Some Foreign Influences in Greek Thought

Extract

There is a quarter of the eastern Mediterranean which has been singularly fertile in the history of thought. Place yourself, in time, in the four centuries from 300 b.c. to a.d. 100: place yourself, in space, on the island of Cyprus, and look northwards to Cilicia, eastwards to northern Syria, and south-eastwards to Phoenicia; and then so placed and so looking, you will find a constellation of many stars. From Citium in Cyprus came Zeno, a Hellenized Phoenician, as Mr. Bevan has called him, who founded the Stoic school. From Soli, in Cilicia, to the north, came Chrysippus, the systematizer of Stoicism. From the neighbouring city of Tarsus came Zeno the Second, the successor to Chrysippus as master of the Porch; and from Tarsus there also came a Hellenized Hebrew (again I quote Mr. Bevan), whom we call St. Paul, and who visited Athens three and a half centuries after the Hellenized Phoenician from Cyprus, and preached in terms of Stoic philosophy, as it is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, in the midst of Mars' Hill. These are not the only sons of Tarsus. There was also Antipater, who was next successor but one to Zeno the Second as the head of the Stoic school; and many centuries afterwards, about a.d. 650, there was also Theodore of Tarsus, the founder of the English Church, who had studied at Athens, was well versed in literature, Greek as well as Latin, and was called ‘the philosopher’.