Stoicism is a wisdom philosophy. What that means is that it’s a philosophy about how to live life and live it well. Our philosophy was founded in Athens, Greece, about 2300 years ago by a man named Zeno. After studying with the Cynics for several years, he studied at Plato’s Academy, then started his own school at the central market in Athens. Zeno started his school by standing on a porch in the market and talking to anyone who happened by. In time, he had a regular group of men standing and talking philosophy there with him. The porch became his school. The word for porch in Greek is stoa, and the men who met there to talk philosophy soon became known as the men of the porch, or Stoics.
Stoicism became the preeminent philosophy of ancient Greece and Rome and flourished for nearly 500 years. It reemerged as a popular philosophy in the Renaissance when people returned to reason rather than faith to find answers about how to live. Today our philosophy and those who live by it are alive and well all over the world.