21, 23. 17 See Cic. Luc. 145 and SVF I 75. 18 DL VII 24. 18 Jacques Brunschwig new environment, without meeting with any xenophobic reaction. He apparently kept his exotic outlook, his dark complexion, perhaps a touch of accent when speaking.19 He was what is familiarly and shamefully called nowadays in France (with overtly xenophobic connotations) "un basané", a sunburnt fellow. Sunburnt he was indeed, first by his origins, and also by his taste for sunbathing (DL VII 1), a taste which clearly shows that he did absolutely nothing to lose his natural complexion - on the contrary. But these physical characteristics won him only gentle and unoffensive nicknames, like "the little Phoenician", already mentioned, and also "the Egyptian vine-branch" (DL VII 1). Athens did not demand that he hide as much as possible the features which made him recognizable as a foreigner; in other words, in order to be integrated into the Athenian society, he did not have to get assimilated to it. In this respect, it is certainly important to remember, not only that Zeno never repudiated his being a citizen of Kition (DL VII 12), but also that (like Cleanthes, but unlike Chrysippus) he refused to receive the Athenian citizenship when it was offered him; he did so “in order not to seem unfaithful to his native city” (as Plutarch says, Stoic. repugn. 1034 a). According to DL (ibid.), "when he was one of the contributors to the restoration of the baths and his name was inscribed upon the pillar as “Zeno the philosopher”, he requested that the words “of Kition” should be added". Some people20 think that this story concerns some bath-house in Kition; but I think it not very credible that Zeno might have felt like seeing “of Kition” added to his name in a Kition inscription; overall, the story makes much more sense if it concerns baths in Athens.21 Through his request, Zeno clearly showed that, even in the guise of a distinguished benefactor of his adoptive city, he was still proud of his Cypriot
19 The spelling φωνᾶεν, instead not of φων∞εν but of φωνÆ (SVF I 150), might be an echo of his provincial dialect and pronunciation (Pohlenz 1967: 26, n.2). 20 E.g. Gabaude 1996: 11. 21 My thanks again are due to Christian Le Roy, who told me that the customary ways of inscribing the names of benefactors on public establishments were such that the story certainly took place in Athens, and not in Kition. Zeno between Kition and Athens 19 origins. Conversely, if the words "of Kition" were first forgotten, and then added to the inscription, in conformity with Zeno’s request, the story shows that Athens was by no means obsessed by Zeno’s foreign origin, but quite happy, upon occasion, to publicize his Cypriot citizenship and patriotism. On the other hand, Kition was quite aware of his faithfulness to his native city; his statue was erected there (I suppose in absentia), and the colony of Kition people living in Sidon were also proud of him (DL VII 6). This seems to show, not only that Zeno managed to conciliate his faithfulness towards both his motherland and his fatherland, so to speak, but also that each of the two cities was able to understand and to support him in this enterprise: Athens, by accepting his keeping a political and sentimental link with Kition, and Kition, by considering him still as a glorious fellow-citizen, even if he had emigrated once for all, apparently without any intention of coming back home. I leave aside the question how he managed to combine this double loyalty, to Kition and to Athens, with an allegiance to the ideal city of his own Politeia; whether this city is conceived of a city of Sages, Zeno not claiming to be a Sage, or as a city of friends,22 the problem is probably not insuperable. On the other hand, there is a quite meaningful sign of Zeno’s attachment to his remote origins, and correlative disdain towards Athenian parochial prejudices, which I think has not been quite properly appreciated. It is the very choice of the Stoa Poikilè as his teaching place, which was to give to the word "Porch" a century-long fame. Diogenes Laertius (VII 5) glosses over this choice in the following terms: "He used then to discourse, pacing up and down in the Painted Colonnade, which is also called the colonnade of Pisianax, but which received its name from the painting of Polygnotus; his object being to keep the spot clear of idlers. It was the spot where in the time of the Thirty 1400 Athenian citizens had been put to death. Hither, then, people came henceforth to hear Zeno, and this is why they were known as men of the Stoa”. Later on (VII 14), Diogenes gives some additional explanations: “He did
