Wisdom from the Early Stoics, Zeno of Citium 14

He showed the utmost endurance, and the greatest frugality; the food he used required no fire to dress, and the cloak he wore was thin. Hence it was said of him:

The cold of winter and the ceaseless rain 
Come powerless against him: weak the dart 
Of the fierce summer sun or racking pain 
To bend that iron frame. He stands apart 
Unspoiled by public feast and jollity: 
Patient, unwearied night and day doth he 
Cling to his studies of philosophy. 

Nay more: the comic poets by their very jests at his expense praised him without intending it. Thus Philemon says in a play, Philosophers:  

This man adopts a new philosophy. 
He teaches to go hungry: yet he gets 
Disciples. One sole loaf of bread his food; 
His best dessert dried figs; water his drink. 

Others attribute these lines to Poseidippus.  

By this time he had almost become a proverb. At all events, "More temperate than Zeno the philosopher" was a current saying about him. Poseidippus also writes in his Men Transported: 

So that for ten whole days 
More temperate than Zeno's self he seemed.

—Diogenes Laërtius, 7.27

IMAGE: Rembrandt, Seated Beggar and His Dog (1629)