He never spoke
A single sentence by great Jove I swear,
Like this one, "Know thyself," or any other
Of the oft-quoted proverbs: all such sayings
He scorned, as he did beg his way through dirt;
Teaching that all opinion is but vanity.
A single sentence by great Jove I swear,
Like this one, "Know thyself," or any other
Of the oft-quoted proverbs: all such sayings
He scorned, as he did beg his way through dirt;
Teaching that all opinion is but vanity.
Diogenes Laertius
" When he was asked what advantage he had derived from philosophy, he replied, "If no other, at least this, that I am prepared for every kind of fortune.
" The question was put to him what countryman he was, and he replied, "A Citizen of the world" (kosmopolites).
Some men were sacrificing to the Gods to prevail on them to send them sons, and he said, "And do you not sacrifice to procure sons of a particular character?
" Once he was asking the president of a society for a contribution,18 and said to him:
"Spoil all the rest, but keep your hands from Hector. "
He used to say that courtesans were the queens of kings; for that they asked them for whatever they chose. When the Athenians had voted that Alexander was Bacchus, he said to them, "Vote, too, that I am Serapis. " When a man reproached him for going into unclean places, he said, "The sun too penetrates into privies, but is not polluted by them. " When supping in a temple, as some dirty loaves were set before him, he took them up and threw them away, saying that nothing dirty ought to come into a temple; and when some one said to him, "You philosophize without being possessed of any knowledge," he said, "If I only pretend to wisdom, that is philosophizing. " A man once brought him a boy, and said that he was a very clever child, and one of an admirable disposition. " "What, then," said Diogenes, "does he want of me? " He used to say, that those who utter virtuous sentiments but do not do them, are no better than harps, for that a harp has no hearing or feeling. Once he was going into a theatre while every one else was coming out of it; and when asked why he did so, "It is," said he, "what I have been doing all my life. " Once when he saw a young man putting on effeminate airs, he said to him, "Are you not ashamed to have worse plans for yourself than nature had for you? for she has made you a man, but you are trying to force yourself to be a woman. " When he saw an ignorant man tuning a psaltery, he said to him, "Are you not ashamed to be arranging proper sounds on a wooden instrument, and not arranging your soul to a proper life? " When a man said to him, "I am not calculated for philosophy," he said, "Why then do you live, if you have no desire to live properly? " To a man who treated his father with contempt, he said, "Are you not ashamed to despise him to whom you owe it that you have it in your power to give yourself airs at all? " Seeing a handsome young man chattering in an unseemly manner, he said, "Are you not ashamed to draw a sword cut of lead out of a scabbard of ivory? " Being once reproached for drinking in a vintner's shop, he said, "I have my hair cut, too, in a barber's. " At another time, he was attacked for having accepted a cloak from Antipater, but he replied:
"Refuse not thou to heed
The gifts which from the mighty Gods proceed. "19
A man once struck him with a broom, and said, "Take care;" so he struck him in return with his staff, and said, "Take care. "
He once said to a man who was addressing anxious entreaties to a courtesan, "What can you wish to obtain, you wretched man, that you had not better be disappointed in? "Seeing a man reeking all over with unguents, he said to him, "Have a care, lest the fragrance of your head give a bad odour to your life. " One of his sayings was, that servants serve their masters, and that wicked men are the slaves of their appetites. Being asked why slaves were called andrapoda , he replied, "Because they have the feet of men (tous podas andron) and a soul such as you who are asking this question. " He once asked a profligate fellow for a mina; and when he put the question to him, why he asked others for an obol, and him for a mina, he said, "Because I hope to get something from the others another time, but the Gods alone know whether I shall ever extract anything from you again. " Once he was reproached for asking favours, while Plato never asked for any; and he said
"He asks as well as I do, but he does it
Bending his head, that no one else may hear. "
One day he saw an unskilful archer shooting; so he went and sat down by the target, saying, "Now I shall be out of harm's way. " He used to say, that those who were in love were disappointed in regard of the pleasure they expected. When he was asked whether death was an evil, he replied, "How can that be an evil which we do not feel when it is present? " When Alexander was once standing by him, and saying, "Do not you fear me? " He replied, "No; for what are you, a good or an evil? " And as he said that he was good, "Who, then," said Diogenes, "fears the good? " He used to say, that education was, for the young sobriety, for the old comfort, for the poor riches, and for the rich an ornament. " When Didymus the adulterer was once trying to cure the eye of a young girl (kores), he said, "Take care, lest when you are curing the eye of the maiden, you do not hurt the pupil. "20 A man once said to him, that his friends laid plots against him; "What then," said he, "are you to do, if you must look upon both your friends and enemies in the same light? "
On one occasion he was asked, what was the most excellent thing among men; and he said, "Freedom of speech. " He went once into a school, and saw many statues of the Muses, but very few pupils, and said, "Gods, and all my good schoolmasters, you have plenty of pupils. " He was in the habit of doing everything in public, whether in respect of Venus or Ceres; and he used to put his conclusions in this way to people: "If there is nothing absurd in dining, then it is not absurd to dine in the market-place. But it is not absurd to dine, therefore it is not absurd to dine in the market-place. " And as he was continually doing manual work in public, he said one day, "Would that by rubbing my belly I could get rid of hunger. " Other sayings also are attributed to him, which it would take a long time to enumerate, there is such a multiplicity of them.
He used to say, that there were two kinds of exercise: that, namely, of the mind and that of the body; and that the latter of these created in the mind such quick and agile phantasies at the time of its performance, as very much facilitated the practice of virtue; but that one was imperfect without the other, since the health and vigour necessary for the practice of what is good, depend equally on both mind and body. And he used to allege as proofs of this, and of the ease which practice imparts to acts of virtue, that people could see that in the case of mere common working trades, and other employments of that kind, the artisans arrived at no inconsiderable accuracy by constant practice; and that any one may see how much one flute player, or one wrestler, is superior to another, by his own continued practice. And that if these men transferred the same training to their minds they would not labour in a profitless or imperfect manner. He used to say also, that there was nothing whatever in life which could be brought to perfection without practice, and that that alone was able to overcome every obstacle; that, therefore, as we ought to repudiate all useless toils, and to apply ourselves to useful labours and to live happily, we are only unhappy in consequence of most exceeding folly. For the very contempt of pleasure, if we only inure ourselves to it, is very pleasant; and just as they who are accustomed to live luxuriously, are brought very unwillingly to adopt the contrary system; so they who have been originally inured to that opposite system, feel a sort of pleasure in the contempt of pleasure.
This used to be the language which he held, and he used to show in practice, really altering men's habits, and deferring in all things rather to the principles of nature than to those of law; saying that he was adopting the same fashion of life as Hercules had, preferring nothing in the world to liberty; and saying that everything belonged to the wise, and advancing arguments such as I mentioned just above. For instance: every thing belongs to the Gods; and the Gods are friends to the wise; and all the property of friends is held in common; therefore everything belong to the wise. He also argued about the law, that without it there is no possibility of a constitution being maintained; for without a city there can be nothing orderly, but a city is an orderly thing; and without a city there can be no law; therefore law is order. And he played in the same manner with the topics of noble birth, and reputation, and all things of that kind, saying that they were all veils, as it were, for wickedness; and that that was the only proper constitution which consisted in order. Another of his doctrines was that all women ought to be possessed in common; and he said that marriage was a nullity, and that the proper way would be for every man to live with her whom he could persuade to agree with him. And on the same principle he said, that all people's sons ought to belong to every one in common; and there was nothing intolerable in the idea of taking anything out of a temple, or eating any animal whatever, and that there was no impiety in tasting even human flesh; as is plain from the habits of foreign nations; and he said that this principle might be correctly extended to every case and every people. For he said that in reality everything was a combination of all things. For that in bread there was meat, and in vegetables there was bread, and so there were some particles of all other bodies in everything, communicating by invisible passages and evaporating.
VII. And he explains this theory of his clearly in the Thyestes, if indeed the tragedies attributed to him are really his composition, and not rather the work of Philistus, of Aegina, his intimate friend, or of Pasiphon, the son of Lucian, who is stated by Favorinus, in his Universal History, to have written them after Diogenes' death.
VIII. Music and geometry, and astronomy, and all things of that kind, he neglected, as useless and unnecessary. But he was a man very happy in meeting arguments, as is plain from what we have already said.
IX. And he bore being sold with a most magnanimous spirit. For as he was sailing to Aegina, and was taken prisoner by some pirates, under the command of Scirpalus, he was carried off to Crete and sold; and when the Circe asked him what art he understood, he said, "That of governing men. " And presently pointing out a Corinthian, very carefully dressed, (the same Xeniades whom we have mentioned before), he said, "Sell me to that man; for he wants a master. " Accordingly Xeniades bought him and carried him away to Corinth; and then he made him tutor of his sons, and committed to him the entire management of his house. And he behaved himself in every affair in such a manner, that Xeniades, when looking over his property, said, "A good genius has come into my house. " And Cleomenes, in his book which is called the Schoolmaster, says, that he wished to ransom all his relations, but that Diogenes told him that they were all fools; for that lions did not become the slaves of those who kept them, but, on the contrary, those who maintained lions were their slaves. For that it was the part of a slave to fear, but that wild beasts were formidable to men.
