SVF I.186
Stoic: Zeno of Citium · Ancient source: Augustinus, Contra Academicos, Book III — c. Acad. III 7,16 · Source language: Latin · Source status: Later report, Paraphrase by ancient source
Original — Latin
clamat Zenon et tota illa porticus tumultuatur hominem natum ad nihil esse aliud quam honestatem; ipsam suo splendore ad se animos ducere, nullo prorsus commodo extrinsecus posito et quasi lenocinante mercede; voluptatemque illam Epicuri solis inter se pecoribus esse communem; in quorum societatem et hominem et sapientem trudere nefas esse.
StoicOs Translation
Zeno cries out, and that whole Porch resounds with him: man is born for nothing other than moral worth (honestas); it draws souls to itself by its own splendour, with no advantage placed outside it and no reward playing the pander; and that pleasure of Epicurus is shared only by cattle among themselves — and to thrust man, and the wise man, into their company is an outrage.
Context
In his early dialogue against the sceptical Academy, Augustine surveys the schools' answers to the question what man lives for, and stages Zeno as the founding voice of the Stoa — with the whole Porch shouting the doctrine after him.
Text verified against von Arnim, SVF I (1903), no. 186, p. 46 (OCR of the scanned edition). Augustine, writing more than six centuries after Zeno, presents the doctrine rhetorically, with the whole Porch joining in Zeno's cry.
What the source actually tells us
A late, rhetorical Latin paraphrase, explicitly under Zeno's name. It attests — in Augustine's own words — the doctrine that only moral worth is man's end, chosen for its own splendour and not for any external reward, and the Stoic polemic against Epicurean pleasure.
Philosophical meaning
Virtue needs no wages: it attracts by its own light. What Zeno states drily elsewhere — nothing is good but virtue (SVF I.190), virtue suffices for happiness (SVF I.187) — Augustine renders as a cry that still echoed six centuries later, proof of how completely this doctrine had become the signature of the school Zeno founded.
Scholarly uncertainty
The wording is entirely Augustine's, written c. 386 CE for a Christian-philosophical purpose; no Zenonian book or phrase is cited. The content, however, matches the independently attested doctrine of SVF I.185, I.187 and I.190; only the vivid staging (the cry, the tumult of the Porch) is Augustine's rhetoric.
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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.