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Posidonius of Apamea

Posidonius of Apamea

c. 135 BCEc. 51 BCE · Apamea

The most learned Stoic polymath (philosophy, science, history, geography); his synthesis shaped Cicero, Seneca, and the wider Greco-Roman intellectual world.

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Stop 1 of 6135 BCEBorn

ApameaSyria

What they did here

Born in Apamea on the Orontes in Syria c.135 BCE; his Syrian-Greek origin is well attested, hence the epithet 'the Apamean' (Strabo 16.2.10; Suda).

About Apamea

Apamea on the Orontes, in northwestern Syria near modern Qalaat al-Madiq, was a major Hellenistic city founded by the Seleucids. It was a significant philosophical center: the Stoic Posidonius and the Neopythagorean/Middle Platonist Numenius were both natives, and the Neoplatonist Iamblichus founded his influential school there in the early fourth century AD.

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In the same place & time

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The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Posidonius of Apamea’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

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Influenced byPanaetius of RhodesPosidonius of Apamea