Chrysippus

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.

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.

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:

What has Chrysippus left out among the Stoics?

And this contest a man both acute and careful, Chrysippus, does not despise, but thinks the whole question of the highest good lies in the comparison of these two.

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.

Wherefore Carneades, as I see our Antiochus write, used to reprehend Chrysippus for praising that song of Euripides:

From which Chrysippus thinks that distress itself, lypē, was so named as being, as it were, a \"loosening\" (solutio) of the whole man.

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?

But, that I may come to things which are clearer, I will now pour forth whole subjects, about which volumes have been filled, not only by our men but even by Chrysippus (about whom the Stoics are wont to complain that, while he zealously sought out everything against the senses and clearness, and against all common usage and against reason, he was, in answering himself, the weaker — and so by him …

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;

3 I should like to use the comparison of our own Chrysippus drawn from the game of ball, which without doubt falls either through the fault of the thrower or of the catcher;

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.

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.

So Chrysippus turned to hellebore.

But it is divided into parts — now into two by Plato, now into three by Zeno, now into five and into six by Panaetius, into seven by Soranus, even into eight in the school of Chrysippus, even into nine in that of Apollophanes;

And to me, indeed, it seems that, since there had been two opinions among the philosophers of old—one of those who held that all things come to pass by fate in such a way that this fate brings the force of necessity (in which opinion were Democritus, Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Aristotle), the other of those to whom it seemed that the voluntary motions of the mind are without any fate—Chrysippus, …

and so he thinks both necessity and fate are confirmed), so Chrysippus is afraid that, if he should not maintain that everything which is stated is either true or false, he will not hold that all things come to pass by fate and from the eternal causes of future things.

Since this is so, what reason is there why not every proposition should be either true or false, unless we shall have granted that whatever comes to pass comes to pass by fate?

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.

Lampis, men of Athens, was close at hand when I did this, yet he never ventured to say that he had received the money from Phormio, nor did he say, as he naturally would have done supposing his story to be true, Chrysippus, you are mad.

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.

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.

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.

I shall show that this is acceptable to the Stoics as well, not because I have laid down for myself the law of committing nothing contrary to a pronouncement of Zeno or Chrysippus, but because the matter itself permits me to side with their view;

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.