back to ideas for this text


Single Idea 20837

[from 'fragments/reports' by Chrysippus, in 16. Persons / F. Free Will / 6. Determinism / b. Fate ]

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 Reference

'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.