The Shipwreck

Zeno of Citium was a merchant. He lost a cargo of Tyrian purple to the sea near Athens, walked into a bookshop, and found philosophy. He founded Stoicism. Our first collection starts with that purple.

Around 300 BC, a merchant named Zeno of Citium sailed from Phoenicia to Athens with a cargo of purple dye. The ship was lost in a storm. He arrived on a foreign shore with nothing.

He wandered into a bookseller, read of Socrates, and asked where such a man could be found. He never left. He spent the rest of his life teaching from a painted porch, the Stoa, and gave his name to a philosophy of discipline and quiet control of the self.

He called the wreck the most fortunate voyage of his life.