Most Famous Hellenistic Philosophers

Hellenistic philosophy denotes the philosophical schools that flourished in the Greek-speaking Mediterranean from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC through the early Roman imperial period. Its major schools include Stoicism, Epicureanism, Skepticism, and Cynicism. Hellenistic philosophy is broadly characterised by a turn from speculative metaphysics toward ethics and the practical question of how to live well in a turbulent world. Its leading figures include Zeno of Citium, Epicurus, Pyrrho, Diogenes of Sinope, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. Stoicism in particular has experienced a notable popular revival in recent decades.

Philosophers in this tradition

Marcus Aurelius 121 – 180 · Roman
Marcus Aurelius was Roman emperor from 161 to 180 AD and the last of the so-called Five Good Emperors. He is remembered as much for his philosophical writing as for his rule, wh...
Cicero 106 BC – 43 BC · Roman
Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman statesman, orator, lawyer, and philosopher of the late Roman Republic, who served as consul in 63 BC and was murdered in 43 BC during the prosc...
Epictetus c. 50 – c. 135 · Greek
Epictetus was a Greek Stoic philosopher of the first and early second centuries, born into slavery in Hierapolis in Roman Phrygia and freed in adulthood. He taught Stoic philoso...
Epicurus 341 BC – 270 BC · Greek
Epicurus was a Greek Hellenistic philosopher who founded the school known as the Garden in Athens around 307 BC. His ethics taught that pleasure, properly understood as the abse...
Seneca the Younger 4 BC – 65 · Roman
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, commonly known as Seneca the Younger, was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist of the first century. He served as tutor and later adviser t...
Diogenes of Sinope c. 412 BC – 323 BC · Greek
Diogenes of Sinope was an ancient Greek philosopher and one of the founders of the Cynic school. After his exile from Sinope on the Black Sea coast he settled in Athens, where h...
Lucretius c. 99 BC – c. 55 BC · Roman
Titus Lucretius Carus was a 1st-century BC Roman poet and Epicurean philosopher, known for his sole surviving work, the long Latin poem De Rerum Natura, On the Nature of Things....
Sextus Empiricus c. 160 – c. 210 · Greek
Sextus Empiricus was a Greek physician and philosopher of the second and early third centuries AD, the principal extant source for ancient Pyrrhonian Skepticism. His major works...
Zeno of Citium 334 BC – 262 BC · Greek
Zeno of Citium was a Greek philosopher of Phoenician descent and the founder of Stoicism. After surviving a shipwreck on the voyage to Athens around 312 BC, he became a student ...
Chrysippus 279 BC – 206 BC · Greek
Chrysippus of Soli was a Greek philosopher and the third head of the Stoic school, often regarded as its second founder. He was an extraordinarily prolific writer, credited in a...
Pyrrho of Elis c. 360 BC – c. 270 BC · Greek
Pyrrho of Elis was an ancient Greek philosopher of the late fourth and early third centuries BC, the founder of the philosophical school of Skepticism that bears his name as Pyr...
Cleanthes 330 BC – 230 BC · Greek
Cleanthes of Assos was a Greek Stoic philosopher who succeeded Zeno of Citium as head of the Stoa around 262 BC. Originally a boxer who arrived in Athens with little money, he s...
Philo of Alexandria 25 BC – 50 AD · Hellenistic Jewish
Philo of Alexandria was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who synthesized the Hebrew scriptures with Greek philosophical thought, especially Platonism and Stoicism. He developed ...
Philodemus c. 110 BC – c. 30 BC · Greek
Philodemus of Gadara was a 1st-century BC Greek Epicurean philosopher and poet, who taught in Italy under the patronage of the Roman politician Lucius Calpurnius Piso. His works...
Aenesidemus c. 100 BC – c. 40 BC · Greek
Aenesidemus of Cnossos was a 1st-century BC Greek philosopher who revived the Pyrrhonian school of Skepticism after a period in which Skepticism had been dominated by the New Ac...
Carneades 214 BC – 129 BC · Greek
Carneades of Cyrene was a Greek philosopher and the most important head of the New Academy, the skeptical phase of Plato's school. He was famous for his ability to argue with eq...
Hipparchia of Maroneia c. 350 BC – c. 280 BC · Greek
Hipparchia of Maroneia was an ancient Greek Cynic philosopher of the late 4th and early 3rd centuries BC, one of the few women philosophers documented in the historical record f...