Theater of Fate

his goods perished Laërtius, in the life of Zeno.. Unable to control his mind at such a loss, while he was wandering through the city, he happened to stand at a bookseller’s shop and, delighted by the reading of Xenophon’s Commentaries, he asked where such men lived. The bookseller pointed with his finger to Crates, who was passing by, into whose discipline he immediately conceded, and with tireless study he easily surpassed the remaining fellow students in a short span of time. How great the innocence of his life was is clear from the proverb by which he is called continent: More continent than Zeno. How great his doctrine was is clear from the fact that he was able to found a new sect in philosophy, the Stoics, which was later followed by leaders of states and most select men, who thought that all things happen by fate because a series or reason of things is connected to them, through which the world is ruled Prudentius, book 1, against Symmachus..

They also ascribe the strong threads of Lachesis to the rocks,
And believe that the beams of the weavers hang from rotating spindles,
And they attribute decrees to the seals themselves.

Or in the words of Seneca Seneca, book 2, chapter 35, Natural Questions., Fates carry out their own law, nor are they moved by any prayer; they are not bent by mercy, nor by favor. They keep an irrevocable course; they flow from what is destined. Just as the current of rapids does not flow back on itself, nor does it even delay, because what comes before precipitates what follows; so the eternal series rotates the order of fate, the first law of which is: To stand by the decree.