Diogenes Laërtius · fl. 3rd century CE
Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.156 — Diogenes Laërtius on the Stoics
Translation by R. D. Hicks (1925)
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.156
Reported speech · Diogenes Laërtius on the Stoics
And there are five terrestrial zones: first, the northern zone which is beyond the arctic circle, uninhabitable because of the cold; second, a temperate zone; a third, uninhabitable because of great heats, called the torrid zone; fourth, a counter-temperate zone; fifth, the southern zone, uninhabitable because of its cold. Nature in their view is an artistically working fire, going on its way to create; which is equivalent to a fiery, creative, or fashioning breath. And the soul is a nature capable of perception. And they regard it as the breath of life, congenital with us; from which they infer first that it is a body and secondly that it survives death. Yet it is perishable, though the soul of the universe, of which the individual souls of animals are parts, is indestructible.
Cite this passage
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.156 (on the Stoics), tr. R. D. Hicks (1925)
https://whatwouldstoicsdo.com/passage/lives-of-the-stoics/7.156
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book VII, tr. R. D. Hicks (Loeb, 1925). Text: Perseus Digital Library (CC BY-SA 4.0). Sources and licences
In plain English
AI-written notesFive climate zones of the earth, two icy and uninhabitable, one scorching and two temperate. Nature is a creative fire that works like an artist, and the soul is perceptive nature, the breath of life, so it is a body that survives death for a time but is still perishable.
Older wording
- “torrid zone”
- — the very hot region around the equator
- “congenital”
- — present from birth
Themes and situations
- Nature and the cosmos
- Death and mortality
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