The Death of Marcus Aurelius

The Death of Marcus Aurelius

Wednesday, May 10, 2023

Wisdom from the Early Stoics, Zeno of Citium 59


Amongst the virtues some are primary, some are subordinate to these. 

The following are the primary: wisdom, courage, justice, temperance. 

Particular virtues are magnanimity, continence, endurance, presence of mind, good counsel. 

And wisdom they define as the knowledge of things good and evil and of what is neither good nor evil.

Courage as knowledge of what we ought to choose, what we ought to beware of, and what is indifferent. 

Justice . . . 

Magnanimity as the knowledge or habit of mind which makes one superior to anything that happens, whether good or evil equally. 

Continence as a disposition never overcome in that which concerns right reason, or a habit which no pleasures can get the better of.  

Endurance as a knowledge or habit which suggests what we are to hold fast to, what not, and what is indifferent. 

Presence of mind as a habit prompt to find out what is meet to be done at any moment. 

Good counsel as knowledge by which we see what to do and how to do it if we would consult our own interests. 

Similarly, of vices some are primary, others subordinate: e.g. folly, cowardice, injustice, profligacy are accounted primary; but incontinence, stupidity, ill-advisedness subordinate. 

Further, they hold that the vices are forms of ignorance of those things whereof the corresponding virtues are the knowledge. 

—Diogenes Laërtius, 7.92-93 





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