Chrysippus
（
Χρύσιππος).
1.
A son of Pelops, carried off by Laius (
Apollod. iii.5.6).
This circumstance became a theme with many ancient writers, and hence the story assumed
different shapes, according to the fancy of those who handled it. The death of Chrysippus was
also related in different ways. According to the common account, he was slain by Atreus, at
the instigation of his step-mother, Hippodamia. (Gonsult Heyne
ad
loc.).
2.
A Stoic philosopher of Soli in Cilicia Campestris. He fixed his residence at Athens, and
became a disciple of Cleanthes, the successor of Zeno. He was equally distinguished for
natural abilities and industry, seldom suffering a day to elapse without writing 500 lines.
He wrote several hundred volumes, of which three hundred were on logical subjects, but in all
he borrowed largely from others. He maintained, with the Stoics in general, that the world
was God, or a universal effusion of his spirit, and that the superior part of this spirit,
which consisted in mind and reason, was the common nature of things, containing the whole and
every part. Sometimes he speaks of God as the power of fate and the necessary chain of
events; sometimes he calls him fire; and sometimes he deifies the fluid parts of nature, as
water and air; and again, the earth, sun, moon, and stars, and the universe in which these
are comprehended, and even those men who have obtained immortality. He was very fond of the
figure
sorites in arguing, which is hence called by Persius
“the heap of Chrysippus.” His discourses abounded more in curious
subtleties and nice distinctions than in solid arguments. In disputation, in which he
spent the greatest part of his life, he discovered a degree of promptitude and confidence
which approached towards audacity. He often said to his preceptor, “Give me
doctrines, and I will find arguments to support them.” It was a singular proof of
his haughty spirit that when a certain person asked him what preceptor he would advise him to
choose for his son, he said, “Me; for if I thought any philosopher excelled me, I
would myself become his pupil.” With so much contempt did he look down upon the
distinctions of rank that he would never, as other philosophers did, pay his court to princes
or great men, by dedicating to them any of his writings. The vehemence and arrogance with
which he supported his tenets created him many adversaries, particularly in the Academic and
Epicurean sects. Even his friends of the Stoic School complained that, in the warmth of
dispute, while he was attempting to load his adversary with the reproach of obscurity and
absurdity, his own ingenuity often failed him, and he adopted such unusual and illogical
modes of reasoning as gave his opponents great advantages over him. It was also a common
practice with Chrysippus, at different times, to take the opposite sides of the same
question, and thus furnish his antagonists with weapons which might easily be turned, as
occasion offered, against himself. Carneades, who was one of his most able and skilful
adversaries, frequently availed himself of this circumstance, and refuted Chrysippus by
convicting him of inconsistency. Of his writings (he is said to have published 700 works in
all) nothing remains, except a few extracts which are preserved in the works of Cicero,
Plutarch, Seneca, and Aulus Gellius. These fragments were collected and edited by Petersen in
1827. He died in the 143d Olympiad, B.C. 208, at the age of eighty-three. A statue was
erected to his memory by Ptolemy. See the account in Zeller's
Stoics,
Epicureans, and Sceptics (Eng. trans. London, 1870).
