Panaetius was, unlike his predecessors, a born globalist. His life began in Rhodes but expanded when he studied abroad in both Pergamum and Rome. He traveled across most of the Mediterranean. He fell in with Romans fascinated by the East. Panaetius was able to manage and integrate all these diverse and conflicting ties in a surprisingly modern way. Marcus Aurelius would, in Meditations, describe himself as a “citizen of the world,” and in so doing was following the new course for the philosophy that Panaetius had first set.
Yet even with this international mindset, Panaetius never lost his connection to where he came from. When Athens offered him citizenship, he politely declined, saying that “one city was enough for a sensible man.”
All were aware that Panaetius had a moderating effect on the frenetic yet practical Scipio, balancing out his ambition with mildness and principles. But he was clearly no wet blanket, or he would not have been able to cultivate such a vivacious and diverse social circle. Scipio got enough out of Panaetius’s company that in the spring of 140 BC he asked him to accompany him on an ambitious embassy to the East. This mission was recorded in many sources and logged stops across Egypt, Cyprus, Syria, Rhodes, and various places in Greece and Asia Minor. Plutarch writes that Scipio summoned Panaetius directly, and another source explains that the Senate sent them to “to view the violence and lawlessness of men.” Today we might call this a “fact-finding mission.”
We like to think that the world has changed a great deal since Panaetius’s time, but the truth is that senates are still sending men to the same regions to make the same kinds of observations that this soldier and philosopher were dispatched to make more than twenty-one hundred years ago—just as we are still struggling to strike the right balance, as Panaetius did, between nationalism and globalism, the concerns of the many and the concerns of ourselves.
In the way that Zeno followed in his father’s trade, so too did Panaetius, the son of a diplomat and the student of two philosopher diplomats, continue the family business—and continue Stoicism’s transition from the Stoa to the levers of power, from the provincialism of the Athenian agora to the world stage. In a time when many still believed that the gods played an active role in human affairs and when sacrifices and ritual were designed to placate them, Panaetius was a freethinker. He rejected the silly theories of soothsayers and astrologers, and it was likely on his advice around this time that Scipio banned them from his regiments.
Plutarch tells a colorful story from this nearly two-year fact-finding mission in his Moralia: Roman Sayings that, when Scipio arrived in Alexandria, traveling in a retinue which included Panaetius and five servants, the people were in such a frenzy that they yelled for Scipio to take his toga off his head so they could get a good look, and when he did the masses burst into applause. He writes that the Egyptian king Ptolemy “the Fat” VIII “could hardly keep up with them in walking because of his inactive life and his pampering of his body, and Scipio whispered softly to Panaetius, ‘Already the Alexandrians have received some benefit from our visit. For it is owing to us that they have seen their king walk.’”
Fat and lazy heads of state are another recurring character of history.
In 138 BC, Panaetius and Scipio returned to Rome. Panaetius was now forty-seven years old and had gained a wide life experience. His schooling long finished in Pergamum and Athens, an interim public career in Rhodes behind him, including time spent in the navy, he now found himself ensconced in the inner workings of Rome. It was again timeless and modern that he would, as so many men do at that age, begin to turn some of his attention to writing.
His most important book, Concerning Appropriate Actions, which is an extended meditation on ethical behavior in public life, was not merely theoretical. As he was finishing it, Scipio, who still depended on Panaetius for advice and guidance, began prosecuting a series of major corruption cases against Roman politicians. One against Lucius Cotta was an extortion case. Another involved the Gracchus affair and Scipio’s brother-in-law, Tiberius Gracchus. Antipater’s ethical teachings partly encouraged this populist revolt (his student Blossius was a ringleader), which sought to distribute lands to the poor, but Panaetius found himself on the other side of it. It was the role of the ruling class to defend and maintain order—and Scipio’s aggressive prosecution of the Gracchus affair is interesting in that it essentially pitted two Stoic leaders against each other. We have the Stoic revolutionary in Blossius and the Stoic conservative in Panaetius, both fulfilling what they believed to be their duty to the state. It’s not so much a strange coincidence of history as rather a natural outgrowth of Stoicism’s increasing integration into the political world. Of course, Panaetius would find himself in the middle of a fierce conflict where he knew all the parties involved—that’s what happens when you’re connected.
Cicero would write that Concerning Appropriate Actions “has given us what is unquestionably the most thorough discussion of moral duties that we have,” no small statement given that a hundred years later, Cicero would find himself navigating political revolution as Caesar overthrew the Republic. The previous Stoics had sometimes actively flouted social convention, but Panaetius saw each human being as having a unique prosopon, Greek for “character” or “role,” that must be fulfilled with honor and courage and commitment, however humble or impressive.
Panaetius argues that if we are to live an ethical life and choose appropriate actions, we must find a way to balance:
the roles and duties common to us all as human beings;
the roles and duties unique to our individual daimon, or personal genius/calling;
the roles and duties assigned to us by the chance of our social station (family and profession);
the roles and duties that arise from decisions and commitments we have made.
Each of these layers is an essential part of living virtuously in the real world. A soldier has to manage their obligations as a human, as a warrior, as a member of a family (or as an immigrant or as a wealthy heir), and as a person who has made promises and commitments (to friends, to families, to business partners). The pieces of the equation are different for a head of state or a beggar, but the complicated balance—and the need for guidance—is the same.
When we say that Panaetius was a connector, then, we don’t just mean that he connected people like some kind of master networker—though he was one. More than just searching for obscure ideas in books, he was connecting timeless principles with real people for use in their real lives.
It’s not just the fate of the modern man and woman to ask: Who am I? What should I do with my life? How can I make my life count? The ancients struggled with this too, and Panaetius’s formula helped them as it can help us.
Panaetius believed that each person had an inborn desire for leadership, and that we are obligated to fulfill this potential in our own unique way. We may not all be able to be Scipio on the battlefield, or even Panaetius with an elite education and diplomatic connections, but we can serve the public good in many other ways with equal courage. That’s really what the Scipionic Circle was—a diverse collection of men of vastly different talents, stations, and interests all trying to find a way to contribute and thrive in the world.
Everyone can have a life of meaning and purpose. Everyone can do what they do like a good Stoic.
Panaetius, we can imagine, was the one friends often turned to for advice about how best to do so, and it was aphormai (our inborn resources) that Panaetius pointed them to. It would be a theme, in fact, carried forward by Stoics through to the writings of Marcus Aurelius. Humanity is given these instincts toward virtue by nature, and we can thrive and live nobly if we learn to live consistently with our own nature and our duties, while making the most of the resources we have been given. Panaetius, while born to privilege, chose not to settle into that comfortable life of ease. Instead, he openly embraced duty and the responsibility of a much broader stage. He took the resources he was given and leveraged them, becoming the best version of himself and contributing as much as he could to the big projects of his time.