SVF I.134
- Stoic
- Zeno of Citium
- Ancient source
- Cicero, Academica posteriora, Book I — Acad. post. 1.39
- Source language
- Latin
- Source status
- Later report · Paraphrase by ancient source
Original — Latin
(Zeno) statuebat ignem esse ipsam naturam quae quoique gigneret [et] mentem atque sensus.StoicOs Translation
Zeno held that fire is nature itself — the fire that generates each thing, and mind and the senses.
Context
In the Academica posteriora Cicero lets Varro summarise how Zeno departed from the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition. Writing about 250 years after Zeno and in Latin, Cicero compresses whole doctrines into single clauses; under the same SVF number stand his parallel remarks that Zeno identified the generative principle and even the soul with fire.
Source notes:Text verified against H. von Arnim, SVF I (1903), no. 134, pp. 37–38 (scanned pages). Von Arnim prints quoique (Madvig's emendation for the manuscripts' quidque) and brackets [et] for deletion; under the same number he adds the parallels De finibus 4.12 and Tusculanae disputationes 1.19 (“to Zeno the Stoic the soul seems to be fire”).
What the source actually tells us
A later Latin report, not Zeno's Greek. The clause attests that Zeno identified nature with a generative fire and extended the same fiery stuff to mind and the senses. The transmitted Latin is slightly damaged (the manuscripts read quidque; Madvig emended), so the exact syntax — though not the doctrine — is editorially reconstructed.
Philosophical meaning
Here Zeno's physics and psychology meet in one sentence: the same craftsmanlike fire that builds the world also thinks in us. Mind and senses are not ghostly additions to matter but concentrations of nature's own generative heat. This continuity between cosmos and mind grounds the Stoic conviction that a human being is never a stranger in the universe.
Scholarly uncertainty
The manuscripts' wording is corrupt at one point (quidque against Madvig's quoique/cuique, and an et most editors delete), and Cicero's compressed Latin leaves open exactly how Zeno phrased the relation between fire, nature, mind and senses. The identification itself is confirmed by the parallels Cicero gives elsewhere (De finibus 4.12; Tusc. 1.19) and by the Greek tradition of the craftsmanlike fire (SVF I.171).
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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.