X. And the man had the gift of persuasion in a wonderful degree; so that he could easily overcome any one by his arguments. Accordingly, it is said that an Aeginetan of the name of Onesicritus, having two sons, sent to Athens one of them, whose name was Androsthenes, and that he, after having heard Diogenes lecture, remained there; and that after that, he sent the elder, Philiscus, who has been already mentioned, and that Philiscus was charmed in the same manner. And last of all, he came himself, and then he too remained, no less than his son, studying philosophy at the feet of Diogenes. So great a charm was there in the discourses of Diogenes. Another pupil of his was Phocion, who was surnamed the Good; and Stilpon, the Megarian, and a great many other men of eminence as statesmen.
XI. He is said to have died when he was nearly ninety years of age, but there are different accounts given of his death. For some say that he ate an ox's foot raw, and was in consequence seized with a bilious attack, of which he died; others, of whom Cercidas, a Megalopolitan or Cretan, is one, say that he died of holding his breath for several days; and Cercidas speaks thus of him in his Meliambics:
He, that Sinopian who bore the stick,
Wore his cloak doubled, and in th' open air
Dined without washing, would not bear with life
A moment longer: but he shut his teeth,
And held his breath. He truly was the son
Of Jove, and a most heavenly-minded dog,
The wise Diogenes.
Others say that he, while intending to distribute a polypus to his dogs, was bitten by them through the tendon of his foot, and so died. But his own greatest friends, as Antisthenes tells us in his Successions, rather sanction the story of his having died from holding his breath. For he used to live in the Craneum, which was a Gymnasium at the gates of Corinth. And his friends came according to their custom, and found him with his head covered; and as they did not suppose that he was asleep, for he was not a man much subject to the influence of night or sleep, they drew away his cloak from his face, and found him no longer breathing; and they thought that he had done this on purpose, wishing to escape the remaining portion of his life.
On this there was a quarrel, as they say, between his friends, as to who should bury him and they even came to blows; but when the elders and chief men of the city came there, they say that he was buried by them at the gate which leads to the Isthmus, And they placed over him a pillar, and on that a dog in Parian marble. And at a later period his fellow citizens honoured him with brazen statues, and put this inscription on them:
E'en brass by lapse of time doth old become,
But there is no such time as shall efface,
Your lasting glory, wise Diogenes;
Since you alone did teach to men the art
Of a contented life: the surest path
To glory and a lasting happiness.
We ourselves have also written an epigram on him in the proceleusmatic metre.
A. Tell me Diogenes, tell me true, I pray,
How did you die; what fate to Pluto bore you?
B. The savage bits of an envious dog did kill me.
Some, however, say that when he was dying, he ordered his friends to throw his corpse away without burying it, so that every beast might tear it, or else to throw it into a ditch, and sprinkle a little dust over it. And others say that his injunctions were, that he should be thrown into the Ilissus; that so he might be useful to his brethren. But Demetrius, in his treatise on Men of the Same Name, says that Diogenes died in Corinth the same day that Alexander died in Babylon. And he was already an old man, as early as the hundred and thirteenth Olympiad,
XII. The following books are attributed to him. The dialogues entitled the Cephalion; the Icthyas; the Jackdaw; the Leopard; the People of the Athenians; the Republic; one called Moral Art; one on Wealth; one on Love; the Theodorus; the Hypsias; the Aristarchus; one on Death; a volume of Letters; seven Tragedies, the Helen, the Thyestes, the Hercules, the Achilles, the Medea, the Chrysippus, and the Oedippus.
But Sosicrates, in the first book of his Successions, and Satyrus, in the fourth book of his Lives, both assert that none of all these are the genuine composition of Diogenes. And Satyrus affirms that the tragedies are the work of Philiscus, the Aeginetan, a friend of Diogenes. But Sotion, in his seventh book, says that these are the only genuine works of Diogenes: a dialogue on Virtue; another on the Good; another on Love; the Beggar; the Solmaeus ; the Leopard; the Cassander; the Cephalion; and that the Aristarchus, the Sisyphus, the Ganymede, a volume of Apophthegms, and another of Letters, are all the work of Philiscus.
XIII. There were five persons of the name of Diogenes. The first a native of Apollonia, a natural philosopher; and the beginning of his treatise on Natural Philosophy is as follows: "It appears to me to be well for every one who commences any kind of philosophical treatise, to lay down some undeniable principle to start with. " The second was a Sicymian, who wrote an account of Peloponnesus. The third was the man of whom we have been speaking. The fourth was a Stoic, a native of Seleucia, but usually called a Babylonian, from the proximity of Seleucia to Babylon. The fifth was a native of Tarsus, who wrote on the subject of some questions concerning poetry which he endeavours to solve.
XIV. Athenodorus, in the eighth book of his Conversations, says, that the philosopher always had a shining appearance, from his habit of anointing himself.
1. The passage is not free from difficulty; but the thing which misled Diogenes appears to have been that nomisma, the word here used, meant both "a coin, or coinage," and "a custom. "
2. This line is from Euripides, Medea, 411.
3. The saperda was the coracinus (a kind of fish) when salted.
4. This is probably an allusion to a prosecution instituted by Demosthenes against Midias, which was afterwards compromised by Midias paying Demosthenes thirty minae, or three thousand drachmae. See Dem. Or. cont. Midias.
5. This is a pun upon the similarity of Athlias's name to the Greek adjective athlios, which signifies miserable.
6. The heiromnemones were the sacred secretaries or recorders sent by each Amphictyonic state to the council along with their pulagoras, (the actual deputy or minister, L. & S. Gr. & Eng. Lex. , in voc.
7. There is a pun here. Cheiron is the word used for worse. Chiron was also the most celebrated of the Centaurs, the tutor of Achilles.
8. There is a pun intended here; as Diogenes proposed Didymus a fate somewhat similar to that of the beaver.
Cupiens evadere damno
Testiculorum.
9. This is taken from Homer, Il. 10. 387. Pope's Version, 455.
10. This is also from Homer. Il. 2. 95. Pope's Version, 120.
11. This is a parody on Homer, Il 14. 95, where the line ends hoi' agoreueis "if such is your language;" which Diogenes here changes to of agorazeis, if you buy such things.
12. This is a line of the Phoenissae of Euripides, v. 40.
13. The pun here is on the similarity of the noun elaan, an olive, to the verb elaan, to drive; the words mastixen d' elaan are of frequent occurrence in Homer.
14. This line occurs, Hom. Il. 5 83.
15. The Samothracian Gods were Gods of the sea, and it was customary for those who had been saved from shipwreck to make them an offering of some part of what they had saved; and of their hair, if they had saved nothing but their lives.
16. Eurytion was another of the Centaurs, who was killed by Hercules.
17. This is a pun on the similarity of the sound, Tegea, to tegos, a brothel.
18. The Greek is eranon aitoumenos pros ton eranarchen ephe, - eranos was not only a subscription or contribution for the support of the poor, but also a club or society of subscribers to a common fund for any purpose, social, commercial, or charitable or especially political. . . . On the various eranoi v. Bockh, P. E. i. 328. Att. Process. p. 540, s. 99. L. & S. in voc. eranos.
19. Hom. Il. 3. 65.
20. There is a pun here; kore means both "a girl" and "the pupil of the eye. " And ptheiro, "to destroy," is also especially used for " to seduce. "
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF MONIMUS
I. MONIMUS was a Syracusan, and a pupil of Diogenes, but also a slave of some Corinthian money-changer, as Sosicrates tells us. Xeniades, who bought Diogenes, used often to come to him, extolling the excellency of Diogenes both in actions and words till he excited a great affection for the man in the mind of Monimus. For he immediately feigned madness, and threw about all the money and all the coins that were on the table, until his master discarded him, and then he straightway went to Diogenes and became his pupil. He also followed Crates the Cynic a good deal, and devoted himself to the same studies as he did; and the sight of this conduct of his made his master all the more think him mad.
II. And he was a very eminent man, so that even Menander, the comic poet, speaks of him; accordingly, in one of his plays, namely in the Hippocomus, he mentions him thus:
There is a man, O Philo, named Monimus,
A wise man, though but little known, and one
Who bears a wallet at his back and is not
Content with one but three.
He never spoke
A single sentence by great Jove I swear,
Like this one, "Know thyself," or any other
Of the oft-quoted proverbs: all such sayings
He scorned, as he did beg his way through dirt;
Teaching that all opinion is but vanity.
But he was a man of such gravity that he despised glory, and sought only for truth.
III. He wrote some jests mingled with serious treatises, and two essays on the Appetites, and an Exhortation.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF ONESICRITUS
I. ONESICRITUS is called by some authors an Aeginetan, but Demetrius the Magnesian affirms that he was a native of Astypalaea. He also was one of the most eminent of the disciples of Diogenes.