22 See Malcolm Schofield’s contribution to the present volume, and his 1991. 20 Jacques Brunschwig not like to walk around with more than two or three people. He even used to solicit bronze coins from the bystanders, so that people, reluctant to give, might not crowd around, as Cleanthes says in his book On bronze.23 When more [than two or three] stood around him, he pointed to the wooden fence around the altar in the Stoa and said, “This altar once stood out here in the middle; but because it got in the way, it was put off by itself. So, you, too, remove yourselves from out of the middle [here] and you better not crowd us so much”. These stories about the Stoa Poikilè are supposed to confirm a feature of Zeno’s character which is attested elsewhere in Diogenes’ bios, namely his being shy, shameful, reluctant to consort with crowds, or even big companies, for instance at dinner parties.24 But I think that there is something else to be learnt from the story. For the Athenians, the Stoa Poikilè was apparently what Pierre Nora called "un lieu de mémoire", a memorial place, but an ominous one, linked in some way (scholars disagree on exactly what way)25 with the political crimes of the Thirty. That is why they did not like to walk around in this area. When choosing this very place for his teaching, Zeno was therefore pretty sure of not being disturbed too much by idle bystanders. But there were certainly other quiet places in Athens than that one, after all; and Zeno himself had devised a trick for keeping intruders far away, namely asking them money, which could perfectly well work in any other place. So it is likely that he had some other reason to select this particular place. I suggest
23 Hahm 1992: 4116, whose translation I use here with a slight modification, omits this reference to Cleanthes. No περ‹ χαλκοË is either mentioned in the list of Cleanthes’ works (DL VII 174-175), or known otherwise. Perhaps it was a commentary on the anecdote concerning Zeno, or a more general reflection about the problem of teaching for money. As is well known, Cleanthes was extremely poor, and he had to work by night in order to earn his living (DL VII 168), and perhaps his tuition under Zeno; he is the distinguished ancestor of our “salaried students”. 24 See DL VII 1, 3, 13, 14, etc. 25 See Hicks’ note ad loc.: “Probably the Thirty met in the Stoa and passed sentence of death there. It is not likely that this was the place of execution”. Zeno between Kition and Athens 21 that this other reason was to show that he did not care much about the vicissitudes of local history, nor felt himself obliged to espouse the local quasi-superstitious fears. At this point, an interesting problem is raised by Hahm’s suggestion (1992: 4116) of engrafting upon the text of § 14 the following sentence of § 5: "for at the time of the Thirty nearly 1400 citizens were removed permanently (ἀνῄρηντ')
26 Hahm’s quotation marks make this point perfectly clear. 22 Jacques Brunschwig
Let us now come back to an earlier stage in Zeno’s career. However debatable the details may be, I suppose that nobody would deny that a Cynic episode took place in his youthful days. If we look at his life as an brilliant example of "acculturation", this episode seems paradoxical at first sight, since Cynicism is, on the contrary, a persistent criticism of culture, as opposed to nature, a bitter rejection of all the values, institutions, conventions and modes of behaviour linked to culture, and thus, a radical attempt at "deculturation". In Plutarch’s forcible phrase (De esu carn. 995 c-d), the Cynics’ aim was "to make life wild again" (τÚν βÛον ἀποθηρι«σαι). However, in spite of their frequently scandalous words and deeds, the Cynics were fairly well tolerated in Athens, so far as we can see. I suppose that King Demos took them rather as ordinary kings take their jesters and clowns, as picturesque and amusing cranks: they are so universally subversive that, at the end of the day, they are politically harmless. Far more dangerous are the "serious" thinkers, those who do not criticize everything, but keep their arrows for definite targets. These are the ones who are condemned or banished, for instance the victims of prosecution for impiety. I would like to suggest that Zeno was first attracted to Cynicism, not only because Crates happened to walk down the street at the right time, but also, and perhaps above all, because of two features of Cynicism: first, its universal, but mainly theoretical subversivity, and second, its relative innocuity on the political and practical levels. Cynicism was for Zeno, within the process of his new integration to Athens, a way