If you strip Stoicism of its paradoxes and its wilful misuse of
language, what is left is simply the moral philosophy of Socrates,
Plato and Aristotle, dashed with the physics of Heraclitus. Stoicism
was not so much a new doctrine as the form under which the old Greek
philosophy finally presented itself to the world at large. It owed
its popularity in some measure to its extravagance. A great deal
might be said about Stoicism as a religion and about the part it
played in the formation of Christianity but these subjects were
excluded by the plan of this volume which was to present a sketch of
the Stoic doctrine based on the original authorities.
ST GEORGE STOCK M A
_Pemb. Coll. Oxford_