A set of fatalistic heathen philosophers so named from the Greek word signifying porch, or portico, because Zeno its founder, more than three centuries before Christ, held his school in a porch of the city of Athens. They placed the supreme happiness of man in living agreeably to nature and reason; affecting the same stiffness, patience, apathy, austerity, and insensibility as the Pharisee, whom they much resembled. They were in great repute at Athens when Paul visited that city, Ac 17:18.

a sect of Greek philosophers at Athens, so called from the Greek word stoa i.e., a "porch" or "portico," where they have been called "the Pharisees of Greek paganism." The founder of the Stoics was Zeno, who flourished about B.C. 300. He taught his disciples that a man's happiness consisted in bringing himself into harmony with the course of the universe. They were trained to bear evils with indifference, and so to be independent of externals. Materialism, pantheism, fatalism, and pride were the leading features of this philosophy.

Ac 17:18,29. The pantheists of antiquity, as the Epicureans were the atheists. Zeno of Citium founded the Stoic school, 280 B.C. The painted stoa or "portico" where he taught originated the name. Cleanthes and Chrysippus succeeded; Seneca popularized their tenets; Epictetus (A.D. 115), as a Stoic, gives their purest specimens of pagan morality; and the emperor Marcus Aurelius tried to realize them in his public conduct. But egotism and pride are at the root, whereas humility is at the foundation of Christianity. Individual autonomy is their aim, faith in the unseen God is the Christian's principle.

The Stoic bows to fate, the Christian rests on the personal providence of the loving Father. The Stoics had no notion of bodily resurrection, it is the Christian's grand hope. In common with the Stoics Paul denied the Epicurean notion of the world's resulting from chance, and a God far off and indifferent to human acts and sorrows; for, as the poet Aratus says, "in God we live, and move, and have our being"; but he agreed with the Epicureans, God "needs" nothing from us; but he rejects both Stoic and Epicurean doctrines in proclaiming God as the personal Giver to all of all they have, and the Creator of all, of one blood, and the providential Determiner of their times and places, and their final Judge; inferring the sinful absurdity of idolatry from the spiritual nature of God, which is that wherein man reflects His likeness as His child (not in visible body), and which cannot be represented by any outward image.

When St. Paul met representatives of the Stoic philosophy at Athens (Ac 17:18), that school had been in existence for about three centuries and a half. The name came from the Stoa or Porch where Zeno (about b.c. 340

A sect of the philosophers of Greece, founded by Zeno, and named after the Stoa, the porch at Athens where the philosopher assembled his pupils. He taught that there was one Supreme Being, but many subordinate gods, and that man had similar faculties to the gods. Intellect was to be their guide, and pleasures and pains of the body were not to be regarded. From this sect the English word 'stoic' is derived. Pantheism, fatalism, and pride were the leading features of the stoics. Some of such were among the audience Paul addressed at Athens. Ac 17:18.

Sto'ics.

The Stoics and Epicureans, who are mentioned together in

Ac 17:18

represent the two opposite schools of practical philosophy which survived the fall of higher speculation in Greece. The Stoic school was founded by Zeno of Citium (cir. B.C. 280) and derived its name from the painted "portico" (stoa) at Athens in which he taught. Zeno was followed by Cleanthes (cir. B.C. 260); Cleanthes by Chrysippus (cir. B.C. 240) who was regarded as the founder of the Stoic system. "They regarded God and the world as power and its manifestation matter being a passive ground in which dwells the divine energy. Their ethics were a protest against moral indifference, and to live in harmony with nature, conformably with reason and the demands of universal good, and in the utmost indifference to pleasure, pain and all external good or evil, was their fundamental maxim." --American Cyclopaedia. The ethical system of the Stoics has been commonly supposed to have a close connection with Christian morality; but the morality of stoicism is essentially based on pride, that of Christianity on humility; the one upholds individual independence, the other absolute faith in another; the one looks for consolation in the issue of fate, the other in Providence; the one is limited by Periods of cosmical ruin, the other is consummated in a personal resurrection.

Ac 17:18

But in spite of the fundamental error of stoicism, which lies in a supreme egotism, the teaching of this school gave a wide currency to the noble doctrines of the fatherhood of God, the common bonds of mankind, the sovereignty of the soul. Among their most prominent representatives were Zeno and Antipater of Tarsus, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius.

STOICS, a sect of Heathen philosophers, Ac 17:18. Their distinguishing tenets were, that God is underived, incorruptible, and eternal; possessed of infinite wisdom and goodness: the efficient cause of all the qualities and forms of things; and the constant preserver and governor of the world: That matter, in its original elements, is also underived and eternal; and is by the powerful energy of the Deity impressed with motion and form: That though God and matter subsisted from eternity, the present regular frame of nature had a beginning originating in the gross and dark chaos, and will terminate in a universal conflagration, that will reduce the world to its pristine state: That at this period all material forms will be lost in one chaotic mass; and all animated nature be reunited to the Deity: That from this chaotic state, however, the world will again emerge by the energy of the efficient principle; and gods, and men, and all forms of regulated nature be renewed and dissolved, in endless succession: And that after the revolution of the great year all things will be restored, and the race of men will return to life. Some imagined, that each individual would return to its former body; while others supposed, that similar souls would be placed in similar bodies. Those among the stoics who maintained the existence of the soul after death, supposed it to be removed into the celestial regions of the gods, where it remains until, at the general conflagration, all souls, both human and divine, shall be absorbed in the Deity. But many imagined that, before they were admitted among the divinities, they must purge away their inherent vices and imperfections, by a temporary residence in some aerial regions between the earth and the planets. According to the general doctrine of the stoics, all things are subject to a stern irresistible fatality, even the gods themselves. Some of them explained this fate as an eternal chain of causes and effects; while others, more approaching the Christian system, describe it as resulting from the divine decrees