of clearing everything out before building something else on new foundations. An experiment in deculturation was for him, so to speak, a necessary condition for a successful acculturation. Some details in DL VII seem to show that that experiment was primarily a thought-experiment, rather than a wholehearted conversion to Cynicism as a total way of life. For instance, it seems to me characteristic of Zeno that, on the one hand, he was able, in his Politeia, to espouse the most scandalous proposals of Diogenes the Cynic in his own Politeia (to such an extent that Philodemus, De Stoicis XVIII-XX Dorandi, gives a single doxography for them both), whereas, on the other hand, when the problem is to carry a potful of lentil-soup through the Ceramicus Zeno between Kition and Athens 23
(DL VII 3), then he is good for nothing. Bold in speech and writing, shy in action, such appears to have been the would-be Cynic Zeno. The anecdote about the pot of soup would have all its point if, as Hahm 1992: 4094 thinks, it takes place at the very end of Zeno’s Cynic education, i.e. after no less than ten years of apprenticeship. Hahm says: "It was Zeno’s last lesson from Crates; when Zeno fled from Crates in the Ceramicus, he as much as fled Cynicism for ever. Crates is thus shown to have failed completely to change Zeno’s character and convert his sense of modesty into Cynic shamelessness; it only drove Zeno to other teachers". A dramatic failure indeed, if this story really took place after ten years of companionship27 - so much so that I wonder whether Zeno did not simply take Crates’ order, which was eccentric but by no means scandalous, as a mere pretext for breaking with him. After the Cynic episode, Zeno could have found himself disappointed with Cynicism, perhaps even disappointed with philosophy. But this is not what happened. As a matter of fact, he looked for other teachers, and he easily found lots of them: Stilpo the Megaric, Diodorus the Dialectician, Polemo the Academician, all of whom he heard for a long time before working out and teaching his own doctrine. However deeply original, this doctrine is variously indebted to all of them, as if each one had helped him to avoid the onesidedness of the others. Here again he found favourable conditions in his Athenian environment: his philosophical achievement would have been hardly possible if Athens had not offered him a large stock of philosophical schools, usually well accepted by the society (with the possible exception of Epicureanism), each of them taking its chance on a free, competitive philosophical market, none of them being an exclusive club with a rigid orthodoxy (once again with the possible exception of
27 As a matter of fact, it seems difficult to make up one’s mind on this point: Crates’ order might be one of the first tests to which he submitted the shy “little Phoenician”, as well as the occasion of a final break off. Perhaps the emphasis on the verb φεÊγειν in the moral of the story, as mirrored by the emphasis on “fled” in Hahm’s paraphrasis, could be an argument in favour of his suggestion. 24 Jacques Brunschwig
Epicureanism). When you had heard one of the philosophy masters, you were not forever ear-marked as a member of his sect (e.g. the fact that Zeno had had about him "certain ragged dirty fellows"28 was not permanently held against him); when you had left another philosopher, you were not forever banished from his circle;29 when you were already about to become a teaching master, you were allowed to attend to other people’s lectures, and the risk of being plagiarized seems to have been lightly accepted. In this respect, I find especially interesting the anecdote (DL VII 25) according to which, "when Zeno was already an advanced philosopher (προκÒπτων), he would enter Polemo’s school: so far from all 30 self-conceit (Íπ'ἀτυφÛας) was he. In consequence Polemo is said to have addressed him thus: “you slip in, Zeno, by the garden door - I’m quite aware of it - you filch my doctrines and give them a Phoenician make-up (Φοινικικ«ς µεταµφιεννÊς)”. One would pay much to know what Polemo meant by this "Phoenician make- up": was it a matter of philosophical doctrine, or a matter of expression, style and vocabulary ? I suspect that the second option is the right one, and that the anecdote supports (or has been concocted so as to support) an Antiochean view of Stoicism, according to which there is no real difference between the Stoics and the Old Academy, but only a verbal one.31 Still, one would like to know what Polemo found specifically "Phoenician" in Zeno’s vocabulary; but it is probably impossible to answer that question. If we now proceed till the end of Zeno's long life, we find that he was officially greeted by Athenian public authorities as a good and useful teacher: here we meet him at the literally crowning moment of his successful integration. The distance between the beginning and the end of the process, at first sight, seems enormous, and it is
