Posidonius
c. 135 – 51 BCE · Rhodes
Student of Panaetius and the most universally learned of the Stoics — astronomer, geographer, historian, ethnographer, and head of the school at Rhodes, where Cicero and Pompey both came to hear him lecture. He revised orthodox Stoic psychology by re-admitting irrational forces in the soul, anticipating Galen's later critique. Almost all of his vast output is lost; quotations survive in Cicero, Seneca, Galen, and Strabo.
Key works
- Histories — Continued Polybius; survives only in fragments cited by later authors.
- On the Passions — Argued against Chrysippus that the soul contains genuinely non-rational drives.
- On the Ocean — Geographical and physical treatise; reportedly measured the size of the Earth.
Selected passages
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Pain, thou art an evil; but no matter what thou art, I will never confess that thou art an evil.
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One day among the learned is worth more than the longest life of the ignorant.
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The cause of all our troubles is that we follow the lead of our fellows, judging things to be best when they are most in fashion.
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Pain is not an evil, but a thing to be endured. The wise man bears it with courage, knowing that it does not touch his soul.
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The passions are diseases of the soul, but they can be cured by the art of philosophy. The philosopher is the physician of the soul.
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The arts were invented by wise men, not by the crowd. The first inventors were philosophers, who sought to improve the life of man.
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The mind should be lifted above the things that agitate it. For it is not the things themselves that trouble us, but our opinions about them.
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The wise man will eat to live, not live to eat. He will take food as a medicine, not as a pleasure.
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The wise man is a citizen of the whole world. He considers all mankind as his country, and all men as his fellow-citizens.
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Posidonius held that the passions arise from an unruly power in the soul, and must be curbed by reason.