Antipater of Tyre
Antipater (Greek: Ἀντίπατρος; 1st century BC) of Tyre was a Stoic philosopher, and a friend of Cato the Younger and Cicero.[1]
Life
Antipater lived after, or was at least younger than, Panaetius. Cicero, in speaking of him, says, that he died "recently at Athens", which must mean shortly before 45 BC.[2] He is mentioned by Strabo as a "famous philosopher" from Tyre.[3] Antipater is said to have befriended Cato when Cato was a young man, and introduced him to Stoic philosophy:[4]
Having gained the intimate acquaintance of Antipater the Tyrian, the Stoic philosopher, he [Cato] devoted himself to the study, above everything, of moral and political doctrine.
Works
Little is known about his writings. From Cicero we can perhaps infer that Antipater, like Panaetius, wrote a work On Duties (Latin: de Officiis):
Antipater of Tyre, a Stoic philosopher who recently died at Athens, claims that two points were overlooked by Panaetius — the care of health and of property.
Diogenes Laërtius[5] refers to another work by him called On the Cosmos (Greek: περὶ κόσμου):
The whole world is a living being, endowed with soul and reason, and having aether for its ruling principle: so says Antipater of Tyre in the eighth book of his treatise On the Cosmos.
— Diogenes Laërtius, vii. 139
Notes
- ^ Leonhard Schmitz claimed (William Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1867) Page 204) that the Antipater of Tyre who was the friend of Cato, was a different, earlier Antipater of Tyre to the one mentioned by Cicero. Schmitz did not explain why; he may have thought (incorrectly) that a teacher of Cato could not have lived down to 45 BC.
- ^ Cicero, de Officiis, ii. 86
- ^ Strabo, Geography, xvi. 2. 24
- ^ Plutarch, Cato the Younger. 4.
- ^ Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, vii. 139, 142, 148