ZENOOF CITIUM self-interest. Zeno was also one of the first (335-263 B.c.) Greek philosophers to end his life by sui- Founder of Stoic philosophy, cide when he believed that his usefulness born at Citium on Cyprus, probably of was at an end, an example emulated Phoenician ancestry. In 313 he went to by such followers as Cato the Younger Athens to attend the Platonic Academy, and Seneca the Younger, the most famous but converted to Cynicism, in which vein Roman adherents except for the Emperor he wrote his earliest treatises. Marcus Aurelius, himself also an ex- He taught in the Stoa Poikile pounder of Stoicism. (Painted Porch) at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens, where he drew many listeners. BIBLIOGRAPHY. J. M. Rist, Stoic Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge When Antigonus Gonatas, king of University Press, 1969. Macedonia, invited him to his court in William A. Percy Pella, he dispatched a disciple instead of going in person, breaking Plato's and Aristotle's tradition of serving tyrants. ZOROASTRIANISM Zeno's complete philosophical system The most important indigenous borrowed physics from Heraclitus and religion of ancient Iran, Zoroastrianism Aristotelian logic from Antisthenes and bears on the history of homosexuality Diodorus the Megaran, but it was his eth- because of its crucial influence on this ics, according to which virtue is the only aspect of Judaism and its sacred writings, good and vice or moral weakness the only as well as on the folk angelology and real evil, that comforted many during the demonology of the intertestamental pe- wars and tyrannies of the successors of riod and later centuries. The religion of Alexander the Great, the late Roman Zoroaster survives today among the small Republic, and the Empire. A protCgC of the Parsi community in India. Scipios, Paenatius of Rhodes (ca. 150 B.c.), Although it reached its apogee introduced Stoic philosophy to Rome and during the Achaemenid Period (ca. 550- harmonized it with the mos rnaiomrn to 330 B.c.), the roots of Zoroastrianism ex- make it the favorite philosophy of Romans tend much further back into Persian reli- until the third century when Neo-Plato- gious traditions relating to nature worship nism replaced it. and good and evil spirits, and beyond these Antigonus of Carystus named to Aryan (Indo-European]mythology with Zeno as having been an exclusive boy- its division of celestial beings into two loverwith no interest inwomen. Ethically warring classcs. This ancient dualism Zeno regarded the choice of sexual object, appeared in Greek mythology as the gods whether male or female, as a purely per- versus the titans, and in Indian tradition sonal matter. No objective criteria, he as the gods (devas) versus the demons opined, can be adduced for preferring ei- (asuras], but in Persia the labels were re- ther homosexuality or heterosexuality. versed, so that the Aryan asuras became What is important is the management of the good ahuras and the devas became the one's life in accordance with enlightened evil daevas. The prophet Zoroaster (from a