BBC Radio 4's In Our Time programme on Stoicism

An audio program on Stoicism (about 42 minutes).

The philosophy of Stoicism was founded by Zeno in the fourth century BC and flourished in Greece and then in Rome. Its ideals of inner solitude, forbearance in adversity and the acceptance of fate won many brilliant adherents and made it the dominant philosophy across the whole of the Ancient World. The ex-slave Epictetus said "Man is troubled not by events, but by the meaning he gives them". Seneca, the politician, declared that "Life without the courage for death is slavery". The stoic thoughts of Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher emperor, provided a rallying point for empire builders into the modern age.

But what was stoicism? How did its ideas of inner retreat come to influence the most powerful and public men of the classical era? And does it still have a legacy for us today?

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Related previous post: The Wisdom of the Stoics: Selections from Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius