Panaetius

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Panaetius of Rhodes (c. 185-180 to 110-108 BCE), Greek Stoic philosopher, belonged to a Rhodian family, but was probably educated partly in Pergamum under Crates of Mallus and afterwards in Athens, where he attended the lectures of Diogenes of Babylon, Critolaus and Carneades. He subsequently went to Rome, where he became the friend of Laelius and of Scipio the Younger. He lived as a guest in the house of the latter, and accompanied him on his mission to Egypt and Asia (143 or 141). He returned with Scipio to Rome, where he did much to introduce Stoic doctrines and Greek philosophy. He had a number of distinguished Romans as pupils, amongst them Q. Mucius Scaevola the augur and Q. Aelius Tubero. After the murder of Scipio in 129, he resided by turns in Athens and Rome, but chiefly in Athens, where he succeeded Antipater of Tarsus as head of the Stoic school. The right of citizenship was offered him by the Athenians, but he refused it. His chief pupil in philosophy was Posidonius of Rhodes (also known as Posidonius of Apamea). In his teaching he laid stress on ethics; and his most important works, of which only insignificant fragments are preserved, were on this subject. They are as follow: On Duty, in three books, the original of the first two books of Cicero's De officiis; On Providence, used by Cicero in his De divinatione (ii.) and probably in part of the second book of the De Deorum natura; a political treatise used by Cicero in his De republica; On Cheerfulness; On Philosophical Schools; a letter to Q. Aelius Tubero, De dolore paliendo (Cicero, De finibus, iv. 9, 23

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• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.