SVF I.191
Stoic: Zeno of Citium · Ancient source: Cicero, Academica posteriora, Book I — Acad. post. I 36 · Source language: Latin · Source status: Testimonium, Later report
Original — Latin
Cetera autem, etsi nec bona nec mala essent, tamen alia secundum naturam dicebat (Zeno), alia naturae esse contraria. His ipsis alia interiecta et media numerabat. Quae autem secundum naturam essent, ea sumenda et quadam aestimatione dignanda dicebat, contraque contraria; neutra autem in mediis relinquebat, in quibus ponebat nihil omnino esse momenti.
StoicOs Translation
The remaining things, however, though they were neither good nor bad, he (Zeno) said were some of them according to nature, others contrary to nature; and between these very things he counted others as interposed and intermediate. Those according to nature, he taught, were to be taken and deemed worthy of a certain valuation (aestimatio), and the contrary of their contraries; while those in between he left neutral, and in them he held there was no weight at all.
Context
In the Academica, Cicero has Varro survey how Zeno reformed the Academic-Peripatetic inheritance point by point. This chapter records what Zeno did with everything that falls outside good and bad — the field the school would call the indifferent.
Text verified against von Arnim, SVF I (1903), no. 191, pp. 47–48 (OCR of the scanned edition). Part of Varro's historical survey of Zeno's innovations in Cicero's dialogue; it immediately precedes the Greek report on the coinage of the proēgmena (SVF I.192) and Cicero's own praeposita/reiecta (SVF I.193–194).
What the source actually tells us
An explicitly attributed Latin report (“dicebat”) of the three-fold division within the indifferent — according to nature, contrary to nature, and weightless middle — and of the doctrine of valuation (aestimatio, rendering Greek axia). It matches the Greek account of SVF I.192 point for point from an independent line.
Philosophical meaning
Zeno refuses two extremes: that health and wealth are goods (the Peripatetics), and that they are simply nothing (as Aristo would insist). Instead he builds a measured landscape inside the indifferent: what accords with nature carries value and is to be taken; what opposes it, the reverse; the truly weightless middle carries none. Rational selection — not desire — becomes the daily work of ethics.
Scholarly uncertainty
Cicero writes in Latin nearly three centuries after Zeno, and his spokesman Varro compresses; the technical Greek behind aestimatio and the middle class is supplied by the parallel SVF I.192. As history of who taught what first, Cicero's school-survey is generally careful but not beyond doubt.
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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.