Chrysippus

and he calls the same the fated necessity, the everlasting truth of things to come — none of which is of such a kind that any divine power can be seen to reside in it.

And now Chrysippus, who is held to be the shrewdest interpreter of the Stoics' dreams, gathers a great throng of unknown gods, and so unknown that we cannot even by conjecture form a picture of them, though our mind seems able to paint anything it pleases by thought.

while in the second he sets out to accommodate the fables of Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod, and Homer to what he himself had said in the first book about the immortal gods, so that even the most ancient poets, who never so much as suspected these things, may seem to have been Stoics.

What has Chrysippus left out among the Stoics?

But at Athens — as I used to hear from my father, who jested at the Stoics with wit and elegance — there is in the Ceramicus a statue of Chrysippus seated with hand outstretched, and the hand signifies that he took delight in this little question:

for after Chrysippus there was no real arguing against him.

He says that the wise man lacks nothing, and yet has need of many things;

these will hand on to you the knowledge of things human and divine, these will bid you be at work, and not merely speak cleverly and toss about words for the entertainment of hearers, but harden the mind and rouse it against threats.

Plato said those things, Zeno said them, Chrysippus and Posidonius and a vast army of our school, so many and such men.

but some are so foul that speech shrinks and recoils from them.

That of Chrysippus is, for truth, the firmest;

and I know that it seems so to Chrysippus too — that what has not been foreseen strikes the harder.

But why should I gather these, when I have Chrysippus, who is thought to prop up the Porch of the Stoics?

Who does not set this philosopher before Cleanthes, Chrysippus, and the rest of the later age, who, compared with him, seem to me of the fifth class?

These things are Chrysippus's, not resolved even by himself.

8 Chrysippus also, who possesses that subtle keenness which pierces to the inmost truth, who speaks for the sake of action and uses words no further than is enough for understanding, fills his whole book with these trifles, so that he says very little about the actual duty of giving, of receiving, and of returning a benefit;

Chrysippus, indeed, says that, like one set in a footrace and shut in the starting-stalls, he ought to await his time, at which, as at a given signal, he may dart forth;

I shall not bring forward to you Socrates, Chrysippus, Zeno and the rest, great men indeed, indeed the greater because in the praise of the ancients envy does not stand in the way.

So Chrysippus turned to hellebore.

But Chrysippus too lends him a hand, laying it down that corporeal things can in no way be deserted by incorporeal ones, since they are not even touched by them — whence Lucretius too says, ‘For nothing but body can touch or be touched’ — and that the body, being deserted by the soul, is affected by death.

‘For in man the blood about the heart is perception.

This argument is refuted by Chrysippus.

and once that motion was defended, they could easily resist Chrysippus.

Only let it be understood what is the distinction and difference of causes.

Him Cleanthes succeeds, him Chrysippus and those after him.

And just as, if a man attend to Ischomachus, he will make him a husbandman, and Lampis a shipmaster, and Charidemus a general, and Simon a horseman, and Perdix a huckster, and Crobylus a cook, and Archelaus a dancer, and Homer a poet, and Pyrrho a wrangler, and Demosthenes an orator, and Chrysippus a logician, and Aristotle a natural philosopher, and Plato a philosopher;

But do not be such a part as the mean and ridiculous verse in the play, of which Chrysippus makes mention.

How many a Chrysippus, how many a Socrates, how many an Epictetus has eternity already swallowed down!

Zeno, then, or Chrysippus, if asked who the wise man is, will answer that he is the man whom he himself has described;

For from Chrysippus I looked for nothing great or magnificent, who speaks in a certain manner of his own, so as to weigh everything by the niceties of words, not by the weight of things.

And last year my brother and I made a free gift of a talent to buy grain for the people.

I, men of Athens, lent to this man, Phormio, twenty minae for the double voyage to Pontus and back, on the security of goods of twice that value, and deposited a contract with Cittus the banker.

The request that I shall make of you, men of the jury, is a fair one, that you should hear us with goodwill as we speak in our turn, knowing well that we are wholly without experience in the art of speaking;

So that I formerly used to marvel at those of the philosophers who left their own fatherlands, with no one compelling them, and chose to live among others, and that too while declaring that one ought to honour one's fatherland and to hold it of the greatest account, and that to engage in public affairs and to take part in politics is for man according to nature.

It was a question formerly discussed by Chrysippus, whether a prize promised to him, who first reached the goal, could be given to two, who reached it at the same time, or to neither.

for his murder of Chrysippus and the cruelty of his acts to Thyestes are all damaging and ruinous (ἀτηρά) to his virtue.

In short, I ask whether Cleanthes and Chrysippus and Zeno lived by their own precepts.

Add now that, by the law of Chrysippus, a man is permitted to live in leisure—I do not say to endure leisure, but to choose it.

We, certainly, are the ones who say that both Zeno and Chrysippus accomplished greater things than if they had led armies, held office, and passed laws.

Chrysippus tells of a man who took it amiss that someone had called him a "sea-wether.

Eager and prepared, I follow Zeno, Cleanthes, Chrysippus—and yet not one of them entered public life, and not one of them failed to urge it on others.

But indeed, when we affirm that demons exist — to be sure, as though we did not also prove it, who alone drive them out from bodies — some flatterer of Chrysippus mocks at us.