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

Alas, my brother! now your eye is troubled;
You were quite sane just now; and yet how quickly
Have you succumbed to frenzy.103

And at drinking parties he used to behave quietly, moving his legs about however, so that a female slave once said: “It is only the legs of Chrysippus that are drunk.” And he had so high an opinion of himself, that once, when a man asked him: “To whom shall I entrust my son?” he said: “To me, for if I thought that there was anyone better than myself, I would have gone to him to teach me philosophy.” In reference to which anecdote they report that people used to say of him:

He has indeed a clear and subtle head,
The rest are forms of empty aether made.104

And also:

For if Chrysippus had not lived and taught,
The Stoic school would surely have been nought.

But at last, when Arcesilaus and Lacydes, as Sotion records in his eighth book, came to the Academy, he joined them in the study of philosophy; from which circumstance he got the habit of arguing for and against a custom, and discussed magnitudes and quantities, following the system of the Academics.

Hermippus relates that one day, when he was teaching in the Odeum, he was invited to a sacrifice by his pupils; and that drinking some sweet unmixed wine, he was seized with giddiness, and departed this life five days afterwards, when he had lived seventy-three years; dying in the hundred and forty-third olympiad, as Apollodorus says in his Chronicles. And we have written an epigram on him:

Chrysippus drank with open mouth some wine
Then became giddy, and so quickly died.
Too little reck’d he of the Porch’s weal,
Or of his country’s, or of his own dear life;
And so descended to the realms of Hell.

But some people say that he died of a fit of immoderate laughter. For that seeing his ass eating figs, he told his old woman to give the ass some unmixed wine to drink afterwards, and then laughed so violently that he died.

He appears to have been a man of exceeding arrogance. Accordingly, though he wrote such numbers of books, he never dedicated one of them to any sovereign. And he was contented with one single old woman, as Demetrius tells us, in his People of the Same Name. And when Ptolemy wrote to Cleanthes, begging him either to come to him himself or to send him someone, Sphaerus went to him, but Chrysippus slighted the invitation.

However, he sent for the sons of his sister, Aristocreon and Philocrates, and educated them; and he was the first person who ventured to hold a school in the open air in the Lyceum, as the before mentioned Demetrius relates.

There was also another Chrysippus, a native of Cnidos, a physician, from whom Erasistratus testifies that he received great benefit. And another also who was a son of his, and the physician of Ptolemy; who, having had a false accusation brought against him, was apprehended and punished by being scourged. There was also a fourth who was a pupil of Erasistratus; and a fifth was an author of a work called Georgics.

Now this philosopher used to delight in proposing questions of this sort: The person who reveals the mysteries to the uninitiated commits a sin; the hierophant reveals them to the uninitiated; therefore the hierophant commits sin? Another was: that which is not in the city, is also not in the house; but a well is not in the city, therefore there is not a well in the house. Another was: there is a certain head; that head you have not got; there is then a head that you have not got; therefore you have not got a head. Again: if a man is in Megara, he is not in Athens; but there is a man in Megara; therefore there is not a man in Athens. Again: if you say anything, what you say comes out of your mouth; but you say “a wagon;” therefore a wagon comes out of your mouth. Another was: if you have not lost a thing, you have it; but you have not lost horns; therefore you have horns. Though some attribute this sophism to Eubulides.

There are people who run Chrysippus down as having written a great deal that is very shameful and indecent. For in his treatise on the Ancient Natural Historians, he relates the story of Jupiter and Juno very indecently, devoting six hundred lines to what no one could repeat without polluting his mouth. For, as it is said, he composes this story, though he praises it as consisting of natural details, in a way more suitable to street walkers than to Goddesses; and not at all resembling the ideas which have been adopted or cited by writers in paintings. For they were found neither in Polemo, nor in Hypsicrates, nor in Antigonus, but were inserted by himself. And in his treatise on Polity, he allows people to marry their mothers, or their daughters, or their sons. And he repeats this doctrine in his treatise on those things which are not desirable for their own sake, in the very opening of it. And in the third book of his treatise on Justice, he devotes a thousand lines to bidding people devour even the dead.

In the second book of his treatise on Life and Means of Support, where he is warning us to consider beforehand how the wise man ought to provide himself with means, he says: “And yet why need he provide himself with means? for if it is for the sake of living, living at all is a matter of indifference; if it is for the sake of pleasure, that is a matter of indifference too; if it is for the sake of virtue, that is of itself sufficient for happiness. But the methods of providing oneself with means are ridiculous;