Xeno, son of Naseus, was a native of Sittium in Cyprus, a Greek city that had received

Phoenician settlers.

He had a neck that bent to one side, and a Apollonius of Tyre says that he was lean,

longish, and swarthy.

Hence someone called him an Egyptian vine.

He was thick-legged, flabby, and weak.

This is why, as Perseus says, he declined most dinner invitations.

He delighted, they say, in green things, and sunbathing.

Welcome once again to Young Heretics, where today we are talking about stoicism.

I've had a bunch of requests to do stoicism, and I wanted to wait until I had the time

and the space to do stoicism right, and probably to do a lot of ancient Greek philosophy.

Because one of the things with the Stoics, who are these Greek philosophers, that come

about in the Hellenistic era after the death of Alexander the Great, is that they have

this reputation and modernity.

People are actually getting into stoicism as a life philosophy, as a self-help course.

There are threads about it on Reddit.

You can find a number of modern treatments of stoicism.

Some people are actually trying to be stoics.

Plus, it's a word in English.

It means to be detached from your emotions or in control of them.

Super-like honeyk is another word that people use sometimes, just very spare and self-control.

In order to get down to stoicism itself, we're going to have to go back into the world of

...