Diogenes Laërtius · fl. 3rd century CE
Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.140 — Diogenes Laërtius on the Stoics
Translation by R. D. Hicks (1925)
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.140
Reported speech · Diogenes Laërtius on the Stoics
The world, they say, is one and finite, having a spherical shape, such a shape being the most suitable for motion, as Posidonius says in the fifth book of his Physical Discourse and the disciples of Antipater in their works on the Cosmos. Outside of the world is diffused the infinite void, which is incorporeal. By incorporeal is meant that which, though capable of being occupied by body, is not so occupied. The world has no empty space within it, but forms one united whole. This is a necessary result of the sympathy and tension which binds together things in heaven and earth. Chrysippus discusses the void in his work On Void and in the first book of his Physical Sciences; so too Apollophanes in his Physics, Apollodorus, and Posidonius in his Physical Discourse, book ii. But these, it is added [i.e. sympathy and tension], are likewise bodies.
Cite this passage
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.140 (on the Stoics), tr. R. D. Hicks (1925)
https://whatwouldstoicsdo.com/passage/lives-of-the-stoics/7.140
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book VII, tr. R. D. Hicks (Loeb, 1925). Text: Perseus Digital Library (CC BY-SA 4.0). Sources and licences
In plain English
AI-written notesThe world is one, finite and spherical, surrounded by an infinite empty space. It has no gaps inside because sympathy and tension bind heaven and earth into one whole, and these too are bodies.
Older wording
- “void”
- — empty space outside the world
- “sympathy and tension”
- — the Stoic idea that all parts of the cosmos are bound together and affect each other
- “incorporeal”
- — without a body
Themes and situations
- Nature and the cosmos
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