Zeno of Citium (The Stoic) was a Hellenistic philosopher from Citium, Cyprus. Zeno was the son of a merchant and a student of Crates of Thebes, the most famous Cynic living at that time in Greece. Zeno was, himself, a merchant until the age of 42, when he started the Stoic school of philosophy. Named for his teaching platform, the Painted Porch ("stoa" is Greek for "porch"), his teachings were the beginning of Stoicism. None of Zeno's works have survived, but he is believed to have taught that tranquility can best be reached via indifference to pleasure and pain.
Zeno is also the first utopian anarchist in the west and thus an important precursor of the anarchism we know today. In The Crooked Timber of Humanity, Isaiah Berlin describes Zeno's beliefs as follows
Men are rational, they do not need control; rational beings have no need of a state, or of money, or of law-courts, or of any organised, institutional life. In the perfect society men and women shall wear identical clothes and feed in a common pasture.... More • http://en.wikipedia. ... _of_Citium View • Books • Images • Videos • Search Related • Anarchists • Philosophers • Anarchism • Cyprus • Greece • Hellenistic Age • Iron Age • Turkey • Turkey (Europe) • Icons • People