Antikeimenon

The opposing circumstance — an external obstacle or adversity that serves the Stoic sage as a testing ground for their inner disposition.

Antikeimenon (Greek: that which resists, the opposite) refers in Stoic philosophy to any external event, illness, social humiliation, or form of resistance that stands in a person's way. It is of central importance that the antikeimenon itself is neither good nor bad — it is only the judgment of the prohairesis that makes it so. The sage uses every antikeimenon as an ephodos, an entry point for the practice of virtue.