SVF I.499

Stoic: Cleanthes of Assos · Ancient source: Arius Didymus (ap. Eusebius), Praeparatio evangelica XV 15,7 (Ar. Did. fr. 29 Diels) — PE 15.15,7 · Source language: Ancient Greek · Source status: Testimonium

Original — Ancient Greek

ἡγεμονικὸν δὲ τοῦ κόσμου Κλεάνθει μὲν ἤρεσε τὸν ἥλιον εἶναι διὰ τὸ μέγιστον τῶν ἄστρων ὑπάρχειν καὶ πλεῖστα συμβάλλεσθαι πρὸς τὴν τῶν ὅλων διοίκησιν, ἡμέραν καὶ ἐνιαυτὸν ποιοῦντα καὶ τὰς ἄλλας ὥρας.

StoicOs Translation

As the ruling part of the cosmos, Cleanthes held it to be the sun, because it is the greatest of the heavenly bodies and contributes most to the administration of the whole, making day and year and the other seasons.

Context

The doxographer Arius Didymus, excerpted by Eusebius, records where each Stoic located the hēgemonikon — the ruling part — of the cosmos. For Cleanthes it is the sun; Chrysippus would later place it in the aether.

Text verified against von Arnim, SVF I (1903), no. 499, p. 112 (OCR of the scanned edition). Von Arnim adds parallels: Ps.-Censorinus 1,4; Diogenes Laërtius 7.139; Aëtius II 4,16; Cicero, Acad. pr. II 126 (“solem dominari et rerum potiri putat”).

What the source actually tells us

A distinctively Cleanthean doctrine, multiply attested: Aëtius, Diogenes Laërtius, Ps.-Censorinus and Cicero all report it under his name, with the reasoning preserved — greatest of the stars, greatest contribution to the government of the whole.

Philosophical meaning

The cosmos is a living being, and every living being has a ruling centre. Cleanthes reads the visible order — day, year, seasons — as government, and locates the governor in the sun, the great fire that feeds and steers the world (cf. SVF I.501). Where Zeno spoke of the designing fire, Cleanthes gives it an address.

Scholarly uncertainty

The wording is the doxographer's, not Cleanthes'; his own argument survives only in this compressed report. That the sun-doctrine is genuinely his — and a point where he differed from later school orthodoxy — is secured by the independent witnesses.

Go deeper

• Read SVF I.501 — the sun, an intelligent kindling from the sea
• Read SVF I.537 — the Hymn to Zeus

About this edition

StoicOs Ancient Library is a developing multilingual digital study edition of surviving early Stoic material. The Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta assembled by Hans von Arnim provides the traditional reference framework. StoicOs distinguishes carefully between fragments, testimonia, later reports and interpretation. StoicOs translations are prepared from the surviving ancient-language sources where available.

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