Misrepresenting Stoicism

I have spent my life teaching the liberal arts, philosophy, history, and literature. I never cease to be amazed by the ignorance, and yes, even sometimes the malice, of my fellows toward Stoicism. I recently found the following quote from an established, tweed-wearing, reactionary Catholic academic:

"Most historians agree that Rome's decline started with the importation of Greek slaves, who brought alien ideas from Greece to Rome."

I have been reading history my whole life, and I've never heard that theory. I know that Gibbon primarily blamed Christianity for the decline of Rome, but to blame the Greeks?

"The Roman fathers gave over their responsibility to their Greek captives, who taught their children a philosophy alien to the Natural Law philosophy of the Romans."

I'm sorry, where do we find any textual evidence that the Romans, a deeply pragmatic, and hardly philosophical people, ever argued for Natural Law? The idea of Natural Law itself is from the Greeks, from the Platonists, the Peripatetics, and the Stoics.

"The natural qualities of modesty, bravery, constancy, prudence, and industry of the Roman home and hearth collapsed under the teachings of the Stoics."

Again, those virtues were clearly defined by the Greeks, while the Romans were still building sand castles. I wonder if the gentleman has ever read a single line from any Stoic philosopher, because these are exactly the virtues that the Stoics proclaim. I have never read of a Stoic proclaiming that a man should be cowardly. disloyal, ignorant, or lazy.

Sir, what have you been reading?

"Moral and intellectual errors set in, and the Roman world started in decline."

As with any and all cultural declines, we can offer many factors. But I do agree with this fellow, that the primary reason for the decline of any society, or the decline of any individual person, is a moral and intellectual one.

Stoicism was always a philosophy that encouraged the Cardinal Virtues, something the Romans adapted, but most certainly did not invent. They learned it precisely from their Greek predecessors. Greek philosophy helped to civilize Rome, and it would be foolhardy to blame the Greeks for the greed and lust for power that destroyed Rome. Vice destroyed Rome, and the Philosophers, those horrible Greeks, warned them about it from day one.

Cicero, Seneca, or Marcus Aurelius are, in my mind, examples of the greatest Romans. They owe much of who they were, and what they did, to the entire tradition of Greek, and of Stoic, philosophy.

Pardon my French, but I call bullshit. We all have our scapegoats. Let's blame the Jews, the Blacks, the Gypsies. I have to laugh, because I'd never heard the claim that those darn Greeks, with their free-thinking philosophy, destroyed Rome.

Rome destroyed itself because of its pride, arrogance, and avarice. The Stoics taught us to avoid those things. I could well claim that Rome fell precisely because it did not follow the teachings of the Stoics.

Written in 02/1998