Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​Appointed to the office for 〈the making of the crown and the〉 building of the tomb were Thrason of Anacaia, Philocles of Peiraeus, Phaedrus of Anaphlystus, Medon of Acharnae, Micythus of Sypalettus, and Dion of Paeania. And so stands the decree. Antigonus of Carystus says that Zeno never denied that he was a Citian. For when he was one of those contributing to the repair of the bath-house and was being inscribed on the stele as 'Zeno the philosopher,' he requested that 'the Citian' be added as well. Once, having made a hollow lid for his oil-flask, he carried coin inside it, so that his teacher Crates might have a ready supply for necessities.

​They say that he arrived in Greece with more than a thousand talents, and lent this money out on maritime loans. He used to eat small loaves and honey, and drank a little fragrant wine. He consorted rarely with youths, and only once or twice with some maidservant, so as not to seem a woman-hater; and he shared a house with Persaeus. When Persaeus brought a little flute-girl into his presence, Zeno pulled her along and took her back to Persaeus. He was also, they say, easy to get along with, so that King Antigonus often caroused with him and went along with him on a revel to the house of Aristocles the citharode, though Zeno would afterward slip away.

​He also avoided, they say, the multitude, so as to seat himself at the end of a bench, gaining at least the removal of annoyance from one side. Nor indeed did he walk about with more than two or three companions. At times he even collected small bronze coins from those standing around him, so that they, fearing to give, would not annoy him, as Cleanthes says in his work On Bronze; and when a crowd gathered around him, pointing to the circular wooden railing of the altar at the end of the Stoa, he said: "This once stood in the middle, but because it got in the way it was set aside; so you too, having removed yourselves from our midst, will annoy us less." When Demochares, son of Laches, greeted him and said that he should tell and write to Antigonus whatever he needed, as the king would provide everything, Zeno, on hearing this, no longer associated with him.

​It is said that after Zeno's death Antigonus said what an audience he had lost; wherefore he also, through Thrason as envoy, requested from the Athenians the burial for him in the Ceramicus. And when asked why he admired him, "Because," he said, "though many and great gifts were offered to him by me, he was never puffed up nor ever seen to demean himself." He was also investigative and rigorous in all things; wherefore Timon in the Silli speaks of him thus: "And I saw a Phoenician woman, a greedy crone in shadowy pride, longing for all things; but her basket had run down, small though it was; and she had less sense than a tindapsos."

​He also diligently disputed with Philo the dialectician and studied with him; whence Philo was admired by the younger Zeno no less than was his own teacher Diodorus. There were also about him certain squalid and naked beggars, as Timon too says: "Until he gathered a cloud of paupers, who beyond all others were the most beggarly and light-headed mortals of the citizens." He was himself grim and bitter, with a pinched expression on his face. He was exceedingly frugal, clinging to a barbarian pettiness under the pretext of household management. If he rebuked anyone, it was restrainedly and not bluntly, but from a distance; I mean as he once spoke concerning the dandy.

​For when this man was hesitatingly stepping across a small ditch, Zeno said: "Rightly do you look askance at the mud; for in it you cannot behold your own reflection." When a Cynic who claimed to have no oil in his flask begged some of him, Zeno said he would not give it; yet as the man departed, Zeno bid him consider which of the two was the more shameless. Being erotically inclined toward Chremonides, when both he and Cleanthes sat down beside him, Zeno got up; and when Cleanthes expressed surprise, he said: "I hear from good physicians that quiet is the best remedy for inflamed parts." Once, when two men were reclining at a drinking party and the one lying next to Zeno kicked the man below himself with his foot, Zeno struck that man with his knee. When the man turned around, Zeno said: "How then do you think the man below you feels at your hands?"