Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​He used to say that nothing is more alien to the grasp of the sciences than conceit, and that there is nothing of which we are so much in want as time. When asked what a friend is, he said: "Another self." They say he was once scourging a slave for theft; and when the slave said, "It was fated for me to steal," Zeno said: "And to be flayed." He said that beauty is the flower of temperance (though others say that temperance is the flower of beauty). Having observed a young slave of one of his acquaintances covered in welts, he said to the acquaintance: "I see the traces of your temper." To the man anointed with perfume he said: "Who is it that smells of a woman?" When Dionysius the Renegade asked him why he corrected everyone else but not him alone, he said: "Because I do not trust you." To the babbling youth he said: "For this reason we have two ears and one mouth, so that we may hear more and speak less."

​Reclining in silence at a symposium, he was asked the reason; he told the man who reproached him to report to the king that there was present someone who knew how to keep silent. Now those who questioned him were ambassadors who had arrived from Ptolemy and wanted to learn what they should report from him to the king. When asked how he stood toward abuse, he said: "Just as if an ambassador were sent back without an answer." Apollonius of Tyre says that when Crates was dragging him by the cloak away from Stilpo, Zeno said: "O Crates, the proper handle for philosophers is by the ears; so persuade me and drag me by these; but if you use force on me, my body will be with you, but my soul with Stilpo."

​He also spent time with Diodorus, as Hippobotus says, with whom he worked out dialectic. When he was already making progress, he also attended Polemo because of his lack of pretension, so that they say Polemo said: "You do not escape my notice, Zeno, slipping in by the garden doors and stealing my doctrines, dressing them up in Phoenician fashion." And to the dialectician who demonstrated to him seven dialectical varieties in the Reaper Argument, when Zeno inquired how much fee he charged and heard a hundred drachmas, he gave him two hundred; such love of learning did he practice. They say that he was also the first to name 'duty' (kathekon) and to compose a treatise on it. He also used to transcribe Hesiod's lines in this way: "That man is altogether best who obeys one speaking well, and noble too is he who understands all things by himself."

​For he said that the one who is able to listen well to what is said and to make use of it is better than the one who has understood everything by himself; for to the latter belongs only understanding, but to the one who has been well persuaded action is also added. When asked, they say, why though austere he unbent in drinking, he said: "Lupines too, being bitter, turn sweet when soaked." Hecato also says in the second book of his Maxims that he relaxed in such gatherings. He also used to say that it is better to slip with the feet than with the tongue. And that the good comes about by a little, yet is not itself a little thing (though others attribute this to Socrates).

​He was most enduring and frugal, eating uncooked food and wearing a thin cloak, so that it was said of him: "Him neither chilling winter nor boundless rain nor solar flame subdues, nor dire disease, nor does the pleasure of the populace strip his vigor, but unwearied he is stretched night and day around his teaching." Indeed, the comic poets unwittingly praised him through their mockery. Thus Philemon says as follows in the play The Philosophers: "One loaf of bread, dried figs for relish, water to drink. For he philosophizes a new philosophy; he teaches hunger and takes pupils;" though others say this is by Posidippus. And by this time it had almost passed into a proverb. At any rate, it was said of him: "More temperate than Zeno the philosopher." And Posidippus in The Men Being Transferred says: "so that in ten days he seemed to be more temperate than Zeno."