II. And he appears in some points to resemble Xenophon. For Xenophon joined in the expedition of Cyrus, and Onesicritus in that of Alexander; and Xenophon wrote the Cyropaedia, and Onesicritus wrote an account of the education of Alexander. Xenophon, too, wrote a Panegyric on Cyrus, and Onesicritus one on Alexander. They were also both similar to one another in style, except that a copyist is naturally inferior to the original.
III. Menander, too, who was surnamed Drymus, was a pupil of Diogenes, and a great admirer of Homer: and so was Hegesaeus of Sinope, who was nicknamed Clocus, and Philiscus the Aeginetan, as we have said before.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF CRATES
I. CRATES was a Theban by birth, and the son of Ascondus. He also was one of the eminent disciples of the Cynic. But Hippobotus asserts that he was not a pupil of Diogenes, but of Bryson the Achaean.
II. There are the following sportive lines of his quoted:
The waves surround vain Peres' fruitful soil,
And fertile acres crown the sea-born isle;
Land which no parasite e'er dares invade,
Or lewd seducer of a hapless maid;
It bears figs, bread, thyme, garlic's savoury charms,
Gifts which ne'er tempt men to detested arms,
They'd rather fight for gold than glory's dreams.
There is also an account-book of his much spoken of, which is drawn up in such terms as these:-
Put down the cook for minas half a score,
Put down the doctor for a drachma more:
Five talents to the flatterer; some smoke
To the adviser, an obol and a cloak
For the philosopher; for the willing nymph,
A talent . . . .
He was also nicknamed Door-opener, because he used to enter every house and give the inmates advice. These lines, too, are his:
All this I learnt and pondered in my mind,
Drawing deep wisdom from the Muses kind,
But all the rest is vanity.
There is a line, too, which tells us that he gained from philosophy:-
A peck of lupins, and to care for nobody.
This, too, is attributed to him:
Hunger checks love; and should it not, time does.
If both should fail you, then a halter choose.
III. He flourished about the hundred and thirteenth Olympiad.
IV. Antisthenes, in his Successions, says that he, having once, in a certain tragedy, seen Telephus holding a date basket, and in a miserable plight in other respects, betook himself to the Cynic philosophy; and having turned his patrimony into money (for he was of illustrious extraction), he collected three hundred talents by that means, and divided them among the citizens. And after that he devoted himself to philosophy with such eagerness, that even
Philemon the comic poet mentions him. Accordingly he says:
And in the summer he'd a shaggy gown,
To inure himself to hardship: in the winter
He wore mere rags.
But Diocles says that it was Diogenes who persuaded him to discard all his estate and his flocks, and to throw his money into the sea; and he says further, that the house of Crates was destroyed by Alexander, and that of Hipparchia under Philip. And he would very frequently drive away with his staff those of his relations who came after him, and endeavoured to dissuade him from his design; and he remained immoveable.
V. Demetrius, the Magnesian, relates that he deposited his money with a banker, making an agreement with him, that if his sons turned out ordinary ignorant people, he was then to restore it to them; but if they became philosophers, then he was to divide it among the people, for that they, if they were philosophers, would have no need of anything. And Eratosthenes tells us that he had by Hipparchia, whom we shall mention hereafter, a son whose name was Pasicles, and that when he grew up, he took him to a brothel kept by a female slave, and told him that that was all the marriage that his father designed for him; but that marriages which resulted in adultery were themes for tragedians, and had exile and bloodshed for their prizes; and the marriages of those who lived with courtesans were subjects for the comic poets, and often produced madness as the result of debauchery and drunkenness.
VI. He had also a brother named Pasicles, a pupil of Euclides.
VII. Favorinus, in the second book of his Commentaries, relates a witty saying of his; for he says, that once, when he was begging a favour of the master of a gymnasium, on the behalf of some acquaintance, he touched his thighs; and as he expressed his indignation at this, he said, "Why, do they not belong to you as well as your knees? " He used to say that it was impossible to find a man who had never done wrong, in the same way as there was always some worthless seed in a pomegranate. On one occasion he provoked Nicodromus, the harp-player, and received a black eye from him; so he put a plaster on his forehead and wrote upon it, "Nicodromus did this. " He used to abuse prostitutes designedly, for the purpose of practising himself in enduring reproaches. When Demetrius Phalereus sent him some loaves and wine, he attacked him for his present, saying, "I wish that the fountains bore loaves;" and it is notorious that he was a water drinker.
He was once reproved by the aediles of the Athenians, for wearing fine linen, and so he replied, "I will show you Theophrastus also clad in fine linen. " And as they did not believe him, he took them to a barber's shop, and showed him to them as he was being shaved. At Thebes he was once scourged by the master of the Gymnasium, (though some say it was by Euthycrates, at Corinth), and dragged out by the feet; but he did not care, and quoted the line :
I feel, O mighty chief, your matchless might,
Dragged, foot first, downward from th' ethereal height. 1
But Diocles says that it was by Menedemus, of Eretria, that he was dragged in this manner, for that as he was a handsome man, and supposed to be very obsequious to Asclepiades, the Phliasian, Crates touched his thighs and said, "Is Asclepiades within? " And Menedemus was very much offended, and dragged him out, as has been already said; and then Crates quoted the above-cited line.
VIII. Zeno, the Cittiaean, in his Apophthegms, says, that he once sewed up a sheep's fleece in his cloak, without thinking of it; and he was a very ugly man, and one who excited laughter when he was taking exercise. And he used to say, when he put up his hands, "Courage, Crates, as far as your eyes and the rest of your body is concerned:
IX. "For you shall see those who now ridicule you, convulsed with disease, and envying your happiness, and accusing themselves of slothfulness. " One of his sayings was, "That
a man ought to study philosophy, up to the point of looking on generals and donkey-drivers in the same light. " Another was, that those who live with flatterers, are as desolate as calves when in the company of wolves; for that neither the one nor the other are with those whom they ought to be, or their own kindred, but only with those who are plotting against them.
X. When he felt that he was dying, he made verses on himself, saying:
You're going, noble hunchback, you are going
To Pluto's realms, bent double by old age.
For he was humpbacked from age.
XI. When Alexander asked him whether he wished to see the restoration of his country, he said, "What would be the use of it? for perhaps some other Alexander would come at some future time and destroy it again.
"But poverty and dear obscurity,
Are what a prudent man should think his country;
For these e'en fortune can't deprive him of. "
He also said that he was:
A fellow countryman of wise Diogenes,
Whom even envy never had attacked.
Menander, in his Twin-sister, mentions him thus:
For you will walk with me wrapped in your cloak,
As his wife used to with the Cynic Crates.
XII. He gave his daughter to his pupils, as he himself used to say -
To have and keep on trial for a month.
***
Peitho's Web note: The following is from the Life of Hipparchia, see Yonge's note 2, in the next line:
There is also a volume of letters of Crates2
extant, in which he philosophizes most excellently; and in style is very little inferior to Plato. He also wrote some tragedies, which are imbued with a very sublime spirit of philosophy, of which the following lines are a specimen:
'Tis not one town, nor one poor single house,
That is my country; but in every land
Each city and each dwelling seems to me,
A place for my reception ready made.
And he died at a great age, and was buried in Boeotia.
1. This is a parody on Homer. Il. 1. 591. Pope's Version, 760.
2. From this last paragraph it is inferred by some critics, that originally the preceding memoirs of Crates, Metrocles, and Hipparchia, formed only one chapter or book.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF METROCLES
I. METROCLES was the brother of Hipparchia; and though he had formerly been a pupil of Theophrastus, he had profited so little by his instructions, that once, thinking that, while listening to a lecture on philosophy, he had disgraced himself by his inattention, he fell into despondency, and shut himself up in his house, intending to starve himself to death. Accordingly, when Crates heard of it, he came to him, having been sent for; and eating a number of lupins, on purpose, he persuaded him by numbers of arguments, that he had done no harm; for that it was not to be expected that a man should not indulge his natural inclinations and habits; and he comforted him by showing him that he, in a similar case, would certainly have behaved in a similar manner. And after that, he became a pupil of Crates, and a man of great eminence as a philosopher.
II. II. He burnt all his writings, as Hecaton tells us in the first book of his Apophthegms, and said:
These are the phantoms of infernal dreams;
As if he meant that they were all nonsense. But some say that it was the notes which he had taken of the lectures of Theophrastus which be burnt, quoting the following verse:
Vulcan, draw near, 'tis Thetis asks your aid. 1
III. He used to say that some things could be bought with money, as for instance a house; and some with time and industry, as education; that wealth was mischievous; if a man did not use it properly.
IV. He died at a great age, having suffocated himself.
V. His pupils were Theomentus and Cleomenes, Demetrius of Alexandria, the son of Theombrotus, Timarchus of Alexandria, the son of Cleomenes, and Echecles, of Ephesus. Not but what Echecles was also a pupil of Theombrotus; and Menedemus, of whom we shall speak hereafter, was his pupil. Menippus, of Sinope, too, was a very eminent person in his school.
