Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

iv STOICISM IN HISTORY Ixxxvii
philosophy and to influence standards of action and
sentiment, Stoicism proper was an affair of the schools.
It was academic before it could become practical ;
was necessary for it to submit theory to the checks of
experience, before it could command allegiance from
the householder, the citizen, and the statesman, as well
as the scholar and recluse. But in its Athenian home,
engaged in stimulating controversy with rival schools of
thought, strengthening defences, abandoning untenable
positions, and mellowing the individualist paradoxes
of Cynism by maturer conceptions of social aim and
obligation, it prepared itself for larger destinies.
In the historic embassy, which proceeded from
Athens to Rome in 155 B.C., to plead for toleration to
philosophers, the Stoic School was represented by
Diogenes ; but its first effective apostle was Panaetius of
Rhodes, who, a few years later, introduced it at Rome
under the most favourable auspices. A man of means
and culture, belonging to one of the oldest and most
distinguished families of Rhodes, Panaetius devoted himself
by deliberate predilection, not by any accident or
secondary motive, to the lifelong pursuit of philosophy.
At Athens, after hearing the best masters of the day,
he attached himself to the Stoic School, of which he
was eventually to become the recognised head. Like
Polybius, he became a member of that Scipionic circle
which first naturalised Hellenic culture at Rome, and
by travel as well as domestic intercourse formed ties of
special intimacy with the younger Scipio. Rome and
Athens were almost equally the centres of his activity,
and through him the Stoic philosophy, in a somewhat
it