Zeno

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In the fourth canto of the Inferno Dante names Zeno alongside Empedocles and Heraclitus, within the band of the great spirits who dwell in Limbo. The ancient commentators were uncertain whether this was Zeno of Elea, a pre-Socratic philosopher of the fifth century BC, or Zeno of Citium, founder of the Stoic school in the third century BC. The critical note favors the Eleatic, both because of the chronological proximity to the other thinkers named in the same tercet, and because of the tradition that records him (through Cicero's Tusculan Disputations) for his contempt for pain. The name of the Stoic is instead explicitly recalled by Dante in the Convivio, where he is cited in a separate passage; a different passage of the Convivio would seem rather to refer to the Eleatic. In the poetic text Zeno appears as a bare name within a list, without further attributive notations.