1. Hom. Il. 18. 395. Pope's version, 460.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF HIPPARCHIA
I. HIPPARCHIA, the sister of Metrocles, was charmed among others, by the doctrines of this school.
II. Both she and Metrocles were natives of Maronea. She fell in love with both the doctrines and manners of Crates, and could not be diverted from her regard for him, by either the wealth, or high birth, or personal beauty, of any of her suitors , but Crates was everything to her; and she threatened her parents to make away with herself, if she were not given in marriage to him. Crates accordingly, being entreated by her parents to dissuade her from this resolution, did all he could; and at last, as he could not persuade her, he rose up, and placing all his furniture before her, he said, "This is the bridegroom whom you are choosing, and this is the whole of his property; consider these facts, for it will not be possible for you to become his partner, if you do not also apply your self to the same studies, and conform to the same habits that he does. " But the girl chose him; and assuming the same dress that he wore, went about with him as her husband, and appeared with him in public everywhere, and went to all entertainments in his company.
III. And once when she went to sup with Lysimachus, she attacked Theodorus, who was surnamed the Atheist; proposing to him the following sophism; "What Theodorus could not be called wrong for doing, that same thing Hipparchia ought not to be called wrong for doing. But Theodorus does no wrong when he beats himself; therefore Hipparchia does no wrong when she beats Theodorus. " He made no reply to what she said, but only pulled her clothes about; but Hipparchia was neither offended nor ashamed, as many a woman would have been; but when he said to her :
"Who is the woman who has left the shuttle
So near the warp? "1
"I, Theodorus, am that person," she replied; "but do I appear to you to have come to a wrong decision, if I devote that time to philosophy, which I otherwise should have spent at the loom? " And these and many other sayings are reported of this female philosopher.
IV. There is also a volume of letters of Crates2 extant, in which he philosophizes most excellently; and in style is very little inferior to Plato. He also wrote some tragedies, which are imbued with a very sublime spirit of philosophy, of which the following lines are a specimen:
'Tis not one town, nor one poor single house,
That is my country; but in every land
Each city and each dwelling seems to me,
A place for my reception ready made.
And he died at a great age, and was buried in Boeotia.
1. This line is from the Bacchae of Euripides, v. 1228.
2. From this last paragraph it is inferred by some critics, that originally the preceding memoirs of Crates, Metrocles, and Hipparchia, formed only one chapter or book.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF MENIPPUS
I. MENIPPUS was also a Cynic, and a Phoenician by descent, a slave by birth, as Achaicus tells us in his Ethics; and Diocles informs us that his master was a native of Pontus, of the name of Baton; but that subsequently, in consequence of his importunities and miserly habits, he became rich, and obtained the rights of citizenship at Corinth.
II. He never wrote anything serious; but his writings are full of ridiculous matter; and in some respects similar to those of Meleager, who was his contemporary. And Hermippus tells us that he was a man who lent money at daily interest, and that he was called a usurer; for he used to lend on nautical usury, and take security, so that he amassed a very great amount of riches.
III. But at last he fell into a snare, and lost all his money, and in a fit of despair he hung himself, and so he died. And we have written a playful epigram on him:
This man was a Syrian by birth,
And a Cretan usurious hound,
As the name he was known by sets forth;
You've heard of him oft I'll be bound;
His name was Menippus-men entered his house,
And stole all his goods without leaving a louse,
When (from this the dog's nature you plainly may tell)
He hung himself up, and so went off to hell.
IV. But some say that the books attributed to him are not really his work, but are the composition of Dionysius and Zopyrus the Colophonians, who wrote them out of joke, and then gave them to him as a man well able to dispose of them.
V. There were six persons of the name of Menippus; the first was the man who wrote a history of the Lydians, and made an abridgment of Xanthus; the second was this man of whom we have been speaking; the third was a sophist of Stratonice, a Carian by descent; the fourth was a statuary; the fifth and the sixth were painters, and they are both mentioned by Apollodorus.
VI. The writings left by the Cynic amount to thirteen volumes; a Description of the Dead; a volume called Wills; a volume of Letters in which the Gods are introduced; treatises addressed to the Natural Philosophers, and Mathematicians, and Grammarians; one on the Generations of Epicurus, and on the Observance of the Twentieth Day by the philosophers of his school; and one or two other essays.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF MENEDEMUS
I. MENEDEMUS was a disciple of Colotes of Lampsacus.
II. He proceeded, as Hippobotus tells, to such a great degree of superstition, that he assumed the garb of a fury, and went about saying that he had come from hell to take notice of all who did wrong, in order that he might descend thither again and make his report to the deities who abode in that country. And this was his dress: a tunic of a dark colour reaching to his feet, and a purple girdle round his waist, an Arcadian hat on his head with the twelve signs of the zodiac embroidered on it, tragic buskins, a preposterously long beard, and an ashen staff in his hand.
III. These then are the lives of each of the Cynics; and we shall also subjoin some of the doctrines which they all held in common, if indeed it is not an abuse of language to call that a sect of philosophy at all, instead of, as some contend it should be termed, a mere system of life.
They wished to abolish the whole system of logic and natural philosophy, like Aristo of Chios, and thought that men should study nothing but ethics; and what some people assert of Socrates was described by Diocles as a characteristic of Diogenes, for he said that his doctrine was, that a man ought to investigate-
Only the good and ill that taketh place
Within our houses.
They also discard all liberal studies. Accordingly, Antisthenes said that wise men only applied themselves to literature and learning for the sake of perverting others; they also wish to abolish geometry and music, and everything of that kind. Accordingly, Diogenes said once to a person who was showing him a clock; "It is a very useful thing to save a man from being too late for supper. " And once when a man made an exhibition of musical skill before him, he said:
"Cities are governed, so are houses too,
By wisdom, not by harp-playiug and whistling. "1
Their doctrine is, that the chief good of mankind is to live according to virtue, as Antisthenes says in his Hercules, in which they resemble the Stoics. For those two sects have a good deal in common with one another, on which account they themselves say that cynicism is a short road to virtue; and Zeno, the Cittiaean lived in the same manner.
They also teach that men ought to live simply, using only plain food in moderate quantities, wearing nothing but a cloak, and despising riches, and glory, and nobleness of birth; accordingly some of them feed upon nothing beyond herbs and cold water, living in any shelter that they can find, or in tubs as Diogenes did; for he used to say that it was the peculiar property of the Gods to want nothing, and that, therefore, when a man wished for nothing he was like the Gods.
Another of their doctrines is, that virtue is a thing which may be taught, as Antisthenes affirms in his Heraclides; and that when it has once been attained it can never be lost. They also say that the wise man deserves to be loved, and cannot commit error, and is a friend to every one who resembles him, and that he leaves nothing to fortune. And everything which is unconnected with either virtue or vice they call indifferent, agreeing in this with Aristo, the Chian.
These then were the Cynics; and now we must pass on to the Stoics, of which sect the founder was Zeno, who had been a disciple of Crates,
1. This a parody on two lines in the Antiope of Euripides.
Gno me gar andros eu men oikountai poleis.
Eu d' oikos eis t' au polemon ischuei mega.
Which may be translated:
Wisdom it is which regulates both cities,
And private citizens, and makes their lot
Secure and happy; nor is her influence
Of less account in war.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF ARISTON
I. ARISTON the Bald, a native of Chios, surnamed the Scion, said, that the chief good was to live in perfect indifference to all those things which are of an intermediate character between virtue and vice; making not the slightest difference between them, but regarding them all on a footing of equality. For that the wise man resembles a good actor; who, whether he is filling the part of Agamemnon or Thersites, will perform them both equally well.
II. And he discarded altogether the topic of physics, and of logic, saying that the one was above us, and that the other had nothing to do with us; and that the only branch of philosophy with which we had any real concern was ethics.
III. He also said that dialectic reasonings were like cobwebs; which, although they seem to be put together on principles of art, are utterly useless.
IV. And he did not introduce many virtues into his scheme, as Zeno did; nor one virtue under a great many names, as the Megaric philosophers did; but defined virtue as consisting in behaving in a certain manner with reference to a certain thing.
V. And as he philosophized in this manner, and carried on his discussions in the Cynosarges, he got so much influence as to be called a founder of a sect. Accordingly, Miltiades, and Diphilus were called Aristoneans.
VI. He was a man of very persuasive eloquence, and one who could adapt himself well to the humours of a multitude. On which account Timon says of him:
And one who, from Ariston's wily race,
Traced his descent.
Diocles, the Magnesian, tells us that Ariston having fallen in with Polemo, passed over to his school, at a time when Zeno was lying ill with a long sickness. The Stoic doctrine to which he was most attached, was the one that the wise man is never guided by opinions. But Persaeus argued against this, and caused one of two twin brothers to place a deposit in his hands, and then caused the other to reclaim it; and thus he convicted him, as he was in doubt on this point, and therefore forced to act on opinion. He was a great enemy of Arcesilaus. And once, seeing a bull of a monstrous conformation, having a womb, he said, "Alas! here is an argument for Arcesilaus against the evidence of his senses. " On another occasion, when a philosopher of the Academy said that he did not comprehend anything, he said to him, "Do not you even see the man who is sitting next to you? " And as he said that he did not, he said:
Who then has blinded you, who's been so harsh,
As thus to rob you of your beaming eyes?
