Book 7
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last. Persaeus, however, in his ethical lectures makes him die at the age of seventy-two, having come to Athens at the age of twenty-two. But Apollonius says that he presided over the school for fifty-eight years. The manner of his death was as follows. As he was leaving the school he tripped and fell, breaking a toe. Striking the ground with his fist, he quoted the line from the NiobeOf Timotheus. See Nauck, T.G.F. p. 51.: I come, I come, why dost thou call for me? and died on the spot through holding his breath.
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The Athenians buried him in the Ceramicus and honoured him in the decrees already cited above, adding their testimony of his goodness. Here is the epitaph composed for him by Antipater of SidonAnth. Plan. iii. 104.: Here lies great Zeno, dear to Citium, who scaled high Olympus, though he piled not Pelion on Ossa, nor toiled at the labours of Heracles, but this was the path he found out to the stars—the way of temperance alone.
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Here too is another by Zenodotus the Stoic, a pupil of DiogenesAnth. Pal. vii. 117.: Thou madest self-sufficiency thy rule, Eschewing haughty wealth, O godlike Zeno, With aspect grave and hoary brow serene. A manly doctrine thine: and by thy prudence With much toil thou didst found a great new school, Chaste parent of unfearing liberty. And if thy native country was Phoenicia, What need to slight thee? came not Cadmus thence, Who gave to Greece her books and art of writing? And Athenaeus the epigrammatist speaks of all the Stoics in common as followsAnth. Pal. ix. 496.: O ye who’ve learnt the doctrines of the Porch And have committed to your books divine The best of human learning, teaching men That the mind’s virtue is the only good ! She only it is who keeps the lives of men And cities,—safer than high gates and walls. But those who place their happiness in pleasure Are led by the least worthy of the Muses.
