We can assume that the ancient and medieval copyists generally found the works of the later Roman Stoics to be more profitable reading than the works of Zeno and the Greek Stoics. There is a certain randomness in what ancients works survived and which did not. Maybe some freezing monks used the pages of Stoic philosophers to kindle their winter fires. Many of the fragments quoted can be found at, sometime later I will try to purchase some of these works and comment on the work as a whole. Unfortunately, all of these works, save a few fragments found or quoted, are all lost in the sands of history. If we want to learn more than his summaries, Diogenes provides us long lists of the works written by each of these Stoic philosophers. We know for sure that the main works of Zeno were studied by the Romans, as Seneca explicitly mentions studying the works of Zeno. The only primary source, other than scattered fragments, for the Greek Stoic philosophers is Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of the Eminent Philosophers.” Many of the philosophers he discusses are only known through Diogenes, and the works of many others, like Zeno and the other Stoic philosophers in Book 7, must be sampled through the summaries of their views by Diogenes. Such is the case for the Greek founder of Stoicism, Zeno of Citium, in the third century BC. Sometimes all we have is one problematic source for important people and events in ancient history. When we study ancient history, often we are frustrated by the paucity or under-abundance of ancient primary sources.
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