VII. The following works are attributed to him.
"Spoil all the rest, but keep your hands from Hector. "
He used to say that courtesans were the queens of kings; for that they asked them for whatever they chose. When the Athenians had voted that Alexander was Bacchus, he said to them, "Vote, too, that I am Serapis. " When a man reproached him for going into unclean places, he said, "The sun too penetrates into privies, but is not polluted by them. " When supping in a temple, as some dirty loaves were set before him, he took them up and threw them away, saying that nothing dirty ought to come into a temple; and when some one said to him, "You philosophize without being possessed of any knowledge," he said, "If I only pretend to wisdom, that is philosophizing. " A man once brought him a boy, and said that he was a very clever child, and one of an admirable disposition. " "What, then," said Diogenes, "does he want of me? " He used to say, that those who utter virtuous sentiments but do not do them, are no better than harps, for that a harp has no hearing or feeling. Once he was going into a theatre while every one else was coming out of it; and when asked why he did so, "It is," said he, "what I have been doing all my life. " Once when he saw a young man putting on effeminate airs, he said to him, "Are you not ashamed to have worse plans for yourself than nature had for you? for she has made you a man, but you are trying to force yourself to be a woman. " When he saw an ignorant man tuning a psaltery, he said to him, "Are you not ashamed to be arranging proper sounds on a wooden instrument, and not arranging your soul to a proper life? " When a man said to him, "I am not calculated for philosophy," he said, "Why then do you live, if you have no desire to live properly? " To a man who treated his father with contempt, he said, "Are you not ashamed to despise him to whom you owe it that you have it in your power to give yourself airs at all? " Seeing a handsome young man chattering in an unseemly manner, he said, "Are you not ashamed to draw a sword cut of lead out of a scabbard of ivory? " Being once reproached for drinking in a vintner's shop, he said, "I have my hair cut, too, in a barber's. " At another time, he was attacked for having accepted a cloak from Antipater, but he replied:
"Refuse not thou to heed
The gifts which from the mighty Gods proceed. "19
A man once struck him with a broom, and said, "Take care;" so he struck him in return with his staff, and said, "Take care. "
He once said to a man who was addressing anxious entreaties to a courtesan, "What can you wish to obtain, you wretched man, that you had not better be disappointed in? "Seeing a man reeking all over with unguents, he said to him, "Have a care, lest the fragrance of your head give a bad odour to your life. " One of his sayings was, that servants serve their masters, and that wicked men are the slaves of their appetites. Being asked why slaves were called andrapoda , he replied, "Because they have the feet of men (tous podas andron) and a soul such as you who are asking this question. " He once asked a profligate fellow for a mina; and when he put the question to him, why he asked others for an obol, and him for a mina, he said, "Because I hope to get something from the others another time, but the Gods alone know whether I shall ever extract anything from you again. " Once he was reproached for asking favours, while Plato never asked for any; and he said
"He asks as well as I do, but he does it
Bending his head, that no one else may hear. "
One day he saw an unskilful archer shooting; so he went and sat down by the target, saying, "Now I shall be out of harm's way. " He used to say, that those who were in love were disappointed in regard of the pleasure they expected. When he was asked whether death was an evil, he replied, "How can that be an evil which we do not feel when it is present? " When Alexander was once standing by him, and saying, "Do not you fear me? " He replied, "No; for what are you, a good or an evil? " And as he said that he was good, "Who, then," said Diogenes, "fears the good? " He used to say, that education was, for the young sobriety, for the old comfort, for the poor riches, and for the rich an ornament. " When Didymus the adulterer was once trying to cure the eye of a young girl (kores), he said, "Take care, lest when you are curing the eye of the maiden, you do not hurt the pupil. "20 A man once said to him, that his friends laid plots against him; "What then," said he, "are you to do, if you must look upon both your friends and enemies in the same light? "
On one occasion he was asked, what was the most excellent thing among men; and he said, "Freedom of speech. " He went once into a school, and saw many statues of the Muses, but very few pupils, and said, "Gods, and all my good schoolmasters, you have plenty of pupils. " He was in the habit of doing everything in public, whether in respect of Venus or Ceres; and he used to put his conclusions in this way to people: "If there is nothing absurd in dining, then it is not absurd to dine in the market-place. But it is not absurd to dine, therefore it is not absurd to dine in the market-place. " And as he was continually doing manual work in public, he said one day, "Would that by rubbing my belly I could get rid of hunger. " Other sayings also are attributed to him, which it would take a long time to enumerate, there is such a multiplicity of them.
He used to say, that there were two kinds of exercise: that, namely, of the mind and that of the body; and that the latter of these created in the mind such quick and agile phantasies at the time of its performance, as very much facilitated the practice of virtue; but that one was imperfect without the other, since the health and vigour necessary for the practice of what is good, depend equally on both mind and body. And he used to allege as proofs of this, and of the ease which practice imparts to acts of virtue, that people could see that in the case of mere common working trades, and other employments of that kind, the artisans arrived at no inconsiderable accuracy by constant practice; and that any one may see how much one flute player, or one wrestler, is superior to another, by his own continued practice. And that if these men transferred the same training to their minds they would not labour in a profitless or imperfect manner. He used to say also, that there was nothing whatever in life which could be brought to perfection without practice, and that that alone was able to overcome every obstacle; that, therefore, as we ought to repudiate all useless toils, and to apply ourselves to useful labours and to live happily, we are only unhappy in consequence of most exceeding folly. For the very contempt of pleasure, if we only inure ourselves to it, is very pleasant; and just as they who are accustomed to live luxuriously, are brought very unwillingly to adopt the contrary system; so they who have been originally inured to that opposite system, feel a sort of pleasure in the contempt of pleasure.
This used to be the language which he held, and he used to show in practice, really altering men's habits, and deferring in all things rather to the principles of nature than to those of law; saying that he was adopting the same fashion of life as Hercules had, preferring nothing in the world to liberty; and saying that everything belonged to the wise, and advancing arguments such as I mentioned just above. For instance: every thing belongs to the Gods; and the Gods are friends to the wise; and all the property of friends is held in common; therefore everything belong to the wise. He also argued about the law, that without it there is no possibility of a constitution being maintained; for without a city there can be nothing orderly, but a city is an orderly thing; and without a city there can be no law; therefore law is order. And he played in the same manner with the topics of noble birth, and reputation, and all things of that kind, saying that they were all veils, as it were, for wickedness; and that that was the only proper constitution which consisted in order. Another of his doctrines was that all women ought to be possessed in common; and he said that marriage was a nullity, and that the proper way would be for every man to live with her whom he could persuade to agree with him. And on the same principle he said, that all people's sons ought to belong to every one in common; and there was nothing intolerable in the idea of taking anything out of a temple, or eating any animal whatever, and that there was no impiety in tasting even human flesh; as is plain from the habits of foreign nations; and he said that this principle might be correctly extended to every case and every people. For he said that in reality everything was a combination of all things. For that in bread there was meat, and in vegetables there was bread, and so there were some particles of all other bodies in everything, communicating by invisible passages and evaporating.
VII. And he explains this theory of his clearly in the Thyestes, if indeed the tragedies attributed to him are really his composition, and not rather the work of Philistus, of Aegina, his intimate friend, or of Pasiphon, the son of Lucian, who is stated by Favorinus, in his Universal History, to have written them after Diogenes' death.
VIII. Music and geometry, and astronomy, and all things of that kind, he neglected, as useless and unnecessary. But he was a man very happy in meeting arguments, as is plain from what we have already said.
IX. And he bore being sold with a most magnanimous spirit. For as he was sailing to Aegina, and was taken prisoner by some pirates, under the command of Scirpalus, he was carried off to Crete and sold; and when the Circe asked him what art he understood, he said, "That of governing men. " And presently pointing out a Corinthian, very carefully dressed, (the same Xeniades whom we have mentioned before), he said, "Sell me to that man; for he wants a master. " Accordingly Xeniades bought him and carried him away to Corinth; and then he made him tutor of his sons, and committed to him the entire management of his house. And he behaved himself in every affair in such a manner, that Xeniades, when looking over his property, said, "A good genius has come into my house. " And Cleomenes, in his book which is called the Schoolmaster, says, that he wished to ransom all his relations, but that Diogenes told him that they were all fools; for that lions did not become the slaves of those who kept them, but, on the contrary, those who maintained lions were their slaves. For that it was the part of a slave to fear, but that wild beasts were formidable to men.
