The Death of Marcus Aurelius

The Death of Marcus Aurelius

Saturday, December 2, 2023

Wisdom from the Early Stoics, Zeno of Citium 65


And the Stoics say that only the morally beautiful is good. So Hecato in his treatise On Goods, book III, and Chrysippus in his work On the Morally Beautiful

They hold, that is, that virtue and whatever partakes of virtue consists in this: which is equivalent to saying that all that is good is beautiful, or that the term "good" has equal force with the term "beautiful," which comes to the same thing. 

"Since a thing is good, it is beautiful; now it is beautiful, therefore it is good." 

They hold that all goods are equal and that all good is desirable in the highest degree and admits of no lowering or heightening of intensity. 

Of things that are, some, they say, are good, some are evil, and some neither good nor evil, that is, morally indifferent. 

—Diogenes Laërtius, 7.101 

IMAGE: Jean-Jacques-Francois Le Barbier, Chasing Butterflies, An Allegory of Beauty Attempting to Restrain Inconstancy (1810) 



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