Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

IV. STOICISM IN HISTORY
HISTORICALLY, Stoicism belongs to the age of the
Diadochi; the career of Alexander was ended before
Zeno repaired to Athens and enrolled himself among
the disciples of Crates. The conquests of Alexander
changed the moral as well as the political
outlook of
Hellenism ; for ethically, as well as socially, it became
impossible any longer to regard the TroAis as the supreme
unit of morality. The conception of the state enlarged
to that of the nation, and nationality became cosmo-
politan
in its field of exercise.
'
Hellenism '
was no
longer restricted to the cities and colonies of Greece,
but was called upon to realise itself as a social and
intellectual entity from the ^Egean to the Indies. The
reconstruction of Ethics was immediate and fundamental.
In Plato it is a standing assumption that the city is '
nature '
morality ;
by
the Greatest Common Measure of individual
in Aristotle the same idea still dominates the
field of ethics, and moral prerogative is intimately bound
up with civic status ;
'
natural '
obligation is not identical
for the slave and for the freeman, towards the citizen
and towards the alien.
Greek ethics from the first expressed realised con-
ditions of Greek life ;
and the changes of formula that are