<P> Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy that flourished throughout the Roman and Greek world until the 3rd century AD . Zeno of Citium founded stoicism in Athens in the early 3rd century BC . It was heavily influenced by certain teachings of Socrates, while stoic physics are largely drawn from the teachings of the philosopher Heraclitus . Stoicism is predominantly a philosophy of personal ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world . According to its teachings, as social beings, the path to happiness for humans is found in accepting this moment as it presents itself, by not allowing ourselves to be controlled by our desire for pleasure or our fear of pain, by using our minds to understand the world around us and to do our part in nature's plan, and by working together and treating others fairly and justly . </P> <P> The Stoics are especially known for teaching that "virtue is the only good" for human beings, and that external things--such as health, wealth, and pleasure--are not good or bad in themselves, but have value as "material for virtue to act upon". Alongside Aristotelian ethics, the Stoic tradition forms one of the major founding approaches to Western virtue ethics . The Stoics also held that certain destructive emotions resulted from errors of judgment, and they believed people should aim to maintain a will (called prohairesis) that is "in accord with nature". Because of this, the Stoics presented their philosophy as the Word of God (lex divina), and they thought the best indication of an individual's philosophy was not what a person said, but how a person behaved . To live a good life, one had to understand the rules of the natural order since they taught everything was rooted in nature . </P>

Who were the stoics and what did they believe
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