Balbus (Middle period Stoic)

Regularly Checking In On A Small Screen Device? Bookmark THIS page!

    TEXT 30: Cicero On the Nature of the Gods 2.3-164 (selections)

    3. Then Balbus [the Stoic] said, "I shall indulge you, and deal with things as briefly as I can; indeed, once one has exposed the errors of Epicurus my speech is stripped of all [excuse for] length. Our school exhaustively divides this whole question about the immortal gods into four parts: first they teach that there are gods, then what they are like, then that the cosmos is governed by them, and finally that they take thought for the affairs of human beings."

    . The Stoics Reader: Selected Writings and Testimonia (Hackett Classics)

    Thank you for this post AaronSF. You are new here and I am not sure of your interests, but if you are knowledgeable about Stoicism or just interested in helping catalog characters such as Balbus I hope you will continue, because I think this kind of thing is very useful.

    One day I would like to see us construct sort of a "mind map" listing all these ancient characters so we can put them in perspective timewise and also where they stand philosophically.

    That's similar to a project I worked on years ago in mapping the characters in "A Few Days In Athens"

    A Map through A Few Days In Athens and the World of Epicurus
    A Mind Map about A Map through A Few Days In Athens and the World of Epicurus submitted by CassiusAmicus on Nov 18, 2013. Created with Xmind.
    xmind.app

    It looks like Xmind has restricted what its free tier can do, and the mind map doesn't seem to allow embedding anymore, so I need to redo this map too at some point.

    While Epicurean philosophy can be relatively simple at the highest levels, I think it really helps to draw "mind maps" to see how the details connect, and I hope to work on more of these in the future both as to people and also to show how the ideas fit together.

Unread Threads

    1. Title
    2. Replies
    3. Last Reply

    2. Philodemus' "On Anger" - General - Texts and Resources 20

      • Cassius
      • July 8, 2025 at 7:33 AM
    3. Replies
      20
      Views
      6.6k
      20

    4. Kalosyni

      July 8, 2025 at 7:33 AM

    2. Mocking Epithets 3

      • Bryan
      • July 6, 2025 at 9:47 PM
    3. Replies
      3
      Views
      305
      3

    4. Bryan

      July 6, 2025 at 9:47 PM

    2. Best Lucretius translation? 12

      • Rolf
      • July 1, 2025 at 1:59 PM
    3. Replies
      12
      Views
      888
      12

    4. Eikadistes

      July 1, 2025 at 1:59 PM

    2. The Religion of Nature - as supported by Lucretius' De Rerum Natura 4

      • Kalosyni
      • June 23, 2025 at 12:36 AM
    3. Replies
      4
      Views
      853
      4

    4. Godfrey

      June 23, 2025 at 12:36 AM

    2. New Blog Post From Elli - " Fanaticism and the Danger of Dogmatism in Political and Religious Thought: An Epicurean Reading"

      • Cassius
      • June 20, 2025 at 4:31 PM
    3. Replies
      0
      Views
      1.9k