X. And the man had the gift of persuasion in a wonderful degree; so that he could easily overcome any one by his arguments. Accordingly, it is said that an Aeginetan of the name of Onesicritus, having two sons, sent to Athens one of them, whose name was Androsthenes, and that he, after having heard Diogenes lecture, remained there; and that after that, he sent the elder, Philiscus, who has been already mentioned, and that Philiscus was charmed in the same manner. And last of all, he came himself, and then he too remained, no less than his son, studying philosophy at the feet of Diogenes. So great a charm was there in the discourses of Diogenes. Another pupil of his was Phocion, who was surnamed the Good; and Stilpon, the Megarian, and a great many other men of eminence as statesmen.
XI. He is said to have died when he was nearly ninety years of age, but there are different accounts given of his death. For some say that he ate an ox's foot raw, and was in consequence seized with a bilious attack, of which he died; others, of whom Cercidas, a Megalopolitan or Cretan, is one, say that he died of holding his breath for several days; and Cercidas speaks thus of him in his Meliambics:
He, that Sinopian who bore the stick,
Wore his cloak doubled, and in th' open air
Dined without washing, would not bear with life
A moment longer: but he shut his teeth,
And held his breath. He truly was the son
Of Jove, and a most heavenly-minded dog,
The wise Diogenes.
Others say that he, while intending to distribute a polypus to his dogs, was bitten by them through the tendon of his foot, and so died. But his own greatest friends, as Antisthenes tells us in his Successions, rather sanction the story of his having died from holding his breath. For he used to live in the Craneum, which was a Gymnasium at the gates of Corinth. And his friends came according to their custom, and found him with his head covered; and as they did not suppose that he was asleep, for he was not a man much subject to the influence of night or sleep, they drew away his cloak from his face, and found him no longer breathing; and they thought that he had done this on purpose, wishing to escape the remaining portion of his life.
On this there was a quarrel, as they say, between his friends, as to who should bury him and they even came to blows; but when the elders and chief men of the city came there, they say that he was buried by them at the gate which leads to the Isthmus, And they placed over him a pillar, and on that a dog in Parian marble. And at a later period his fellow citizens honoured him with brazen statues, and put this inscription on them:
E'en brass by lapse of time doth old become,
But there is no such time as shall efface,
Your lasting glory, wise Diogenes;
Since you alone did teach to men the art
Of a contented life: the surest path
To glory and a lasting happiness.
We ourselves have also written an epigram on him in the proceleusmatic metre.
A. Tell me Diogenes, tell me true, I pray,
How did you die; what fate to Pluto bore you?
B. The savage bits of an envious dog did kill me.
Some, however, say that when he was dying, he ordered his friends to throw his corpse away without burying it, so that every beast might tear it, or else to throw it into a ditch, and sprinkle a little dust over it. And others say that his injunctions were, that he should be thrown into the Ilissus; that so he might be useful to his brethren. But Demetrius, in his treatise on Men of the Same Name, says that Diogenes died in Corinth the same day that Alexander died in Babylon. And he was already an old man, as early as the hundred and thirteenth Olympiad,
XII. The following books are attributed to him. The dialogues entitled the Cephalion; the Icthyas; the Jackdaw; the Leopard; the People of the Athenians; the Republic; one called Moral Art; one on Wealth; one on Love; the Theodorus; the Hypsias; the Aristarchus; one on Death; a volume of Letters; seven Tragedies, the Helen, the Thyestes, the Hercules, the Achilles, the Medea, the Chrysippus, and the Oedippus.
But Sosicrates, in the first book of his Successions, and Satyrus, in the fourth book of his Lives, both assert that none of all these are the genuine composition of Diogenes. And Satyrus affirms that the tragedies are the work of Philiscus, the Aeginetan, a friend of Diogenes. But Sotion, in his seventh book, says that these are the only genuine works of Diogenes: a dialogue on Virtue; another on the Good; another on Love; the Beggar; the Solmaeus ; the Leopard; the Cassander; the Cephalion; and that the Aristarchus, the Sisyphus, the Ganymede, a volume of Apophthegms, and another of Letters, are all the work of Philiscus.
XIII. There were five persons of the name of Diogenes. The first a native of Apollonia, a natural philosopher; and the beginning of his treatise on Natural Philosophy is as follows: "It appears to me to be well for every one who commences any kind of philosophical treatise, to lay down some undeniable principle to start with. " The second was a Sicymian, who wrote an account of Peloponnesus. The third was the man of whom we have been speaking. The fourth was a Stoic, a native of Seleucia, but usually called a Babylonian, from the proximity of Seleucia to Babylon. The fifth was a native of Tarsus, who wrote on the subject of some questions concerning poetry which he endeavours to solve.
XIV. Athenodorus, in the eighth book of his Conversations, says, that the philosopher always had a shining appearance, from his habit of anointing himself.
1. The passage is not free from difficulty; but the thing which misled Diogenes appears to have been that nomisma, the word here used, meant both "a coin, or coinage," and "a custom. "
2. This line is from Euripides, Medea, 411.
3. The saperda was the coracinus (a kind of fish) when salted.
4. This is probably an allusion to a prosecution instituted by Demosthenes against Midias, which was afterwards compromised by Midias paying Demosthenes thirty minae, or three thousand drachmae. See Dem. Or. cont. Midias.
5. This is a pun upon the similarity of Athlias's name to the Greek adjective athlios, which signifies miserable.
6. The heiromnemones were the sacred secretaries or recorders sent by each Amphictyonic state to the council along with their pulagoras, (the actual deputy or minister, L. & S. Gr. & Eng. Lex. , in voc.
7. There is a pun here. Cheiron is the word used for worse. Chiron was also the most celebrated of the Centaurs, the tutor of Achilles.
8. There is a pun intended here; as Diogenes proposed Didymus a fate somewhat similar to that of the beaver.
Cupiens evadere damno
Testiculorum.
9. This is taken from Homer, Il. 10. 387. Pope's Version, 455.
10. This is also from Homer. Il. 2. 95. Pope's Version, 120.
11. This is a parody on Homer, Il 14. 95, where the line ends hoi' agoreueis "if such is your language;" which Diogenes here changes to of agorazeis, if you buy such things.
12. This is a line of the Phoenissae of Euripides, v. 40.
13. The pun here is on the similarity of the noun elaan, an olive, to the verb elaan, to drive; the words mastixen d' elaan are of frequent occurrence in Homer.
14. This line occurs, Hom. Il. 5 83.
15. The Samothracian Gods were Gods of the sea, and it was customary for those who had been saved from shipwreck to make them an offering of some part of what they had saved; and of their hair, if they had saved nothing but their lives.
16. Eurytion was another of the Centaurs, who was killed by Hercules.
17. This is a pun on the similarity of the sound, Tegea, to tegos, a brothel.
18. The Greek is eranon aitoumenos pros ton eranarchen ephe, - eranos was not only a subscription or contribution for the support of the poor, but also a club or society of subscribers to a common fund for any purpose, social, commercial, or charitable or especially political. . . . On the various eranoi v. Bockh, P. E. i. 328. Att. Process. p. 540, s. 99. L. & S. in voc. eranos.
19. Hom. Il. 3. 65.
20. There is a pun here; kore means both "a girl" and "the pupil of the eye. " And ptheiro, "to destroy," is also especially used for " to seduce. "
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF MONIMUS
I. MONIMUS was a Syracusan, and a pupil of Diogenes, but also a slave of some Corinthian money-changer, as Sosicrates tells us. Xeniades, who bought Diogenes, used often to come to him, extolling the excellency of Diogenes both in actions and words till he excited a great affection for the man in the mind of Monimus. For he immediately feigned madness, and threw about all the money and all the coins that were on the table, until his master discarded him, and then he straightway went to Diogenes and became his pupil. He also followed Crates the Cynic a good deal, and devoted himself to the same studies as he did; and the sight of this conduct of his made his master all the more think him mad.
II. And he was a very eminent man, so that even Menander, the comic poet, speaks of him; accordingly, in one of his plays, namely in the Hippocomus, he mentions him thus:
There is a man, O Philo, named Monimus,
A wise man, though but little known, and one
Who bears a wallet at his back and is not
Content with one but three.
He never spoke
A single sentence by great Jove I swear,
Like this one, "Know thyself," or any other
Of the oft-quoted proverbs: all such sayings
He scorned, as he did beg his way through dirt;
Teaching that all opinion is but vanity.
But he was a man of such gravity that he despised glory, and sought only for truth.
III. He wrote some jests mingled with serious treatises, and two essays on the Appetites, and an Exhortation.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF ONESICRITUS
I. ONESICRITUS is called by some authors an Aeginetan, but Demetrius the Magnesian affirms that he was a native of Astypalaea. He also was one of the most eminent of the disciples of Diogenes.
II. And he appears in some points to resemble Xenophon. For Xenophon joined in the expedition of Cyrus, and Onesicritus in that of Alexander; and Xenophon wrote the Cyropaedia, and Onesicritus wrote an account of the education of Alexander. Xenophon, too, wrote a Panegyric on Cyrus, and Onesicritus one on Alexander. They were also both similar to one another in style, except that a copyist is naturally inferior to the original.
