Chapter 11 Aëtius, Stoic Physics, and Zeno
In: Aëtiana IVSearch for other papers by Anthony A. Long in
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Abstract
The purpose of this paper is a comparative assessment of Aëtius’s treatment of Stoic physics, focusing on a selection of his lemmata concerning central doctrines of the school. After outlining the general scope of his Stoic doxography and comparing it with material in Diogenes Laertius and Arius Didymus, I turn to Aëtius’s accounts of Stoic cosmology and theology. The accuracy of his detailed report on the attributes of Stoic god is confirmed by its replication in all our main sources, including Cicero, who is the earliest of such authors. I propose that the congruity of testimony may be explained by the hypothesis that Zeno’s work On the Universe underlay the doxographical tradition on Stoic theology. I conclude with a brief study of Aëtius’s reports on Zeno’s doctrines of soul and seed.