Eros in government: Zeno and the virtuous city

Classical Quarterly

Volumn 48, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 168-174

  Boys Stones, George ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 33947415739     PISSN: 00098388     EISSN: 14716844     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/cq/48.1.168     Document Type: Article

References (15)

1. and Philodemus says that some Stoics tried to excuse the embarrassingly 'Cynical' elements of the work (such as its notorious tolerance towards incest, for example) on the grounds that Zeno was very young when he wrote the work (de Stoicis 9.1-3 in the edition of T. Dorandi, Cronache Ercolanesi 12 [1982], 91-133)
2. Cf. J.M.Rist, Stoic Philosophy (Cambridge, 1969), p. 64
3. P.Steinmetz in H. Flashar (ed.), Grudriss der Geschichte der Philosophie 4 (Basel, 1994), p. 522
4. But strong reasons to doubt this evidence have been adduced by A.Erskine (The Hellenistic Stoa [Ithaca, 1990], pp. 9-15)
5. Cf. I.Hadot, 'Tradition Stoicienne et Idées Politiques au Temps des Gracques', Revue des Études Latines 48 (1970), 133-79, at p. 150
6. Plutarch, Lycurgus 17-18 (esp. 17.1, 18.4)
7. See M.Schofield, The Stoic Idea of the City (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 34-42
8. with K.J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality (London, 1978), pp. 201-2
9. Schofield admits the difficulty of this claim on his interpretation, and concludes that Athenaeus has mistakenly interpolated the point about freedom into Pontianus' account of Zeno (The Stoic Idea of the City, pp. 48-56)
10. Cf. F.Lasserre, La Figure d'Eros dans la Poésie Grecque (Lausanne, 1946), pp. 130-49
11. In Hesiod (Theogony 116-22 with M. L. West, Hesiod: Theogony [Oxford, 1966], pp. 195-6), as in the fifth-century mythographer Acusilaus (9 Bl-3 [D.-K.]), Earth and Eros are the first beings to emerge from Chaos
12. Eros also played an important role in Orphic cosmology, where he had been identified early on with Phanes as (Orpheus frr. 74, 82 [Kern] with M. L. West, The Orphic Poem [Oxford, 1983], p. 203
13. and Sanchuniathon of Beirut (apud Philo Byblos, FGrH IIIC 790, F2, pp. 806, 15-807,9), both of which involve personified Desire.) Pherecydes (7 B3 [D.-K.]) is reported to have said that Zas (Zeus) became Eros in order to create the world out of opposites, bringing and to the whole - but the accuracy of this report has been questioned: see West, Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient (Oxford, 1971), p. 17
14. and G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge, 1983), p. 62 ad fr. 54, where it is suggested, perhaps significantly in the light of my argument, that the fragment represents a 'palpably Stoic interpretation'
15. And cf. Erskine, The Hellenistic Stoa, pp. 44-5