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There was also the Syrian Posidonius, who stayed i n Athens and visited Rome just once, but eventually established a school on the island of Rhodes that was on the itinerary of every educated Roman. These philosophers of the middle period were all influential i n introducing Stoicism to the Romans. As they did so, they softened the ethical tone of the founders of the school by emphasizing the progress that could be made towards wisdom and virtue, rather than emphasizing the impossible ideal of the perfect character of the Stoic sage.

Zeno of Citium in Cyprus came to Athens in 313 B C E , just before Epicurus. After investigating different philosophies, and spending some time with the Cynic Crates, he struck out on his own, discussing a new philosophy as he walked up and down the painted colonnade (the "Stoa Poikile") in the main agora, and from this location he and his followers were known as Stoics. The main outlines of Stoicism, i n their three divisions of logic, physics and ethics, were established by Zeno during his time in Athens, and further developed by his two immediate successors, Cleanthes of Assos (where Aristotle had spent several years), who focused on religion and wrote the powerful Hymn to Zeus, and Chrysippus from Cilicia in Asia Minor.

When applied to the cosmos (which Aristotle discusses in his works on meteorology and the heavens), the natural movements of earth and water are to move "downwards" that is, towards the centre, and air and fire upwards. But the heavenly bodies (stars and planets) have their own element of aither (the "fifth element") and its natural movement is circular, so that Aristotle's view of the universe, which persisted into the Middle Ages, was of a central earth, encircled by water, then by air and fire; these make up the sublunary realm of change, while the outer heavens, unchanging and eternal, move around them.