SVF I.51
Stoic: Zeno of Citium · Ancient source: Arrian (Epictetus), Discourses, Book IV — Diss. 4.8,12 · Source language: Ancient Greek · Source status: Later report
Original — Ancient Greek
θεωρήματα τοῦ φιλοσόφου ... ἃ Ζήνων λέγει· γνῶναι τὰ τοῦ λόγου στοιχεῖα, ποῖόν τι ἕκαστον αὐτῶν ἐστι καὶ πῶς ἁρμόττεται πρὸς ἄλληλα καὶ ὅσα τούτοις ἀκόλουθά ἐστι.
StoicOs Translation
The theorems of the philosopher ... which Zeno states: to know the elements of reason (logos), what sort of thing each of them is, how they fit together with one another, and all that follows from them.
Context
Epictetus, teaching some four centuries after Zeno, invokes the founder's programme to remind his students what philosophy actually demands. Arrian recorded the lecture; the sentence is Epictetus' compressed report of Zeno's teaching, not a quotation from a named book.
Greek text verified against H. von Arnim, SVF I (1903), no. 51, p. 16 (scanned page), section A. Logica. The ellipsis (...) is von Arnim's: he omits intervening words of Epictetus. Epictetus, whose lectures Arrian recorded, reports “what Zeno says” in indirect construction.
What the source actually tells us
A later report with explicit attribution (“which Zeno states”), given in indirect infinitives — Epictetus' wording, faithful in substance but not verbatim. Von Arnim's ellipsis marks omitted words of Epictetus, no lost text of Zeno.
Philosophical meaning
This is Zeno's syllabus for logic in one sentence: know the elements of rational discourse, understand each one, see how they combine, and trace their consequences. Logic, for the first Stoic, is not a party trick but the anatomy of reason itself — the discipline that makes every other insight possible.
Scholarly uncertainty
How much of the tripartite formulation is Zeno's own and how much is Epictetus' didactic arrangement cannot be determined; no book title is named, and the report stands alone in this form.
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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.