Zeno (342–270 B.C.), founder of the Stoic philosophy, a native of Citium in Cyprus. His father was a merchant, and it is said that some stray writings of the Socratic school he brought with him in his trading voyages made Zeno a philosopher. At two- and-twenty he came to Athens, attaching himself first to the Cynic Crates. But he soon became dissatisfied with the Cynics' conventional disregard for conventionality and indifference to speculative inquiry, and next joined the school of the Megaric Stilpo. Still unsatisfied he betook himself to Polemo the Academician; and having thus made himself master of the tenets of the various schools, he proceeded to open a school for himself in the 'Painted Porch' (Stoa Poikilē). Here he taught, honoured by all, until in extreme old age he voluntarily put an end to his life.
See STOICISM; also Zeller, Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics (Eng. trans. 1870); R. Hirzel, Untersuchungen zu Cicero's phil. Schriften (vol. ii. 1882); and A. C. Pearson's Fragments of Zeno and Cleanthes (Camb. 1891).