Stoa Poikilê

Stoa (στοά) is Greek for a colonnade, a covered walkway with columns. Poikilê (painted) — the Stoa Poikilê, the Painted Porch, was a colonnade in the Athenian Agora decorated with famous battle paintings. Around 300 BCE, Zeno of Citium — a Phoenician merchant who had shipwrecked, lost his fortune, and found Cynic philosophy — began teaching in the Stoa Poikilê. His followers were called Stoics: people of the porch.

The Stoics argued that virtue alone was good, and that everything external — wealth, health, fame, even life — was 'indifferent' (adiaphoron): neither good nor bad in itself, only the use we make of our response to it. This was a philosophy for a world of empire, plague, and political uncertainty. Zeno, Chrysippus, Posidonius — then the Roman Stoics: Seneca, Epictetus (a freed slave), Marcus Aurelius (an emperor). The philosophy worked for slaves and emperors alike.

Epictetus, born into slavery around 50 CE, was the Stoic whose life most perfectly demonstrated the philosophy. He taught: 'Some things are in our control, others are not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion. Things not in our control are body, reputation, property, office.' To confuse the two — to seek control over what cannot be controlled — was the source of all suffering. His Enchiridion (Handbook) was copied throughout antiquity.

Marcus Aurelius wrote his Meditations as private notes — a journal of Stoic practice for a Roman emperor who never published them. They survived by accident. Translated into modern languages from the 17th century onward, they became one of the most-read philosophical texts in the world. Ryan Holiday's The Obstacle Is The Way (2014) brought Stoicism to a business and athletic audience. The painted porch's lessons are now sold in airport bookshops.