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Full Idea
Fate is a sempiternal and unchangeable series and chain of things, rolling and unravelling itself through eternal sequences of cause and effect, of which it is composed and compounded.
Gist of Idea
Fate is an eternal and fixed chain of causal events
Source
Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Aulus Gellius - Noctes Atticae 7.2.01
Book Ref
'The Stoics Reader', ed/tr. Inwood,B/Gerson,L.P. [Hackett 2008], p.109
A Reaction
It seems that Chrysippus (called by Aulus Gellius 'the chief Stoic philosopher') had a rather grandly rhetorical prose style.
| 14062 | Sooner follow mythology, than accept the 'fate' of natural philosophers [Epicurus] |
| 20836 | The Lazy Argument responds to fate with 'why bother?', but the bothering is also fated [Chrysippus, by Cicero] |
| 20837 | Fate is an eternal and fixed chain of causal events [Chrysippus] |
| 21679 | When we say events are fated by antecedent causes, do we mean principal or auxiliary causes? [Chrysippus] |
| 23315 | The nearest to ancient determinism is Stoic fate, but that is controlled by a sympathetic God [Stoic school, by Frede,M] |
| 21674 | Even Apollo can only foretell the future when it is naturally necessary [Carneades, by Cicero] |
| 23347 | If I know I am fated to be ill, I should want to be ill [Epictetus] |
| 13162 | Sloth's Syllogism: either it can't happen, or it is inevitable without my effort [Leibniz] |
| 24133 | I have perfected fatalism, as recurrence and denial of the will [Nietzsche] |
| 24152 | Fate is inspiring, if you understand you are part of it [Nietzsche] |
| 9253 | The human heart has a tiresome tendency to label as fate only what crushes it [Camus] |