SVF I.200
Stoic: Zeno of Citium · Ancient source: Plutarchus, De Stoicorum repugnantiis, chapter 7 — Stoic. rep. 7 p. 1034e · Source language: Ancient Greek · Source status: Testimonium
Original — Ancient Greek
ἀρετὰς ὁ Ζήνων ἀπολείπει πλείονας κατὰ διαφοράς, ὥσπερ ὁ Πλάτων, οἷον φρόνησιν ἀνδρείαν σωφροσύνην δικαιοσύνην, ὡς ἀχωρίστους μὲν οὔσας, ἑτέρας δὲ καὶ διαφερούσας ἀλλήλων. πάλιν δὲ ὁριζόμενος αὐτῶν ἑκάστην, τὴν μὲν ἀνδρείαν φησὶ φρόνησιν εἶναι ἐν ⟨ὑπομενετέοις· τὴν δὲ … φρόνησιν ἐν⟩ ἐνεργητέοις· τὴν δὲ δικαιοσύνην φρόνησιν ἐν ἀπονεμητέοις· ὡς μίαν οὖσαν ἀρετήν, ταῖς δὲ πρὸς τὰ πράγματα σχέσεσι κατὰ τὰς ἐνεργείας διαφέρειν δοκοῦσαν.
StoicOs Translation
Zeno, like Plato, admits a plurality of virtues distinguished by their differences — practical wisdom, courage, temperance, justice — holding them to be inseparable, yet distinct and different from one another. And defining each of them in turn, he says that courage is practical wisdom ⟨in things to be endured; that … is practical wisdom in⟩ things to be done; and that justice is practical wisdom in things to be distributed — virtue being one, but seeming to differ, in its activities, by its relations to the things it deals with.
Context
Plutarch, a Platonist collecting what he presents as Stoic self-contradictions, reports Zeno's position on the unity and plurality of the virtues — a report all the more credible because Plutarch cites it in order to attack it.
Text verified against von Arnim, SVF I (1903), no. 200, p. 49 (OCR of the scanned edition; the Stephanus page number is garbled in the OCR — chapter 7 of the treatise lies at p. 1034 of the Moralia). Von Arnim marks a lacuna after “courage”: following Hirzel he supplies the structure, but the name of the virtue defined as “practical wisdom in things to be done” cannot be restored. He appends Diogenes Laërtius 7.161 on Aristo's dissent.
What the source actually tells us
An explicitly attributed testimonium from a hostile witness, with a parallel in Plutarch's De virtute morali (SVF I.201) and a contrast in Diogenes Laërtius 7.161, where Aristo is said to have rejected the plurality Zeno introduced. Three independent lines converge on the same doctrine.
Philosophical meaning
Zeno's solution to an old Socratic problem: the virtues are many in name and field, but one in substance — each is practical wisdom (phronēsis) applied to a different domain: endurance, action, distribution. Courage without wisdom would be recklessness; justice without wisdom, mere rule-following. The doctrine explains why, for the Stoa, no virtue can be possessed without the others.
Scholarly uncertainty
The text carries a marked lacuna: the definition of one virtue (probably temperance, cf. SVF I.201 where it is “practical wisdom in things to be chosen”) has dropped out, and von Arnim declines to restore its name. Plutarch is a polemical witness; but his report agrees with his own independent account at De virt. mor. 441a.
Go deeper
- Read SVF I.201 — the virtues as one practical wisdom
- Read SVF I.190 — the four virtues head the goods
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.