Explaining historical identities through the values of the present can lead to misleading judgments. The Turkish terms Yunan and Rum, the name Hellene, and the English designation Greek are sometimes treated as interchangeable as a result of such judgments. Yet each of these words bears the traces of historical relationships that emerged during different periods in the Aegean, Anatolia, North Africa, and the Eastern Mediterranean. In Modern Greek, a Greek calls himself Έλληνα

This article is the second part of a three-part series on Daoism, Stoicism, and their comparative relevance for modern societies. While the first article examined Daoism as a civilizational ethics of restraint against domination and ecological excess, this study focuses on Stoicism as a Western ethical response to systemic crisis under empire. Stoicism did not emerge as a philosophy of political reform or institutional redesign. It arose as an ethics of endurance in a world