From Competitor to Hero: The Stoics on Socrates

It is commonly held that Zeno of Citium founded the Stoa in the wake of Socrates, and that from that point on the Stoics took themselves to be Socratics. This view gained added credence thanks to A.A. Long; forty years earlier M. Pohlenz claimed that the Stoics drew their image of Socrates from Xenophon’s writings and saw in him their spiritual ancestor. This chapter criticizes this view. Zeno did not regard himself as a Socratic, and he conceived his philosophy as an explicit alternative to Socratism. The first leaders of the Stoa followed the founder of the school. Only in the so-called Middle and Imperial Stoa did the position on Socrates change, Socrates becoming an exemplum. But this was the result of a process that cannot be projected back upon Zeno without anachronism.