Also important in this connection are their views about the need for an integrated philosophical curriculum, the teaching of practical ethics, and the relationship between philosophical theory and conventional beliefs and practices.
Context and History
Stoicism, like its great rival, Epicureanism, emerged in Athens at the start of the third century BCE. Through the activities of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, Athens had become by this date the main center of philosophy in Greece, indeed in the ancient Mediterranean world. Two major "schools" of philosophy had been established, in the Academy (by Plato and his successors) and in the Lyceum (by Aristotle and his successors). Two more schools emerged, that of Epicurus (based in his house and garden outside the city) and that of Zeno, based in the Painted Stoa in Athens.
Though intellectually sophisticated and covering complex fields of knowledge, these schools were highly informal as institutions. They functioned as research groups for likeminded independent scholars and provided public lectures and more sustained courses of teaching for interested young people and adults. The philosophical schools, alongside the rhetorical schools (their more successful and more "mainstream" rivals) offered what could be considered as higher or university-level education. The teachers and students were predominantly (though not entirely) males; the students were mostly (though not invariably) from the upper classes in the Greek-speaking world. Stoicism and Epicureanism, together with other, still more informal, groups such as the Cynics, also represented a distinct set of ethical attitudes, way of life and world view.
Zeno (c.334-262 BCE), the founder of the Stoic school, was strongly influenced, in ideas and approach, by Socrates; his decision to teach in a public colonnade near the city center represented a renewal of the Socratic style of teaching by argument with all comers. During his lifetime, Zeno was strongly challenged by others, notably Aristo, who claimed, like Zeno, to be capturing the heart of the Socratic ethical message.
After his death, Zeno was regarded as the clear leader of a new philosophical movement, and his ideas were developed and systematized by subsequent leaders of the school, notably Chrysippus, the greatest Stoic theorist (280-207 BCE). However, debate about the core doctrines and their implications continued thoughout the third and second centuries BCE; Stoicism also developed through argument with other schools, notably the Academic (Platonic) school. In the early first century BCE, Athens ceased to be the main center of philosophy, and Stoicism, like other philosophies, was taught and studied throughout the main cities of the Eastern (Greek-speaking) Mediterranean, now dominated by Rome, and at Rome itself. Stoicism, in this more widespread and diffused form, became the most influential of Greek philosophies during the first and second centuries CE. Subsequently, Stoicism was eclipsed in antiquity by revived forms of Platonism and Aristotelianism and by Christianity, though Stoic thought continued to influence all three traditions.
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