CLEANTIIF.S (KAnisees) was the successor of Zeno of Citium in the Stole school, and was himself succeeded by his pupil Chrysippns. As Zeno died in Le. 263 or 259, the period of Cleanthes Is approxi matively determined by that fact. [Zee° of Citinrn.] Cleanthea was a native of Arius in the Treed, and originally a boxer. He came to Athens with four drachmas (about 3e.) in his pocket, and began to attend the lectures of Zeno. As lie had to pay his teacher a small fee, and at the emu time to gsin his livelihood, he used to draw water for the gardens about Athens in the night, and also grind corn. There is a story that he was brought before the Areopagus in order to show what his means of subsistence were, and he proved that he was an honest man by producing as witnesses the gardener and the mealman for whom he worked, whereupon the Areopagus voted bins a present of ten mimu, which however Zeno would not allow him to receive. Ten minas seems rather a large sum for the Areopagus to vote on such occasion; and it is not said whether they had a fund for remune rating persons who were brought before them on groundless charges. Cleanthes attended the lessons of Zeno for nineteen years. Ile was slow of comprehension, but very laborious, whence be got the name of the second Hercules. Though he did not learn quick, he kept what he got. He was n copious writer : a list of his numerous treatises is preserved by Diogenes Laertius. Nothing is known of his works, except that wo may collect that ho indulged in the subtleties of discussion ; but it does not appear that he did much towards the extension or improvement (if the Stoic doctrines : that was done by his pupil Chrynippus. But the stern character of Cleantlies was well
adapted to give stability to the doctrines of Zeno. The story of his death is characteristic. He had a swelling in his jaw, and at the advice of physicians he abstained from food, and the complaint began to abate. The physicians told him that he might now take Ids usual food, but he remarked that he had already gone a good part of the journey, and so he continued fasting till be died, at the age of eighty, or of ninety-nine, according to Lncian and Valerina Maximus.
tleanthes is the anther of a hymn to Jupiter in Greek hexameters, which was first published by Fulvius Uremia, at the end of the 'Fragments of the Nine Illustrious Women and of the Lyric Poets,' Antwerp, 1568, 8vo. It is printed in Cudworth's Intellectual Sys tem,' with a Latin poetical version by Duport. The last edition is by Cornea, in his edition of the ' Euchiridion of Epictetus,' Paris 1826, 8vo.
The hymn of Clean thee has always been a favourite with Christian philosophers; but the true understanding of it, as Ritter remarks, can only be reached by looking at it from the Stoical point of view.
(Diogenes Isiertiue, Oleanders; Fabricius, Biblioth. Greet., iii. 550; Ritter, Geschichtc der Philosophic, iii, 521.)