It has been nearly 2,000 years since the sober men in togas came together in Rome, coaching one another to put aside worldly wants and walk a straight and moral path.
But now--in a time of presidential hanky-panky, 24-hour entertainment and murky social values--their ancient creed is being resurrected.
Stoicism is back for a small but growing group of adherents, thanks to the unlikely convergence of America's most biting chronicler of pop culture, one of its most celebrated Vietnam War prisoners and, even, a San Diego County probation investigator.
The renaissance of the classical philosophy began in earnest last year, when novelist Tom Wolfe made the ancient philosopher Epictetus and his teachings a leitmotif in his best-selling novel, "A Man in Full." From the discourses of the former slave, at least two of Wolfe's characters learned to value personal integrity over material gain.
And that philosophy has blossomed in scores of small ways--from the bookstores that now sell Stoic philosophy to businessmen, to the increasing correspondence on the World Wide Web, to reportage by the BBC and a host of American newspapers.
"It has been astonishing," said Sharon Lebell, a Marin County writer whose book on the Stoics has been revived of late. "Suddenly, interest in Stoicism has been galvanized."
Stoicism was born three centuries before the birth of Jesus, when Zeno of Citium started his own school around a covered colonnade, or stoa, at the central market in Athens.
What began as a radical counterpoint to the loose moral temper of the times evolved into a complex doctrine that thrived for at least five centuries and influenced the early Christian patriarchs.
Despite apparent chaos, the Stoics believed that the universe is rational, its events predetermined. They did not believe in an afterlife, but thought men could exercise their internal divinity by behaving rationally and controlling their passions. Men could free themselves from preoccupations such as wealth and status, the Stoics said, by following an inner creed.
Epictetus (pronounced Eh-pick-tee-tuss) personified the Stoic ideal. Born in the first century as a slave in the eastern reaches of the Roman empire, he nonetheless flourished as one of the philosophy's latest and greatest teachers.
"Things themselves don't hurt or hinder us. Nor do other people," Epictetus said. "It is our attitudes and reactions that give us trouble. . . . We cannot choose our external circumstances, but we can choose how we respond to them."
It has been argued that the Stoics were ahead of their time. An early tract asserted the equality of women. One of Rome's most humane and accomplished emperors, Marcus Aurelius, was guided by the teachings of the Stoics.
'A Bolt Out of the Blue'
In an interview, Wolfe said he is tickled by the revival of the Stoics, something he personally credited to a quirk of the creative process.
The author was well into a near decade of work on his 742-page novel when he realized that one of his central characters--a young man who lands in jail after many unfair setbacks--lacked a certain gravity.
Like "a bolt out of the blue" came the idea of Stoicism, Wolfe said.
The young inmate, Conrad Hensley, inadvertently discovers the philosophy when he requests a spy novel called "The Stoics' Game" in jail and is delivered, instead, a collection of teachings by Epictetus. The book helps Hensley survive the tribal brutality of jail life.
Wolfe said he had only a passing knowledge of the philosophy from a time, two decades earlier, when he was researching his epic on early U.S. astronauts, "The Right Stuff." Poring over stories about military pilots, Wolfe had read accounts of how James Stockdale, a Navy Air Wing commander, survived a 7 1/2-year ordeal in a North Vietnamese prison by adhering to the teachings of Epictetus (born about AD 55).
Wolfe called his recent rediscovery of the Stoics "electrifying."
"I think the Stoics are such a wonderful draft of cool air in this hothouse existence we have," he said. "People have begun to feel everything is too materialistic and they're looking for a countervailing weight."
While "stoic" has come to connote personal calm in the face of adversity, the Stoics' theories about human relationships and emotion were complex.
They encouraged one another to play their social roles--as parents, teachers, military officers--to the hilt. But they expected emotions to remain level, even under extreme circumstances.
The good Stoic should focus on events within his control and separate his emotions from things he cannot change.
"If your child were to die and you were crying and pulling your hair out, the Stoics would say your reaction was based on a mistake," said Tad Brennan, an assistant professor of philosophy at Yale University, "and once you saw clearly and rationally, that the emotion would evaporate."
