- Lived:
- c. 185–c. 110 BCE · Rhodes, Rome, and Athens
- Tradition:
- Middle Stoicism — the Stoa softened, humanized, and carried into the Roman world
- The Big Idea:
- Ethics is not a geometry for perfect sages; it is practical guidance for imperfect people making progress — and each of us must harmonize four roles at once: human being, individual, creature of circumstance, and chooser of a path.
- In their words:
- "The spirit and mind of the wise man... ought to be alert, ready, strongly protected... opposing judgment and forethought, like arms and hands, to the strokes of fortune." (from his only sizable surviving fragment, preserved by Aulus Gellius)
- If you remember one thing:
- He rewrote Stoicism for ordinary, imperfect people — and through Cicero's On Duties, his lost Greek book quietly became the West's default manual for how a decent public person should behave.