Posidonius Quotes on Knowledge
Posidonius of Apameia (c. 135 – c. 51 BC), the Stoic polymath whose works in physics, history, geography, ethnography, and astronomy were almost entirely lost but extensively quoted by Cicero, Strabo, Seneca, and Galen, carried Stoic epistemology into the late-Hellenistic period and supplied much of the philosophical material on which the subsequent Roman Stoicism would draw. Posidonius's reception of Plato's tripartite soul against the more austerely rationalist psychology of Chrysippus, and his sustained engagement with the empirical sciences of his day, position him as the principal late-Hellenistic mediator between Stoic, Platonist, and Aristotelian tendencies.
Quotes
-
Attributed to Posidonius:
“There is one work proper to philosophy: to discover the truth.”
-
“Riches are a cause of evil, not because, of themselves, they do any evil, but because they goad men on so that they are ready to do evil.”
As quoted in Epistulae morales ad Lucilium by Seneca , Epistle LXXXVII (trans. R. M. Gummere) -
“A single day among the learned lasts longer than the longest life of the ignorant.”
As quoted in Epistulae morales ad Lucilium by Seneca , Epistle LXXVIII (trans. R. M. Gummere) -
“Things which bestow upon the soul no greatness or confidence or freedom from care are not goods. But riches and health and similar conditions do none of these things; therefore, riches and health are not goods. Things which bestow upon the soul no greatness or confidence or freedom from care, but on the other hand create in it arrogance, vanity, and insolence, are evils. But things which are the g”
As quoted in Epistulae morales ad Lucilium by Seneca , Epistle LXXXVII (trans. R. M. Gummere) -
“There are never any occasions when you need think yourself safe because you wield the weapons of Fortune; fight with your own! Fortune does not furnish arms against herself; hence men equipped against their foes are unarmed against Fortune herself.”
As quoted in Epistulae morales ad Lucilium by Seneca , Epistle CXIII (trans. R. M. Gummere)