Cleanthes: Philosophy, Quotes & Legacy

Biography

Cleanthes was born around 330 BCE, probably in Assos in the Troad, the region of northwestern Asia Minor. According to Diogenes Laertius, he came to Athens as a young man with only four drachmas in his possession, and he attached himself to the school of Zeno of Citium. He was famously poor and famously industrious: he supported himself by manual labor — drawing water at night and working as a gardener or wrestler by day — and he was known to his fellow students as "the well" or, because of his persistence, "the ass." He studied with Zeno for nineteen years, and when Zeno died around 262 BCE, Cleanthes succeeded him as head of the Stoic school.

Cleanthes led the school for over thirty years, from about 262 to 230 BCE. He was not the most brilliant of the early Stoics — Zeno's other pupils, including the logician Aristo of Chios and the physicist Herillus, had competing systems — but he was the most faithful to the master's doctrine, and his fidelity preserved the school. He was, by the testimony of the tradition, slow in intellect but unshakeable in character; Chrysippus, the greatest of his pupils, mocked his slowness, yet chose to study with him for the very reason that the school could not be understood from the master's works alone. Cleanthes died around 230 BCE, at an advanced age. The traditional account of his death is the most famous anecdote about him: suffering from a painful ulcer, he fasted for two days, and when the doctors told him he was well enough to resume eating, he answered that, having gone so far on the road, he would not turn back — and starved himself to death. The story, whether historically exact or not, captures the Stoic ideal of the voluntary and rational death.

Historical Context

Cleanthes stands at the hinge of the early Stoa. The school that Zeno founded was, in Cleanthes's lifetime, still defining itself against its rivals: the Cynics, whose radicalism Zeno had softened; the Epicureans, who denied providence and made pleasure the end; the Sceptics of the Academy, who denied the possibility of knowledge. Cleanthes's task was to hold the school to Zeno's doctrine — the unity of virtue and reason, the governance of the world by the Logos — while the school was developing the physics and the logic that would make it a complete system.

His age was also the age in which the Stoic theology was being worked out. The early Stoics were materialists of a distinctive kind: the divine, the soul, the reason were all bodies, of a finer and more active kind, and the universe was a living whole permeated by the divine fire. Cleanthes's contribution was to give this physics its religious expression. Where Zeno had been mainly an ethicist, Cleanthes was the theologian of the early school, and his Hymn to Zeus — the only complete Stoic poem to survive — is the fullest statement of Stoic piety that antiquity has left us.

Core Ideas

The Hymn to Zeus

Cleanthes's Hymn to Zeus is the most important surviving document of early Stoic theology. It is a hymn of about sixty lines, addressed to Zeus, whom Cleanthes identifies with the Logos, the reason that governs the universe: "Most glorious of the immortals, many-named, ever all-powerful, Zeus, ruler of nature, governing all things by law." The hymn develops the central Stoic doctrines: the world is governed by a single rational principle; all things happen in accordance with its law, even the evil that befalls the wicked; and the wise man is the one who willingly follows the divine order, since, as the most famous line of the hymn puts it, "the fated may lead the willing, and drag the unwilling."

The hymn is remarkable for its combination of piety and philosophy. Cleanthes is not merely using the traditional language of Greek religion; he is giving it a philosophical content. Zeus is not a personal god in the traditional sense but the cosmic reason itself, and the hymn's prayer — "Deliver men from their grievous ignorance" — is the prayer of the philosopher for the correction of judgment, which is the Stoic definition of salvation.

The Doctrine of Fate and Freedom

The most famous passage of the hymn states the Stoic doctrine of fate: "Lead me, O Zeus, and thou, O Destiny, wherever you have appointed me to go, and I will follow without hesitation; but if I grow unwilling, I shall follow all the same." The lines, quoted by later Stoics and by the Roman Stoics above all, state the doctrine with perfect clarity: fate governs all, but the wise man's freedom consists in willing what is necessary. The formula — follow willingly or be dragged — became one of the most quoted sayings of the ancient world, and it is the origin of the modern image of the Stoic acceptance of fate.

The Activity of the Divine Fire

Cleanthes's physics developed the doctrine of the divine fire with special emphasis. For the early Stoics, the universe is a cycle: from the primal fire, the cosmos is generated; through its phases, it is dissolved back into fire at the conflagration (ekpyrosis); and the cycle begins again. Cleanthes contributed the account of the divine fire as an artisan fire, a principle that not only burns but works, shaping the cosmos as a craftsman shapes his material. The divine is thus not an unmoved mover but an active, immanent principle, "the fire of the craftsman, working methodically toward the generation of the cosmos."

Philosophy

Cleanthes's place in the history of Stoicism is that of the faithful transmitter and the theologian. He added little to the logic of the school — that was the work of his successor Chrysippus — and his physics was Zeno's, developed in a religious direction. But his importance is precisely in the fidelity that the tradition records: he held the school together during the difficult generation after the founder's death, and he preserved the religious and ethical core of the system when its rivals within the school were pulling it toward logic on one side and physics on the other.

His philosophy is thus best understood as the Stoic system in its devotional mode. The Stoics were sometimes accused of atheism, because their God was a material principle; Cleanthes's Hymn answers the charge by showing that the Stoic God can be the object of genuine piety. And his doctrine of fate gave the school its most memorable formula for the central Stoic attitude: the willing acceptance of necessity, which is the definition of inner freedom. The tradition records that Cleanthes, on being reproached for his slowness, replied that he was slow but sure — and the same may be said of his place in the school: he was not the most brilliant of the Stoics, but without him the school might not have survived.

Major Works

Cleanthes was a prolific author, and Diogenes Laertius preserves a list of his works that runs to fifty titles, most of them lost. The one complete survival is the Hymn to Zeus, preserved by Stobaeus. The fragments of his other works — including On the Chief Good, On Time, On the Elements, and the Introduction to Physics — are preserved in quotation by later authors, and they show him writing on physics, theology, ethics, and the interpretation of the myths. His lost work on Heraclitus was an important source for the Stoic doctrine of the Logos.

Famous Quotes

The most famous of Cleanthes's sayings is the formula of the Hymn: "Lead me, O Zeus, and thou, O Destiny, wherever you have appointed me to go, and I will follow without hesitation; but if I grow unwilling, I shall follow all the same." His definition of the end of life is reported as "living in agreement with nature," the formula he transmitted from Zeno. And his account of the divine fire is quoted by the Stoic doxographers: "The divine fire is an artisan fire, working methodically toward the generation of the cosmos."

Related Thinkers

Cleanthes was the pupil and successor of Zeno of Citium, whose doctrine he preserved and transmitted. His own pupil Chrysippus succeeded him as head of the school and became its greatest systematizer. The Hymn to Zeus was quoted by the Roman Stoics — by Seneca and by Epictetus, who cites Cleanthes with special reverence — and its formula of the willing acceptance of fate became one of the most quoted passages in the whole Stoic tradition.

Sources

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Stoicism" (plato.stanford.edu/entries/stoicism)
• Diogenes Laertius. Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Book VII. Trans. Pamela Mensch. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
• Long, A.A., and D.N. Sedley. The Hellenistic Philosophers, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
• Thom, Johan. Cleanthes' Hymn to Zeus: Text, Translation, and Commentary. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005.