III. Menander, too, who was surnamed Drymus, was a pupil of Diogenes, and a great admirer of Homer: and so was Hegesaeus of Sinope, who was nicknamed Clocus, and Philiscus the Aeginetan, as we have said before.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF CRATES
I. CRATES was a Theban by birth, and the son of Ascondus. He also was one of the eminent disciples of the Cynic. But Hippobotus asserts that he was not a pupil of Diogenes, but of Bryson the Achaean.
II. There are the following sportive lines of his quoted:
The waves surround vain Peres' fruitful soil,
And fertile acres crown the sea-born isle;
Land which no parasite e'er dares invade,
Or lewd seducer of a hapless maid;
It bears figs, bread, thyme, garlic's savoury charms,
Gifts which ne'er tempt men to detested arms,
They'd rather fight for gold than glory's dreams.
There is also an account-book of his much spoken of, which is drawn up in such terms as these:-
Put down the cook for minas half a score,
Put down the doctor for a drachma more:
Five talents to the flatterer; some smoke
To the adviser, an obol and a cloak
For the philosopher; for the willing nymph,
A talent . . . .
He was also nicknamed Door-opener, because he used to enter every house and give the inmates advice. These lines, too, are his:
All this I learnt and pondered in my mind,
Drawing deep wisdom from the Muses kind,
But all the rest is vanity.
There is a line, too, which tells us that he gained from philosophy:-
A peck of lupins, and to care for nobody.
This, too, is attributed to him:
Hunger checks love; and should it not, time does.
If both should fail you, then a halter choose.
III. He flourished about the hundred and thirteenth Olympiad.
IV. Antisthenes, in his Successions, says that he, having once, in a certain tragedy, seen Telephus holding a date basket, and in a miserable plight in other respects, betook himself to the Cynic philosophy; and having turned his patrimony into money (for he was of illustrious extraction), he collected three hundred talents by that means, and divided them among the citizens. And after that he devoted himself to philosophy with such eagerness, that even
Philemon the comic poet mentions him. Accordingly he says:
And in the summer he'd a shaggy gown,
To inure himself to hardship: in the winter
He wore mere rags.
But Diocles says that it was Diogenes who persuaded him to discard all his estate and his flocks, and to throw his money into the sea; and he says further, that the house of Crates was destroyed by Alexander, and that of Hipparchia under Philip. And he would very frequently drive away with his staff those of his relations who came after him, and endeavoured to dissuade him from his design; and he remained immoveable.
V. Demetrius, the Magnesian, relates that he deposited his money with a banker, making an agreement with him, that if his sons turned out ordinary ignorant people, he was then to restore it to them; but if they became philosophers, then he was to divide it among the people, for that they, if they were philosophers, would have no need of anything. And Eratosthenes tells us that he had by Hipparchia, whom we shall mention hereafter, a son whose name was Pasicles, and that when he grew up, he took him to a brothel kept by a female slave, and told him that that was all the marriage that his father designed for him; but that marriages which resulted in adultery were themes for tragedians, and had exile and bloodshed for their prizes; and the marriages of those who lived with courtesans were subjects for the comic poets, and often produced madness as the result of debauchery and drunkenness.
VI. He had also a brother named Pasicles, a pupil of Euclides.
VII. Favorinus, in the second book of his Commentaries, relates a witty saying of his; for he says, that once, when he was begging a favour of the master of a gymnasium, on the behalf of some acquaintance, he touched his thighs; and as he expressed his indignation at this, he said, "Why, do they not belong to you as well as your knees? " He used to say that it was impossible to find a man who had never done wrong, in the same way as there was always some worthless seed in a pomegranate. On one occasion he provoked Nicodromus, the harp-player, and received a black eye from him; so he put a plaster on his forehead and wrote upon it, "Nicodromus did this. " He used to abuse prostitutes designedly, for the purpose of practising himself in enduring reproaches. When Demetrius Phalereus sent him some loaves and wine, he attacked him for his present, saying, "I wish that the fountains bore loaves;" and it is notorious that he was a water drinker.
He was once reproved by the aediles of the Athenians, for wearing fine linen, and so he replied, "I will show you Theophrastus also clad in fine linen. " And as they did not believe him, he took them to a barber's shop, and showed him to them as he was being shaved. At Thebes he was once scourged by the master of the Gymnasium, (though some say it was by Euthycrates, at Corinth), and dragged out by the feet; but he did not care, and quoted the line :
I feel, O mighty chief, your matchless might,
Dragged, foot first, downward from th' ethereal height. 1
But Diocles says that it was by Menedemus, of Eretria, that he was dragged in this manner, for that as he was a handsome man, and supposed to be very obsequious to Asclepiades, the Phliasian, Crates touched his thighs and said, "Is Asclepiades within? " And Menedemus was very much offended, and dragged him out, as has been already said; and then Crates quoted the above-cited line.
VIII. Zeno, the Cittiaean, in his Apophthegms, says, that he once sewed up a sheep's fleece in his cloak, without thinking of it; and he was a very ugly man, and one who excited laughter when he was taking exercise. And he used to say, when he put up his hands, "Courage, Crates, as far as your eyes and the rest of your body is concerned:
IX. "For you shall see those who now ridicule you, convulsed with disease, and envying your happiness, and accusing themselves of slothfulness. " One of his sayings was, "That
a man ought to study philosophy, up to the point of looking on generals and donkey-drivers in the same light. " Another was, that those who live with flatterers, are as desolate as calves when in the company of wolves; for that neither the one nor the other are with those whom they ought to be, or their own kindred, but only with those who are plotting against them.
X. When he felt that he was dying, he made verses on himself, saying:
You're going, noble hunchback, you are going
To Pluto's realms, bent double by old age.
For he was humpbacked from age.
XI. When Alexander asked him whether he wished to see the restoration of his country, he said, "What would be the use of it? for perhaps some other Alexander would come at some future time and destroy it again.
"But poverty and dear obscurity,
Are what a prudent man should think his country;
For these e'en fortune can't deprive him of. "
He also said that he was:
A fellow countryman of wise Diogenes,
Whom even envy never had attacked.
Menander, in his Twin-sister, mentions him thus:
For you will walk with me wrapped in your cloak,
As his wife used to with the Cynic Crates.
XII. He gave his daughter to his pupils, as he himself used to say -
To have and keep on trial for a month.
***
Peitho's Web note: The following is from the Life of Hipparchia, see Yonge's note 2, in the next line:
There is also a volume of letters of Crates2
extant, in which he philosophizes most excellently; and in style is very little inferior to Plato. He also wrote some tragedies, which are imbued with a very sublime spirit of philosophy, of which the following lines are a specimen:
'Tis not one town, nor one poor single house,
That is my country; but in every land
Each city and each dwelling seems to me,
A place for my reception ready made.
And he died at a great age, and was buried in Boeotia.
1. This is a parody on Homer. Il. 1. 591. Pope's Version, 760.
2. From this last paragraph it is inferred by some critics, that originally the preceding memoirs of Crates, Metrocles, and Hipparchia, formed only one chapter or book.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF METROCLES
I. METROCLES was the brother of Hipparchia; and though he had formerly been a pupil of Theophrastus, he had profited so little by his instructions, that once, thinking that, while listening to a lecture on philosophy, he had disgraced himself by his inattention, he fell into despondency, and shut himself up in his house, intending to starve himself to death. Accordingly, when Crates heard of it, he came to him, having been sent for; and eating a number of lupins, on purpose, he persuaded him by numbers of arguments, that he had done no harm; for that it was not to be expected that a man should not indulge his natural inclinations and habits; and he comforted him by showing him that he, in a similar case, would certainly have behaved in a similar manner. And after that, he became a pupil of Crates, and a man of great eminence as a philosopher.
II. II. He burnt all his writings, as Hecaton tells us in the first book of his Apophthegms, and said:
These are the phantoms of infernal dreams;
As if he meant that they were all nonsense. But some say that it was the notes which he had taken of the lectures of Theophrastus which be burnt, quoting the following verse:
Vulcan, draw near, 'tis Thetis asks your aid. 1
III. He used to say that some things could be bought with money, as for instance a house; and some with time and industry, as education; that wealth was mischievous; if a man did not use it properly.
IV. He died at a great age, having suffocated himself.
V. His pupils were Theomentus and Cleomenes, Demetrius of Alexandria, the son of Theombrotus, Timarchus of Alexandria, the son of Cleomenes, and Echecles, of Ephesus. Not but what Echecles was also a pupil of Theombrotus; and Menedemus, of whom we shall speak hereafter, was his pupil. Menippus, of Sinope, too, was a very eminent person in his school.
