The Republic was a work written by Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoic philosophyat the beginning of the 3rd century BC. Although it has not survived, it was his most famous work, and various quotes and paraphrases were preserved by later writers. The purpose of the work was to outline the ideal society based on Stoic principles, where virtuous men and women would live a life of simple asceticism in an equal society.
Content
Written, it would seem, in conscious opposition to Plato's Republic, Zeno's Republic outlined the principles of an ideal state written from the point of view of early Stoic philosophy. The work has not survived; but it was widely known in antiquity and more is known about it than any of his other works. Plutarch provides a summary of its intent: It is not obvious from Plutarch's remarks whether he had read the work himself. One person who had read it was "Cassius the Skeptic", whose polemic written against Zeno's Republic is paraphrased by Diogenes Laërtius: Further on, Laërtius makes some further remarks which also seem to be from the same work by Cassius: These paraphrases by Cassius are not a neutral summary of the Republic, his purpose seems to be to describe all the doctrines in the work which he found shocking. These include Zeno's denouncement of general education; his exhortation that only the virtuous can be regarded as true citizens; his view that men and women should wear the same clothes; and the idea that "there should be a community of wives", which in practice seems to have meant "recognizing no other form of marriage than the union of the man who lives freely with a consenting woman". A few other statements from the Republic are preserved by other writers. We learn from Laërtius that Zeno stated that the wise man will marry and produce children, and several writers mention Zeno's view that there is no need to build temples to the gods, "for a temple not worth much is also not sacred, and nothing made by builders or workmen is worth much". Athenaeus also preserves a quote on the need for a city to be built on the principle of love:
Reception
Zeno's Republic seems to have been viewed with some embarrassment by some of the later Stoics. This was not helped when Chrysippus, Zeno's most illustrious successor as the head of the Stoic school, wrote his own treatise On the Republic, in which he defended both incest and cannibalism. It is unlikely that Chrysippus urged the adoption of such behaviors; Chrysippus was probably responding to criticisms that in a society practicing free love, in which people often did not know who their relatives were, rare instances of incest would unintentionally occur; his discussion of cannibalism is probably connected with the Stoic contempt for dead bodies as an empty shell. Nevertheless, these points provided extra ammunition for those people who wished to attack both Zeno and Stoicism in general. Some blamed the influence which Crates of Thebes, the famous Cynic philosopher and teacher of Zeno, may have had when he wrote the Republic: it was joked that Zeno "had written it at the tail of the dog." By the 1st century BC, there was an attempt among the Stoics to downplay the involvement which Cynic philosophy had played in the development of early Stoicism; it was said that Zeno had been "young and thoughtless" when he wrote his Republic. It was also said that "by Zeno things were written which they do not readily allow disciples to read, without their first giving proof whether or not they are genuine philosophers." Regardless of these views, it is clear that Zeno was one of the first philosophers in a long tradition begun by Plato of depicting an ideal society in order to understand ethical principles.
