For half a millennium Stoicism was very likely the most widely accepted world view in the Western World. Although there was, of course, never a single all-pervasive world view in antiquity, yet from the third century B.C. to the second century A.D. more people in the Mediterranean world seem to have held a more or less Stoic conception of the world than any other. The Peripatos had its following among a few intellectuals; Platonism was dormant while skepticism ruled in the Academy; and even if Epicureanism had a slightly larger following, it, too, was limited to a small coterie of ardent believers with a somewhat larger group of sympathizers, particularly among the Roman aristocrats. The Stoic world view, however, appealed to all classes, attracting slaves and laborers as well as kings and emperors. Its ideas infiltrated religion and science, medicine and theology, poetry and drama, law and government. Even when it had to yield to other world views, it left its mark on Christianity, Gnosticism, Neo-Pythagoreanism, and Neo-Platonism. For a variety of reasons the Stoic outlook, both physical and ethical, captivated a large number of people in the ancient world, probably many more than we shall ever realize; and, in fact, in view of its pervasiveness, it may not be much of an exaggeration to say that the Stoic physical world view was the ancient counterpart of our current, popular, scientific world view.
~ David E. Hahm, The Origins of Stoic Cosmology, Ohio State University Press (1977), xiii.
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