1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Chrysippus

CHRYSIPPUS (c. 280–206 B.C.), Greek philosopher, the third great leader of the Stoics. A native of Soli in Cilicia (Diog. Laert. vii. 179), he was robbed of his property and came to Athens, where he studied possibly under Zeno, certainly under Cleanthes. It is said also that he became a pupil of Arcesilaus and Lacydes, heads of the Middle Academy. This impartiality in his early studies is the key of his philosophic work, the dominant characteristic of which is comprehensiveness rather than originality. He took the doctrines of Zeno and Cleanthes and crystallized them into a definite system; he further defended them against the attacks of the Academy. His polemic skill earned for him the title of the “Column of the Portico.” Diogenes Laertius says, “If the gods use dialectic, they can use none other than that of Chrysippus”; εἰ μὴ γὰρ ᾐν Χρύσιππὄς, οὐκ ἂν ἠν Στοά (“Without Chrysippus, there had been no Porch”). He excelled in logic, the theory of knowledge, ethics and physics. His relations with Cleanthes, contemporaneously criticized by Antipater, are considered under Stoics. He is said to have composed seven hundred and fifty treatises, fragments alone of which survive. Their style, we are told, was unpolished and arid in the extreme, while the argument was lucid and impartial.

See G. H. Hagedorn, Moralia Chrysippea (1685), Ethica Chrysippi (1715); J. F. Richter, De Chrysippo Stoico fastuoso (1738); F. Baguet, De Chrysippi vita doctrina et reliquiis (1822); C. Petersen, Philosophiae Chrysippeae fundamenta (1827); A. Gercke, “Chrysippea” in Jahrbücher für Philologie, suppl. vol. xiv. (1885); R. Nicolai, De logicis Chrysippi libris (1859); Christos Aronis, Χρύσιππος γραμματικος (1885); R. Hirzel, Untersuchungen zu Ciceros philosophischen Schriften, ii. (1882); L. Stein, Die Psychologie der Stoa (1886); A. B. Krische, Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der alten Philosophie (1840); J. E. Sandys, Hist. Class. Schol. i. 149.