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By the time when Cynics came to dominate Greek thought, the ideal of a perfect republic had evolved from a previous view of aristocratic order and martial virtues to one of equality and peaceful social engagement.
It's in philosophers like Zeno, and other Cynics, that it becomes evident that the combination of the egalitarian principle, coupled with increased concern for human suffering, provides virtue-signalers with the perfect environment to flourish. Many like him will follow throughout the history of Western philosophy and religion, and some in the East.
Hellenistic rulers like Antigonus II, an expert juggler of vicious, often more powerful enemies, found this entertaining; none of them, however, seems to have encountered any useful insight in Zeno.
Hedonism, originally a minor offshoot of Socrates' thought focused on the search of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, also became in practice conjoined with cynicism and stoicism as part of the philosophical mainstream of the era. This was due to the influence of Epicurus, one of the least politically-minded philosophers in Classic antiquity.
Epicurus (341-270 BC), a contemporary of Zeno of Citium, was a cheerful vegetarian feminist who grew up in Greek backwaters in the Aegean, almost equidistant from the political centers of his era in Alexandria, Carthage and Rome, but settled in middle age in an Athens that remained politically agitated, and hard to control by the Diadochi.
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