The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius (best free ebook reader txt) 📕

command of his physicians, he abstained from food for two days. And he got so well that his physicians allowed him to return to all his former habits; but he refused, and saying that he had now already gone part of the way, he abstained from food for the future, and so died, being, as some report, eighty years old, and having been a pupil of Zeno nineteen years. And we have written a playful epigram on him also, which runs thus:

I praise Cleanthes, but praise Pluto more;
Who could not bear to see him grown so old,
So gave him rest at last among the dead,
Who’d drawn such loads of water while alive.

Sphaerus

Sphaerus, a native of the Bosphorus, was, as we have said before, a pupil of Cleanthes after the death of Zeno.

And when he made a considerable advance in philosophy he went to Alexandria, to the court of Ptolemy Philopater. And once, when there was a discussion concerning the question whether a wise man would allow himself to be guided by opinion, and when Sphaerus affirmed that he would not, the king, wishing to refute him, ordered some pomegranates of wax to be set before him; and when Sphaerus was deceived by them, the king shouted that he had given his assent to a false perception. But Sphaerus answered very neatly that he had not given his assent to the fact that they were pomegranates, but to the fact that it was probable that they might be pomegranates. And that a perception which could be comprehended differed from one that was only probable.

Once, when Mnesistratus accused him of denying that Ptolemy was a king, he said to him: “That Ptolemy was a man with such and such qualities, and a king.”101

He wrote the following books: Two on the World; one on the Elements of Seed; one on Fortune; one on the Smallest Things; one on Atoms and Phantoms; one on the Senses; five Conversations about Heraclitus; one on Ethical Arrangement; one on Duty; one on Appetite; two on the Passions; one on Kingly Power; on the Lacedaemonian Constitution; three on Lycurgus and Socrates; one on Law; one on Divination; one volume of Dialogues on Love; one on the Eretrian Philosophers; one on Things Similar; one on Terms; one on Habits; three on Contradictions; one on Reason; one on Riches; one on Glory; one on Death; two on the Art of Dialectics; one on Categorems; one on Ambiguity; and a volume of Letters.

Chrysippus

Chrysippus was the son of Apollonius, and a native of either Soli or Tarsus, as Alexander tells us in his Successions; and he was a pupil of Cleanthes. Previously he used to practice running as a public runner; then he became a pupil of Zeno or of Cleanthes, as Diocles and the generality of authors say, and while he was still living he abandoned him, and became a very eminent philosopher.

He was a man of great natural ability, and of great acuteness in every way, so that in many points he dissented from Zeno, and also from Cleanthes, to whom he often used to say that he only wanted to be instructed in the dogmas of the school, and that he would discover the demonstrations for himself. But whenever he opposed him with any vehemence, he always repented, so that he used frequently to say:

In most respects I am a happy man,
Excepting where Cleanthes is concerned;
For in that matter I am far from fortunate.

And he had such a high reputation as a dialectician that most people thought that if there were such a science as dialectics among the Gods, it would be in no respect different from that of Chrysippus. But though he was so eminently able in matter, he was not perfect in style.

He was industrious beyond all other men, as is plain from his writings, for he wrote more than seven hundred and five books. And he often wrote several books on the same subject, wishing to put down everything that occurred to him, and constantly correcting his previous assertions, and using a great abundance of testimonies. So that, as in one of his writings he had quoted very nearly the whole of the Medea of Euripides, and someone had his book in his hands; this latter, when he was asked what he had got there, made answer: “The Medea of Chrysippus.” And Apollodorus the Athenian, in his Collection of Dogmas, wishing to assert that what Epicurus had written out of his own head, and without any quotations to support his arguments, was a great deal more than all the books of Chrysippus, speaks thus (I give his exact words): “For if anyone were to take away from the books of Chrysippus all the passages which he quotes from other authors, his paper would be left empty.”

These are the words of Apollodorus; but the old woman who lived with him, as Diocles reports, used to say that he wrote five hundred lines every day. And Hecaton says that he first applied himself to philosophy when his patrimony had been confiscated and seized for the royal treasury.

He was slight in person, as is plain from his statue which is in the Ceramicus, which is nearly hidden by the equestrian statue near it; in reference to which circumstance, Carneades called him Crypsippus.102 He was once reproached by someone for not attending the lectures of Ariston, who was drawing a great crowd after him at the time; and he replied: “If I had attended to the multitude I should not have been a philosopher.” And once, when he saw a dialectician pressing hard on Cleanthes, and proposing sophistical fallacies to him, he said: “Cease to drag that old man from more important business, and propose these questions to us who are young.” At another time, when someone wishing to ask him something privately, was addressing him quietly, but when he saw a multitude