1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Panaetius

PANAETIUS (c. 185–180 to 110–108 B.C.), Greek Stoic philosopher, belonged to a Rhodian family, but was probably educated partly in Pergamum under Crates of Mallus and afterwards in Athens, where he attended the lectures of Diogenes the Babylonian, Critolaus and Carneades. He subsequently went to Rome, where he became the friend of Laelius and of Scipio the Younger. He lived as a guest in the house of the latter, and accompanied him on his mission to Egypt and Asia (143 or 141). He returned with Scipio to Rome, where he did much to introduce Stoic doctrines and Greek philosophy. He had a number of distinguished Romans as pupils, amongst them Q. Mucius Scaevola the augur and Q. Aelius Tubero. After the murder of Scipio in 129, he resided by turns in Athens and Rome, but chiefly in Athens, where he succeeded Antipater of Tarsus as head of the Stoic school. The right of citizenship was offered him by the Athenians, but he refused it. His chief pupil in philosophy was Posidonius of Apamea. In his teaching he laid stress on ethics; and his most important works, of which only insignificant fragments are preserved, were on this subject. They are as follow: Περὶ τοῦ καθήκοντος (On Duty), in three books, the original of the first two books of Cicero’s De officiis; Περὶ προνοίας (On Providence), used by Cicero in his De divinatione (ii.) and probably in part of the second book of the De Deorum natura; a political treatise (perhaps called Περὶ πολιτικῆς), used by Cicero in his De republica; Περὶ εὐθυμίας (On Cheerfulness); Περὶ αἱρέσεων (On Philosophical Schools); a letter to Q. Aelius Tubero, De dolore patiendo (Cicero, De finibus, iv. 9, 23).

Edition of the fragments by H. N. Fowler (Bonn, 1885), and in F. van Lynden’s monograph (Leiden, 1802). See also A. Schmekel, Die Philosophie der mittleren Stoa (1892); F. Susemihl, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur in der Alexandrinerzeit (1892), ii. 63–80; E. Zeller, “Beiträge zur Kenntniss des Stoikers Panätius” in Commentationes philologae in honorem Th. Mommseni (1877); on the use made of him by Cicero, R. Hirzel, Untersuchungen zu Ciceros philosophischen Schriften (1877–1883). For his importance in the Stoic succession and his philosophy generally, see Stoics.