In this department
they were the successors or rather the supersessors of Aristotle. For
after the death of Theophrastus the library of the Lyceum is said to
have been buried underground at Scepsis until about a century before
Christ, So that the Organon may actually have been lost to the world
during that period. At all events under Strato the successor of
Theophrastus who specialized in natural science the school had lost
its comprehensiveness. Cicero even finds it consonant with dramatic
propriety to make Cato charge the later Peripatetics with ignorance
of logic! On the other hand Chrysippus became so famous for his logic
as to create a general impression that if there were a logic among
the gods it would be no other than the Chrysippean.
But if the Stoics were strong in logic they were weak in rhetoric.
This strength and weakness were characteristic of the school at all
periods. Cato is the only Roman Stoic to whom Cicero accords the
praise of real eloquence. In the dying accents of the school as we
hear them in Marcus Aurelius the imperial sage counts it a thing to
be thankful for that he had learnt to abstain from rhetoric, poetic,
and elegance of diction.
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