Posidonius
historical figure · 7 works · 22 mentions · 28 anchored passages
our Posidonius · our friend Posidonius · Posidonius the Stoic · the astrologer-philosopher · the master · the most noble philosopher
in the texts
Letters to Lucilius
Stoic philosopher recommended as intellectual company.
Live with Chrysippus, with Posidonius:
Plato said those things, Zeno said them, Chrysippus and Posidonius and a vast army of our school, so many and such men.
At this point I wish to report to you the sentiment of our Posidonius:
On the Nature of the Gods
One of Cicero's philosophical teachers, associated with Stoicism.
and it was precisely when I seemed least engaged in it that I was most a philosopher — as is shown both by my speeches, which are full of the maxims of philosophers, and by my intimacy with the most learned men, in whom my house has always abounded, and by my having been trained by those eminent teachers, Diodotus, Philo, Antiochus, and Posidonius.
Truer, then, no doubt, is that which Posidonius, the familiar friend of us all, set forth in the fifth book of his work On the Nature of the Gods:
But if anyone should carry into Scythia or Britain that sphere which our friend Posidonius lately made, whose single revolutions bring about the same in the sun and in the moon and in the five wandering stars as is brought about in the heaven on single days and nights, who in that barbarous land would doubt that that sphere had been perfected by reason?
On Fate
Stoic philosopher whose anecdotal arguments for fate (Daphitas, the castaway, Icadius) are criticized as absurd by Cicero.
Some things, too, Posidonius (saving my respect for the master) seems to invent;
But let us dismiss Posidonius, as is fair, with our good grace, and return to the snares of Chrysippus.
What good is it, then, to keep harping on fate, when without fate the explanation of all things may be referred to nature or to fortune?
Tusculan Disputations
Stoic philosopher, gravely afflicted in his joints, who nonetheless lectured to Pompey from his sickbed and repeatedly declared that pain would never make him confess it an evil.
\"You do nothing, pain!
that when he had come to Rhodes on his way from Syria, he wished to hear Posidonius;
In which the most noble philosophers spent their lives — Xenocrates, Crantor, Arcesilaus, Lacydes, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Zeno, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Antipater, Carneades, Clitomachus, Philo, Antiochus, Panaetius, Posidonius, and innumerable others, who, once having gone out, never returned home.
On Moral Ends
Stoic philosopher, personal friend of Cicero, named as chief among the still-read Stoics.
And yet we read Diogenes, Antipater, Mnesarchus, Panaetius, and many others, and above all our friend Posidonius.
Stromata
Stoic philosopher who defined the end as contemplation of the truth and order of the universe.
And above all, Posidonius declared the end to be living, contemplating the truth and order of the universe, and helping to constitute it so far as possible, being led in nothing by the irrational part of the soul.
De Anima
Stoic philosopher cited for the most elaborate soul-division scheme, reaching seventeen parts.
but also into twelve among certain of the Stoics, and into two more than that in the school of Posidonius, who, having begun from two titles, the principal — which they call the ‘hegemonic’ — and the rational — which they call the ‘logical’ — went on from there to seventeen.