SVF I.87
- Stoic
- Zeno of Citium
- Ancient source
- Stobaeus, Eclogae, Book I (Arius Didymus fr. 20) — I 11,5a p. 132,26 W.
- Source language
- Ancient Greek
- Source status
- Testimonium
Original — Ancient Greek
Ζήνωνος· οὐσίαν δὲ εἶναι τὴν τῶν ὄντων πάντων πρώτην ὕλην, ταύτην δὲ πᾶσαν ἀΐδιον καὶ οὔτε πλείω γιγνομένην οὔτε ἐλάττω· τὰ δὲ μέρη ταύτης οὐκ ἀεὶ ταὐτὰ διαμένειν ἀλλὰ διαιρεῖσθαι καὶ συγχεῖσθαι. διὰ ταύτης δὲ διαθεῖν τὸν τοῦ παντὸς λόγον, ὃν ἔνιοι εἱμαρμένην καλοῦσιν, οἷόνπερ καὶ ἐν τῇ γονῇ τὸ σπέρμα.StoicOs Translation
Of Zeno: substance is the prime matter of all things that are; it is in its entirety eternal, becoming neither more nor less. Its parts, however, do not always remain the same but are divided and fused together. Through it runs the reason (logos) of the whole, which some call fate — just like the seed in generation.
Context
Stobaeus here excerpts the doxography of Arius Didymus (1st century BCE), which preserves school definitions under the philosophers' names; this entry is headed simply “of Zeno”.
Source notes:Text verified against von Arnim, SVF I (1903), no. 87, p. 24 (OCR of the scanned edition). The excerpt is headed simply “Ζήνωνος” — of Zeno — in Arius Didymus' doxography; von Arnim adds a parallel from Epiphanius.
What the source actually tells us
A testimonium explicitly filed under Zeno's name, in the doxographer's wording. It attests his doctrine of substance as eternal prime matter, constant as a whole while its parts divide and merge, pervaded by the logos of the whole — with the doxographer noting that “some call it fate”.
Philosophical meaning
This is Zeno's law of conservation: the world's stuff neither grows nor shrinks; only its configurations change. And matter is never mere matter — reason runs through it as the seed runs through generation, the same image as in the great cosmological report SVF I.98.
Scholarly uncertainty
The wording is Arius Didymus', not Zeno's; the equation of the all-pervading logos with fate is marked as others' usage (“some call it”). The doctrine coheres with the independently attested reports SVF I.85–86 and I.98.
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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.