Zeno of Citium

Zeno of Citium, from Cyprus, founded Stoicism — so named because he taught in the Stoa Poikile, the 'Painted Porch' of Athens. A merchant turned philosopher (after a shipwreck, the story goes, that cost him everything and gave him philosophy), he built a complete system of logic, physics, and ethics.

Its heart was the teaching that the cosmos is a single rational whole governed by the divine Logos, and that the good life is to live 'in agreement with nature' — that is, with reason — so that virtue alone is good and the passions are to be mastered. His successors, above all Chrysippus, systematised the school.