SVF I.171

Original — Latin

Zeno igitur naturam ita definit, ut eam dicat ignem esse artificiosum ad gignendum progredientem via.

StoicOs Translation

Zeno, then, defines nature thus: he says that it is a craftsmanlike fire, proceeding methodically to generation.

Context

In Book II of De Natura Deorum, Cicero lets the Stoic Balbus expound Stoic theology. Writing some 250 years after Zeno and in Latin, Balbus reports Zeno's definition of nature as part of the Stoic argument that the cosmos is rationally ordered.

Source notes:Full sentence as printed in H. von Arnim, SVF I (1903), no. 171, p. 44, verified against the scanned page; von Arnim adds the Greek parallel Diogenes Laërtius 7.156 (πῦρ τεχνικὸν ὁδῷ βαδίζον εἰς γένεσιν) under the same number.

What the source actually tells us

This is a later Latin report of Zeno's definition, not his Greek wording; Greek parallels use the phrase πῦρ τεχνικόν (pyr technikon, craftsmanlike fire). The testimony supports that Zeno identified nature with an intelligent, productive fire; the precise original formulation cannot be determined from Cicero alone.

Philosophical meaning

For Zeno, nature is not passive material but an active, intelligent principle — a fire that works like a craftsman, building the world methodically (“via”, by a path or method). This is the seed of Stoic physics: one rational logos pervading and shaping everything.

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