Book 7
1.14
When Demochares, the son of Laches, greeted him and told him he had only to speak or write for anything he wanted to Antigonus, who would be sure to grant all his requests, Zeno after hearing this would have nothing more to do with him.Zeno must have foreseen that this compliment would be followed by a request to use his undoubted influence with the king on behalf of Demochares. who, as an Athenian patriot and the nephew of Demosthenes, was out of favour at the Macedonian court. Indeed the fact of his making such advances at all is so strange that Ferguson (p. 172) and Tarn (p. 94, note 11) feel constrained to offer hypothetical explanations.
1.15
After Zeno’s death Antigonus is reported to have said, What an audience I have lost.Tarn, Antig. Gon. p. 310, well compares Plato, Politicus 260 c, and Epicurus (ap. Senec. Ep. 7. 11), satis enim magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus. Hence too he employed Thraso as his agent to request the Athenians to bury Zeno in the Ceramicus. And when asked why he admired him, Because, said he, the many ample gifts I offered him never made him conceited nor yet appear poor-spirited.
1.15
His bent was towards inquiry, and he was an exact reasoner on all subjects. Hence the words of Timon in his SilliFrag. 38 D.: A Phoenician too I saw, a pampered old woman ensconced in gloomy pride, longing for all things; but the meshes of her subtle web have perished, and she had no more intelligence than a banjo.Cf. Od. xi. 281, 271.
1.16
He used to dispute very carefully with Philo the logician and study along with him. Hence Zeno, who was the junior, had as great an admiration for Philo as his master Diodorus. And he had about him certain ragged dirty fellows, as Timon saysFrag. 39 D. in these lines: The while he got together a crowd of ignorant serfs, who surpassed all men in beggary and were the emptiest of townsfolk.Cf. Il. ii. 831, xxiii. 133.
