Stoics

"A remark more biting than Zeno."

Zeno was a celebrated philosopher, born about 350 B. C. After finishing his studies in Athens under the Cynics, he founded a sect of his own called Stoics; so called from a spacious painted porch in which the master taught (stoa being the Greek for Porch). Zeno's lecture hall being the finest of all the Athenian porches was naturally called the porch. The Cynics were a sect of Greek philosophers, noted for their morose and snarling manner, whence some trace the derivation of the name, which means doggish or dog-like. More probably it is derived from the name of the gymnasium where Antisthenes taught, which was called Cynosarges. Antisthenes was a pupil of Socrates, who was born about 470 B. C. To the sect of the Cynics Diogenes belonged, but he must be considered a philosophical fanatic; he died in 324 B. C. The Stoical philosophy of which Zeno was the founder, was less severe than that of the Cynics (which it ultimately absorbed); yet it inculcated a callousness of feeling, and even sanctioned self-destruction. Its maxim was: "If your house smokes, quit it!" that is, leave your body.

It was certain philosophers of the Stoics as well as of the Epicureans who encountered Paul at Athens (Acts XVII., 18.)

Zeno took part in a revolt against Nearchus, tyrant of Elea, but was detected and apprehended. Nearchus then ordered him to be pounded to death in a mortar, unless he would tell the names of the other conspirators. When the philosopher was nearly dead he called the tyrant to him, as if to make a confession. Nearchus bending down put his ear close to the mouth of the dying man, when Zeno bit it off. This account is given as the origin of the phrase, "A remark more biting than Zeno."