“igneus est ollis vigor et cælestis origo,” with the solemn words of Eccles. xii. 7,
What the position of Cleanthes really was, in the sphere of religion, we can never fully ascertain; we possess his teaching only in fragments, and we cannot properly judge a thinker by the disjecta membra of his philosophy. But we seem to discover in Cleanthes, when we read his hymn[1] (was it written in early, middle, or later life?), a genuinely religious man, “bent on giving a theological interpretation of the world, and breathing a pious submission to the world-order which it is refreshing to feel and come in contact with” (Davidson, The Stoic Creed, p. 27). Notwithstanding the materialism apparent in his physical speculations, “he can yet infuse into his submission to the cosmic order such an amount of willing acquiescence as to give the impression of the deepest religious feeling” (ib., p. 229).[2] Lightfoot was justified in calling his hymn the noblest expression of heathen devotion which Greek literature has preserved to us. Nothing quite so impressive, of its kind, was ever again to appear in pagan history till, nearly half a millennium later, Stoicism was destined to produce its final and exquisite fruit in the Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius.
GREEK TEXT OF THE HYMN.
Ζεῦ, φύσεως ἀρχηγέ, νόμου μέτα πάντα κυβερνῶν,
χαῖρε· σὲ γὰρ πάντεσσι θέμις θνητοῖσι προσαυδᾶν.
ἐκ σοῦ γὰρ γένος ἐσμέν, ἑνὸς[3] μίμημα λαχόντες
- ↑ Which may be regarded as a summary of his whole theology.
- ↑ An ethical fervour of a high order is shown in the lines of Cleanthes (frag. 45) quoted by Eusebius, Præparatio Evangelica, 679ᶜ (ed. Gifford, 1903). [See “Added Note,” p. 16.]
- ↑ The MS. has ἤχου, which gives no sense. Bergk conjectures ὅλου. W. L. Newman conjectures ἀγοῦ (from ἀγός=a leader).
