Stoicism and the Principate

Abstract

The wide circulation of Stoic ideas among Romans of the upper class from the time of Panaetius in the second century B.C. to the reign of Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 161–80) is a familiar fact. Few Romans of note can indeed be marked down as committed Stoics, and even those like Seneca who avowedly belonged to the school borrowed ideas from other philosophies. Still, even if eclecticism was the mode, the Stoic element was dominant. Stoicism permeated the writings of authors like Virgil and Horace who professed no formal allegiance to the sect, and became part of the culture that men absorbed in their early education. One might think that it exercised an influence comparable in some degree with that which Christianity has often had on men ignorant or careless of the nicer points of systematic theology. It has often been supposed that it did much to humanize Roman law and government. That is a contention of which I should be rather sceptical, but it is not my present theme.