The most influential philosophical value of Roman time is no doubt the Stoicism, which arose in Athens in Hellenistic, the period after the conquest of Alexander the Great, or rather in the year of 300 BC. Stoicism was initiated by Zeno who taught his students in a stoa (i.e. portico), and obviously this was the source of its name.  Although the establishment of the philosophical school was much far away from us all, we are not bound to be unfamiliar with it. It is because the Stoic worldview was and is playing a significant role as a director or even behaving like a close buddy of ours, for the teachings of Stoicism have been borrowed and incorporated by later philosophical and religious traditions, which have been all somehow affecting our lives to a certain degree.
 
It is true that Stoicism is the very preference of many Greeks and non-Greeks around the world, and still all of them share a common philosophical outlook, in spite of the unquestionably existing differences between one another.
 
The Stoics categorize their philosophical doctrines into three sections: the first is the physical, and then the ethical, and the third the logical. Although their philosophy have been fallen into three divisions,  yet the Stoics attach significance to the interdependence. To put it precisely, one segment can not been separately researched into, without taking others into account; It calls for a bird's-eye view of all the three that should be brought into consideration to the full.

Nonetheless, it has been the ethics that are most valued by the Stoicism believers and researchers in the following time up to now. The ethics of Stoicism served as a strong emotion-controller, which dictated its adherents that man should protest himself from both outside and even inside disturbance.
 
This idea possessed its own historical and political background. Stoicism flourished during the specific time when the growing great unified Roman Empire with cosmopolitanism came into domination over the former tiny isolated provincial city-states, as an undoubted result, all the involved went though tremendous dramatic vicissitudes, of course both spiritual and physical suffering included. Consequently, some belief or faith was in the very need to help people adjust to the definitely complicated situations. In a word, the Stoicism’s emergency of increasing acceptance and popularity was absolutely reasonable.

Stoic ethics touched the law of nature, i.e. the cosmology.  They stuck to the fact that all is settled under the will of God , that is called fate and providence, and held the point that everything in the world takes place and develops in the way consistent with that of the universe goes on. Its ethical objective broadly suggested humans live in accordance to the cosmos, and narrowly to one’s essential nature —— REASON.
 
As humanity, we are rational creatures, knowing to control our will, i.e. we are supposed to be capable of choosing, receiving and rejecting. Now that whatever occurs is, by definition, the God’s will, equivalently both the good and the evil, it is our duty to recognize and accept them as natural, and what’s more, to respond accordingly, exactly to conform to the reason and virtue. Somebody once made such an expression in a most theological way, “The ideal is to align one's expectations with nature, wanting nothing beyond what is natural and accepting whatever happens as natural. To be natural is to be rational, to be rational is to be virtuous and to be virtuous is to be happy.” The four cardinal virtues of the Stoic philosophy are: wisdom, courage, justice and temperance, the classification of Plato.

However, we might exclaim at it weather the Stoic ethic is workable in modern times, and even in ancient ones —— For the sake of duty and responsibility though it is, can a person only accept everything from God and stay indifferent to all things except the pursuit of virtue?
 
We can see philosophy for Stoics is a constant practice and self-reminder.  “ Begin each day in the early morning by telling yourself: I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will…… ” quoted Marcus Aurelius as saying. He is giving readers a useful practical technique that directs us to confront and seek solutions to the possible problems in literal time.
 
As Seneca the Elder put it, “Let Nature deal with matter, which is her own, as she pleases; let us be cheerful and brave in the face of everything, reflecting that it is nothing of our own that perishes.”

p.s.  Above is my mid-semester essay of my optional course A Survey Western Culture. I gave it a try to get closer to the best of human ideas, and what I have learned is beyond my expectation. And so I brave myself here to be an e-publisher, who would like to share my so-called achievements with you.
Any comments are welcome.