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

the text here. Casaubon supplies the meaning by a reference to Plutarch’s Treatise on the opinions of the Philosophers, iii 7, “that the winds are a flowing of the air, and that they have various names with reference to the countries from which they flow.” ↩

Something is evidently wanting here; probably some mention of an earthquake. ↩

This is similar to Virgil’s description.

Quinque tenent cœlum zonæ, quarum una corusco
Semper Sole rubens, et torrida semper ab igni:
Quam circum extremæ dextrà lævàque trahuntur.
Cœruleâ glacie concretæ atque imbribus atris.
Has inter mediamque duæ mortalibus ægris
Munere concessæ Divûm, et via secta per ambas,
Obliquus qua se signorum verteret ordo.

—⁠Georgics I 233.

There is no part of Dryden’s translation superior to that of this passage.

Five girdles bind the skies; the torrid zone
Glows with the passing and repassing sun;
Far on the right and left, th’ extremes of heaven,
To frosts, and snows, and bitter blasts are given;
Betwixt the midst. And there the Gods assigned
Four habitable seats for human kind,
And, cross their limits cut a sloping way,
Which the twelve signs in beauteous order sway.

—⁠l. 322.

↩

“Ὑποτελὶς, a name given by Herillus in Diogenes Laërtius to a man’s natural talents, etc., which ought all to be subordinate to the attainment of the chief good.” —⁠Liddle and Scott in voc. ↩

From φρέαρ, a well, and ἀντλέω to draw water. ↩

The Greek used is ἀποφορὰ; which was a term especially applied to the money which slaves let out to hire paid to their master. ↩

This is a parody on Homer, Iliad, iii, 196. Pope’s version, i 260. The word ὅλμος means the mouth piece of a flute. ↩

Taken from the Orestes of Euripides, i 140. ↩

This is parodied from Homer, Odyssey iv. 611. Pope’s version, l 831. ↩

This is referring to the Stoic doctrine ridiculed by Horace:

Si dives qui sapiens est,
Et sutor bonus, et solus formosus, et est Rex
Cur optas quod habes?

—⁠Horace, Satires i 130.

Which may be translated:

If every man is rich who’s wise,
A cobbler too beyond all price;
A handsome man, and eke a king;
Why thus your vows at random fling?

↩

From κρύπτω, to hide, and ἵππος, a horse. ↩

These lines are from the Erestes of Euripides, v. 247. ↩

This is a quotation from Homer, Odyssey x. 495. Pope’s Version, 586. The Greek here is οἷος πέπνυται. The line in Homer stands:

οἵῳ πέπνυσθαι⁠—sc: πόρε περσεφόνεια.

↩

The argument by progression is the sorites. “The arrest” is the method of encountering the sorites, by taking some particular point at which to stop the admissions required by the sorites. ↩

The remainder of the life of Chrysippus is lost. ↩

See Herodotus iv 93. ↩

This resembles the account which Ovid puts into the mouth of Pythagoras, in the last book of his Metamorphoses, where he makes him say:

Morte carent animæ, semperque priore relicta
Sede, novis domibus habitant vivuntque receptæ;
Ipse ego, nam memini, Trojani tempora belli,
Panthorides Euphorbus eram, cui pectore quondam
Hæsit in adverso gravis hasta minoris Atridæ:
Agnovi Clypeum lævæ gestamina nostræ
Nuper Abanteïs templo Junonis in Argis.

Which may be translated:

Death has no pow’r th’ immortal soul to slay;
That, when its present body turns to clay,
Seeks a fresh home, and with unminish’d might
Inspires another frame with life and light.
So I myself, (well I the past recall)
When the fierce Greeks begirt Troy’s holy wall,
Was brave Euphorbus; and in conflict drear,
Poured forth my blood beneath Atrides’ spear:
The shield this arm did bear I lately saw
In Juno’s shrine, a trophy of that war.

↩

This passage has been interpreted in more ways than one. Casaubon thinks with great probability that there is a hiatus in the text. I have endeavored to extract a meaning out of what remains. Compare 2 Samuel 16:23. “And the counsel of Ahitophel, which he counselled in those days, was as if a man had enquired at the oracle of God; so was all the counsel of Ahitophel both with David and with Absalom.” ↩

Zaleucus was the celebrated lawgiver of the Epizephyrian Locrians, and is said to have been originally a slave employed by a shepherd, and to have been set free and appointed lawgiver by the direction of an oracle, in consequence of his announcing some excellent laws, which he represented Minerva as having communicated to him in a dream. Diogenes, is wrong however, in calling him a disciple of Pythagoras (see Bentley on Phalaris), as he lived about a hundred years before his time; his true date being 660 BC. The code of Zaleucus is stated to have been the first collection of written laws that the Greeks possessed. Their character was that of great severity. They have not come down to us. His death is said to have occurred thus. Among his laws was one forbidding any citizen to enter the senate house in arms, under the penalty of death. But in a sudden emergency, Zaleucus himself, in a moment of forgetfulness, transgressed his own law: on which he slew himself, declaring that he would vindicate his law. (Eustathasius Ad Iliad i p. 60). Diodorus, however, tells the same story of Charondas. ↩

Charondas was a lawgiver of Catana, who legislated for his own city and the other towns of Chalcidian origin in Magna Grecia, such as Zancle, Naxos, Leontini, Euboea, Mylae, Himera, Callipolis, and Rhegium. His laws have not been preserved to us, with the exception of a few judgments. They were