Zeno from Citium, was originally a merchant trader before suffering a ship wreak near Athens 300bce, once on land he stumbled upon the readings of Socrates and began to study philosophy. Through his own studies and teachings, he originated the concept of stoicism, which supported virtue, tolerance, and self-control. The original philosophy of stoicism was that the “everything around us operates according to a web of cause and effect” and “while may not always have control over the events affecting us, we can have control over how we approach things”.

 Stoicism stressed that we all share the same fundamental humanity and it became the dominate philosophy from the Hellenistic period through to the roman era.