1. Cleanthes, of Assos, was a Greek Stoic philosopher and boxer who was the successor to Zeno of Citium as the second head of the Stoic school in Athens.
15 Facts About Cleanthes
1. 2.
Cleanthes supported himself by working as a water-carrier at night.
3.
Cleanthes originated new ideas in Stoic physics, and developed Stoicism in accordance with the principles of materialism and pantheism.
4.
Cleanthes's pupil was Chrysippus who became one of the most important Stoic thinkers.
5.
Cleanthes was born in Assos in the Troad, about 330 BC.
6.
Cleanthes continued to support himself by the labour of his own hands.
7.
Simplicius, writing in the 6th century AD, mentions that a statue of Cleanthes was still visible at Assos, which had been erected by the Roman Senate.
8.
Cleanthes was an important figure in the development of Stoicism, and stamped his personality on the physical speculations of the school, and by his materialism gave a unity to the Stoic system.
9.
Cleanthes wrote some fifty works, of which only fragments have survived preserved by writers such as Diogenes Laertius, Stobaeus, Cicero, Seneca and Plutarch.
10.
Cleanthes revolutionized Stoic physics by the theory of tension which distinguished Stoic materialism from all conception of matter as dead and inert.
11.
Cleanthes developed Stoic pantheism, and applied his materialistic views to logic and ethics.
12.
Cleanthes taught that souls live on after death, but that the intensity of its existence would vary according to the strength or weakness of the particular soul.
13.
Cleanthes regarded the Sun as being divine; because the Sun sustains all living things, it resembled the divine fire which animated all living beings, hence it too must be part of the vivifying fire or aether of the universe.
14.
The largest surviving fragment of Cleanthes is the portion of the Hymn to Zeus, which has been preserved in Stobaeus, in which he declares praise and honour of Zeus to be the highest privilege of all rational beings.
15.
Cleanthes appears in Jose Enrique Rodo's essay Ariel, in which he is depicted as meditating on the teachings of Zeno as he carried water all through the night.