1. Hom. Il. 18. 395. Pope's version, 460.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF HIPPARCHIA
I. HIPPARCHIA, the sister of Metrocles, was charmed among others, by the doctrines of this school.
II. Both she and Metrocles were natives of Maronea. She fell in love with both the doctrines and manners of Crates, and could not be diverted from her regard for him, by either the wealth, or high birth, or personal beauty, of any of her suitors , but Crates was everything to her; and she threatened her parents to make away with herself, if she were not given in marriage to him. Crates accordingly, being entreated by her parents to dissuade her from this resolution, did all he could; and at last, as he could not persuade her, he rose up, and placing all his furniture before her, he said, "This is the bridegroom whom you are choosing, and this is the whole of his property; consider these facts, for it will not be possible for you to become his partner, if you do not also apply your self to the same studies, and conform to the same habits that he does. " But the girl chose him; and assuming the same dress that he wore, went about with him as her husband, and appeared with him in public everywhere, and went to all entertainments in his company.
III. And once when she went to sup with Lysimachus, she attacked Theodorus, who was surnamed the Atheist; proposing to him the following sophism; "What Theodorus could not be called wrong for doing, that same thing Hipparchia ought not to be called wrong for doing. But Theodorus does no wrong when he beats himself; therefore Hipparchia does no wrong when she beats Theodorus. " He made no reply to what she said, but only pulled her clothes about; but Hipparchia was neither offended nor ashamed, as many a woman would have been; but when he said to her :
"Who is the woman who has left the shuttle
So near the warp? "1
"I, Theodorus, am that person," she replied; "but do I appear to you to have come to a wrong decision, if I devote that time to philosophy, which I otherwise should have spent at the loom? " And these and many other sayings are reported of this female philosopher.
IV. There is also a volume of letters of Crates2 extant, in which he philosophizes most excellently; and in style is very little inferior to Plato. He also wrote some tragedies, which are imbued with a very sublime spirit of philosophy, of which the following lines are a specimen:
'Tis not one town, nor one poor single house,
That is my country; but in every land
Each city and each dwelling seems to me,
A place for my reception ready made.
And he died at a great age, and was buried in Boeotia.
1. This line is from the Bacchae of Euripides, v. 1228.
2. From this last paragraph it is inferred by some critics, that originally the preceding memoirs of Crates, Metrocles, and Hipparchia, formed only one chapter or book.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF MENIPPUS
I. MENIPPUS was also a Cynic, and a Phoenician by descent, a slave by birth, as Achaicus tells us in his Ethics; and Diocles informs us that his master was a native of Pontus, of the name of Baton; but that subsequently, in consequence of his importunities and miserly habits, he became rich, and obtained the rights of citizenship at Corinth.
II. He never wrote anything serious; but his writings are full of ridiculous matter; and in some respects similar to those of Meleager, who was his contemporary. And Hermippus tells us that he was a man who lent money at daily interest, and that he was called a usurer; for he used to lend on nautical usury, and take security, so that he amassed a very great amount of riches.
III. But at last he fell into a snare, and lost all his money, and in a fit of despair he hung himself, and so he died. And we have written a playful epigram on him:
This man was a Syrian by birth,
And a Cretan usurious hound,
As the name he was known by sets forth;
You've heard of him oft I'll be bound;
His name was Menippus-men entered his house,
And stole all his goods without leaving a louse,
When (from this the dog's nature you plainly may tell)
He hung himself up, and so went off to hell.
IV. But some say that the books attributed to him are not really his work, but are the composition of Dionysius and Zopyrus the Colophonians, who wrote them out of joke, and then gave them to him as a man well able to dispose of them.
V. There were six persons of the name of Menippus; the first was the man who wrote a history of the Lydians, and made an abridgment of Xanthus; the second was this man of whom we have been speaking; the third was a sophist of Stratonice, a Carian by descent; the fourth was a statuary; the fifth and the sixth were painters, and they are both mentioned by Apollodorus.
VI. The writings left by the Cynic amount to thirteen volumes; a Description of the Dead; a volume called Wills; a volume of Letters in which the Gods are introduced; treatises addressed to the Natural Philosophers, and Mathematicians, and Grammarians; one on the Generations of Epicurus, and on the Observance of the Twentieth Day by the philosophers of his school; and one or two other essays.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF MENEDEMUS
I. MENEDEMUS was a disciple of Colotes of Lampsacus.
II. He proceeded, as Hippobotus tells, to such a great degree of superstition, that he assumed the garb of a fury, and went about saying that he had come from hell to take notice of all who did wrong, in order that he might descend thither again and make his report to the deities who abode in that country. And this was his dress: a tunic of a dark colour reaching to his feet, and a purple girdle round his waist, an Arcadian hat on his head with the twelve signs of the zodiac embroidered on it, tragic buskins, a preposterously long beard, and an ashen staff in his hand.
III. These then are the lives of each of the Cynics; and we shall also subjoin some of the doctrines which they all held in common, if indeed it is not an abuse of language to call that a sect of philosophy at all, instead of, as some contend it should be termed, a mere system of life.
They wished to abolish the whole system of logic and natural philosophy, like Aristo of Chios, and thought that men should study nothing but ethics; and what some people assert of Socrates was described by Diocles as a characteristic of Diogenes, for he said that his doctrine was, that a man ought to investigate-
Only the good and ill that taketh place
Within our houses.
They also discard all liberal studies. Accordingly, Antisthenes said that wise men only applied themselves to literature and learning for the sake of perverting others; they also wish to abolish geometry and music, and everything of that kind. Accordingly, Diogenes said once to a person who was showing him a clock; "It is a very useful thing to save a man from being too late for supper. " And once when a man made an exhibition of musical skill before him, he said:
"Cities are governed, so are houses too,
By wisdom, not by harp-playiug and whistling. "1
Their doctrine is, that the chief good of mankind is to live according to virtue, as Antisthenes says in his Hercules, in which they resemble the Stoics. For those two sects have a good deal in common with one another, on which account they themselves say that cynicism is a short road to virtue; and Zeno, the Cittiaean lived in the same manner.
They also teach that men ought to live simply, using only plain food in moderate quantities, wearing nothing but a cloak, and despising riches, and glory, and nobleness of birth; accordingly some of them feed upon nothing beyond herbs and cold water, living in any shelter that they can find, or in tubs as Diogenes did; for he used to say that it was the peculiar property of the Gods to want nothing, and that, therefore, when a man wished for nothing he was like the Gods.
Another of their doctrines is, that virtue is a thing which may be taught, as Antisthenes affirms in his Heraclides; and that when it has once been attained it can never be lost. They also say that the wise man deserves to be loved, and cannot commit error, and is a friend to every one who resembles him, and that he leaves nothing to fortune. And everything which is unconnected with either virtue or vice they call indifferent, agreeing in this with Aristo, the Chian.
These then were the Cynics; and now we must pass on to the Stoics, of which sect the founder was Zeno, who had been a disciple of Crates,
1. This a parody on two lines in the Antiope of Euripides.
Gno me gar andros eu men oikountai poleis.
Eu d' oikos eis t' au polemon ischuei mega.
Which may be translated:
Wisdom it is which regulates both cities,
And private citizens, and makes their lot
Secure and happy; nor is her influence
Of less account in war.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF ARISTON
I. ARISTON the Bald, a native of Chios, surnamed the Scion, said, that the chief good was to live in perfect indifference to all those things which are of an intermediate character between virtue and vice; making not the slightest difference between them, but regarding them all on a footing of equality. For that the wise man resembles a good actor; who, whether he is filling the part of Agamemnon or Thersites, will perform them both equally well.
II. And he discarded altogether the topic of physics, and of logic, saying that the one was above us, and that the other had nothing to do with us; and that the only branch of philosophy with which we had any real concern was ethics.
III. He also said that dialectic reasonings were like cobwebs; which, although they seem to be put together on principles of art, are utterly useless.
IV. And he did not introduce many virtues into his scheme, as Zeno did; nor one virtue under a great many names, as the Megaric philosophers did; but defined virtue as consisting in behaving in a certain manner with reference to a certain thing.
V. And as he philosophized in this manner, and carried on his discussions in the Cynosarges, he got so much influence as to be called a founder of a sect. Accordingly, Miltiades, and Diphilus were called Aristoneans.
VI. He was a man of very persuasive eloquence, and one who could adapt himself well to the humours of a multitude. On which account Timon says of him:
And one who, from Ariston's wily race,
Traced his descent.
Diocles, the Magnesian, tells us that Ariston having fallen in with Polemo, passed over to his school, at a time when Zeno was lying ill with a long sickness. The Stoic doctrine to which he was most attached, was the one that the wise man is never guided by opinions. But Persaeus argued against this, and caused one of two twin brothers to place a deposit in his hands, and then caused the other to reclaim it; and thus he convicted him, as he was in doubt on this point, and therefore forced to act on opinion. He was a great enemy of Arcesilaus. And once, seeing a bull of a monstrous conformation, having a womb, he said, "Alas! here is an argument for Arcesilaus against the evidence of his senses. " On another occasion, when a philosopher of the Academy said that he did not comprehend anything, he said to him, "Do not you even see the man who is sitting next to you? " And as he said that he did not, he said:
Who then has blinded you, who's been so harsh,
As thus to rob you of your beaming eyes?
VII. The following works are attributed to him.
