legitimate offshoot. The majesty of mind, the high ideal of a life in accordance with reason and untrammelled by self-interest, the strong sense of a personal conscience, the doctrine that a man's soul was an emanation from the Deity—all these tenets might have been held by Plato or his master. But the Stoic disregarded, if he did not disbelieve in, the immortality of the soul; and suicide, which Plato held cowardly and impious, was looked upon by Seneca and Epictetus as an easy and justifiable refuge against all the evils of life.
Zeno was the first who lectured at Athens in the Painted Porch, which gave its name (Stoa) to the sect. His pupil Cleanthes—so slow and sure that his master compared his memory to a leaden tablet, difficult to write upon but retaining an indelible impression—carried out in actual practice the principles of his training, drawing water and kneading dough the whole night long, that he might have leisure for philosophy in the day-time. Chrysippus followed, the second founder of the "Porch," who is said to have written upwards of seven hundred volumes; and lastly Posidonius, the most learned of all, whose lectures at Rhodes were heard both by Cicero and Pompey.
Rome was naturally the home of Stoicism. The pride and "majestic egotism" which was their ideal of virtue, suited stern and zealous characters like Cato or Cornutus; and this pride, when softened by religious sentiment, produced the noblest examples of pagan philosophy in the Emperor Marcus Aurelius and the slave Epictetus. But though Stoicism could raise up