28 γυµνορρÊπαροι (DL VII 16). 29 See the anecdote about Crates trying to drag Zeno from Stilpo to himself again (DL VII 24), and Zeno’s reply: “The right way to seize a philosopher, Crates, is by the ears; persuade me then and drag me off by them”. 30 On this notion, important both in Cynicism and Pyrrhonism, see Decleva Caizzi 1980. 31 Thus Pohlenz 1967: I, 520-522. Zeno between Kition and Athens 25 difficult to recognize Crates’ former pupil in the official portrait drawn by the decree which grants him a golden crown and a funeral at the public cost (DL VII 10-12): "Whereas Zeno of Kition, son of Mnaseas, has for many years been devoted to philosophy in the city and has continued to be a man of worth in all other respects, exhorting to virtue and temperance those of the youth who come to him to be taught, directing them to what is best, affording to all in his own conduct a pattern for imitation in perfect consistency with his teaching, it has seemed good to the people to bestow praise upon Zeno of Kition, the son of Mnaseas (...) so that all may know that the Athenian people honour the good both in their life and after their death". Does this fairly conventional homage mean that Zeno, like a former 1968 "enragé" reconverted to a bourgeois way of life, had given up any heritage from his former attraction into Cynicism, and evolved towards a rather dull moralism? Should we think that his successful integration has only been too successful? I would like to suggest that the contrast between young Zeno and old Zeno could be weakened by working it up a little bit on both of its extremities. First, his metamorphosis would be easier to understand if, as I suggested, his initial Cynic affiliation was more verbal than real, or at least more theoretical than practical. On the other hand, we must probably beware of taking too seriously the text of the Athenian decree.32 As is shown by the last sentence ("so that all may know that the Athenian people honour the good"), this text has obviously an ideological function: when praising Zeno, Athens pronounces its own eulogy; the great city shows itself as a highly tolerant, enlightened and virtuous city, able to welcome virtuous men of whatever origin as well as its own citizens (and often better than some of them), and to honour such people to the extent of entrusting them the education of its sons. Official homages, in all times and places, usually draw a "politically correct" image of what they want their hero to symbolize, rather than a historically exact image of
32 Which is likely not to have been devoid of political motivations, given the good relationships between Zeno and Antigonus Gonatas (DL VII 6-9, 14-15). 26 Jacques Brunschwig what he really was; they are accustomed to rub out his imperfections and shortcomings. And I suspect that the whole story, or myth, of Zeno’s relationships with Kition and Athens had, in some sense, a similarly ideological function: Zeno’s success story was also Athens’ success story. Thus, it is still possible to hope, as I do, that Zeno was not that wise after all.33
33 Or at least, that he was a sage in the Stoic way, which is not the conventional way (see e.g. DL VII 13, 26). BIBLIOGRAPHY
• Decleva Caizzi, Fernanda, “τËφος”: Contributo alla storia di un concetto", Sandalion 3 (1980), 53-66. • Gabaude, J.M., “La fidélité de Zénon envers Chypre”, in Chypre et les origines du stoïcisme, Proceedings of the conference held in Paris in May 1995, Paris, Publications du Centre Culturel Hellénique de Paris, 1996, 11-14. • Hahm, D., “Diogenes Laertius VII: the Stoics” in Haase and Temporini (edd.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt II.36.6, 1992, 4076-4182. • Mansfeld, J., “Diogenes Laertius on Stoic Philosophy”, Elenchos 7 (1986), 295-382. • Masson, O., “Recherches sur les Phéniciens dans le monde hellénistique”, Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 93 (1969), 679- 700. • Schofield, M., The Stoic Idea of the City, Cambridge, 1991. • Owen, G.E.L., “Philosophical Invective”, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 1 (1983), 1-25. • Pohlenz, M., La Stoa (authorized Italian version of Die Stoa, Göttingen, 1959), Firenze 1967, 2 vol. • Yon, Marguerite, “Zénon, citoyen de Kition”, in Mélanges Olivier Masson, Centre d’Études Chypriotes, 27, 1997-1998, 165-172.