SVF I.223
Stoic: Zeno of Citium · Ancient source: Clemens Alexandrinus, Stromata, Book V — Strom. V 14,95 · Source language: Ancient Greek · Source status: Testimonium
Original — Ancient Greek
Ζήνων τε ὁ Στωικός, παρὰ Πλάτωνος λαβών, ὁ δὲ ἀπὸ τῆς βαρβάρου φιλοσοφίας, τοὺς ἀγαθοὺς πάντας ἀλλήλων εἶναι φίλους λέγει.
StoicOs Translation
And Zeno the Stoic — taking it from Plato, who took it from barbarian philosophy — says that all the good are friends of one another.
Context
Clement, tracing Greek wisdom back to scripture, cites Zeno's doctrine of the friendship of the good as an inherited truth.
Text verified against von Arnim, SVF I (1903), no. 223, p. 54 (OCR of the scanned edition). Clement adds his own genealogy: Zeno took it from Plato, Plato from “barbarian philosophy” — the latter is Clement's apologetic claim, not history.
What the source actually tells us
A one-sentence testimonium expressly under Zeno's name, confirmed by Diogenes Laërtius 7.124 (the Stoics: friendship exists only among the virtuous). Clement's genealogy through Plato reflects the real affinity with Plato's dictum that the good are friends.
Philosophical meaning
Virtue is the only durable bond: the good need no introduction, contract or shared border to be friends — their agreement with nature makes them agree with one another. The thought feeds directly into the one flock under one common law of Zeno's Republic (SVF I.262) and the oikeiōsis-root of justice (SVF I.197).
Scholarly uncertainty
Clement compresses to a single clause and his source-genealogy serves apologetics; Zeno's own formulation and its context are lost. The doctrine itself is multiply attested for the early Stoa.
Go deeper
- Read SVF I.262 — Zeno's Republic: one life, one common law
- Read SVF I.197 — oikeiōsis, the beginning of justice
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.