Diogenes of Sinope

Diogenes lived in a large ceramic jar in Athens, owned a cup until he saw a boy drinking from his hands and threw it away, and made a career of demonstrating how little a person actually requires. Asked by Alexander the Great whether he wanted anything, he asked him to stand out of the light.

The line from him to Stoicism is direct and short: Diogenes taught Crates, and Crates taught Zeno. What the Stoics kept was the conviction that most of what people want is unnecessary and that virtue is sufficient. What they dropped was the deliberate offensiveness. Stoicism is, in one reading, Cynicism made liveable inside a society.