The introduction of Stoicism at Rome was the most momentous of the many changes that it saw. After the first sharp collision with the jealousy of the national authori ties it found a ready acceptance, and made rapid progress amongst the noblest families. It has been well said that the old heroes of the republic were unconscious Stoics, fitted by their narrow ness, their stern simplicity and devotion to duty for the almost Semitic earnestness of the new doctrine. In Greece its insensi bility to art and the cultivation of life was a fatal defect ; not so with the shrewd men of the world, desirous of qualifying as ad vocates or jurists. It supplied them with an incentive to scientific research in archaeology and grammar; it penetrated jurispru dence until the belief in the ultimate identity of the jus gentium with the law of nature modified the praetor's edicts for centuries. Even to the prosaic religion of old Rome, with its narrow original conception and multitude of burdensome rites, it became in some sort a support. Scaevola, following Panaetius, explained that the prudence of statesmen had established this public institution in the service of order midway between the errors of popular super stition and the barren truths of enlightened philosophy. Soon the influence of the pupils reacted upon the doctrines taught. Of speculative interest the ordinary Roman had as little as may be; for abstract discussion and controversy he cared nothing. In different to the scientific basis or logical development of doctrines, he selected from various writers and from different schools what he found most serviceable. All had to be simplified and disen gaged from technical subtleties. To attract his Roman pupils Panaetius would naturally choose simple topics susceptible of rhetorical treatment or of application to individual details. He was the representative, not merely of Stoicism, but of Greece and Greek literature, and would feel pride in introducing its greatest masterpieces : amongst all that he studied, he valued most the writings of Plato. He admired the classic style, the exquisite purity of language, the flights of imagination, but he admired above all the philosophy. He marks a reaction of the genuine Hellenic spirit against the austerity of the first Stoics.
The writings of the later Stoics have come down to us, if not entire, in great part, so that Seneca, Cornutus, Persius, Lucan, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius are known at first hand. They do not profess to give a scientific exposition of doc trine, and may therefore be dismissed somewhat briefly (see EPICTETUS and MARCUS AURELIUS). We learn much more about the Stoic system from the scanty fragments of the first founders, or even from the epitomes of Diogenes Laertius and Stobaeus, than from these writers. They testify to the restriction of phi losophy to the practical side, and to the increasing tendency, ever since Panaetius, towards a relaxation of the rigorous ethical doc trine and its approximation to the form of religious conviction. This finds most marked expression in the doctrines of submission to Providence and universal philanthropy. Only in this way could they hold their ground, however insecurely, in face of the re ligious reaction of the Ist century. In passing to Rome, Stoicism quitted the school for actual life. The fall of the republic was a gain, for it released so much intellectual activity from civic duties. The life and death of Cato fired the imagination of a degenerate age in which he stood out both as a Roman and a Stoic. To a long line of illustrious successors, men like Thrasea Paetus and Helvidius Priscus, Cato bequeathed his resolute opposition to the dominant power of the times; unsympathetic, impracticable, but fearless in demeanour, they were a standing reproach to the cor ruption and tyranny of their age. But when at first, under Au
gustus, the empire restored order, philosophy became bolder and addressed every class in society, public lectures and spiritual direction being the two forms in which it mainly showed activity. Books of direction were written by Sextius in Greek (as after wards by Seneca in Latin), almost the only Roman who had the ambition to found a sect, though in ethics he mainly followed Stoicism. His contemporary Papirius Fabianus was the popular lecturer of that day, producing a powerful effect by his denuncia tions of the manners of the time. Under Tiberius, Sotion and Attalus were attended by crowds of hearers.
Seneca is the most prominent leader in the direction which Roman Stoicism now took. His penetrating intellect had mastered the subtleties of the system of Chrysippus, but they seldom appear in his works, at least without, apology. Incidentally we meet there with the doctrines of Pneuma and of tension, of the corporeal nature of the virtues and the affections, and much more to the same effect. But his attention is claimed for physics chiefly as a means of elevating the mind, and as making known the wis dom of Providence and the moral government of the world. To reconcile the ways of God to man had been the ambition of Chrysippus, as we know from Plutarch's criticisms. He argued plausibly that natural evil was a thing indifferent—that even moral evil was required in the divine economy as a foil to set off good. The really difficult problem why the prosperity of the wicked and the calamity of the just were permitted under the divine government he met in various ways : sometimes he alleged the forgetfulness of higher powers ; sometimes he fell back upon the necessity of these contrasts and grotesque passages in the comedy of human life. Seneca gives the true Stoic answer in his treatise On Providence: the wise man cannot really meet with misfortune; all outward calamity is a divine instrument of train ing, designed to exercise his powers and teach the world the in difference of external conditions. In the soul Seneca recognizes an effluence of the divine spirit, a god in the human frame ; in virtue of this he maintains the essential dignity and internal free dom of man in every human being. Yet, in striking contrast to this orthodox tenet is his vivid conception of the weakness and misery of men, the hopelessness of the struggle with evil, whether in society or in the individual. Thus he describes the body (which, after Epicurus, he calls the flesh) as a mere husk or fetter or prison of the soul; with its departure begins the soul's true life. Sometimes, too, he writes as if he accepted an irrational as well as a rational part of the soul. In ethics, if there is no novelty of doctrine, there is a surprising change in the mode of its applica tion. The ideal sage has receded; philosophy comes as a phy sician, not to the whole but to the sick. We learn that there are various classes of patients in "progress"
i.e., on their way to virtue, making painful efforts towards it. The first stage is the eradication of vicious habits : evil tendencies are to be cor rected, and a guard kept on the corrupt propensities of the reason. Suppose this achieved, we have yet to struggle with single attacks of the passions : irascibility may be cured, but we may succumb to a fit of rage. To achieve this second stage the impulses must be trained in such a way that the fitness of things indifferent may be the guide of conduct. Even then it remains to give the will that property of rigid infallibility without which we are always liable to err, and this must be effected by the training of the judgment.