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

Epicureans to join other sects, he replied, “People sometimes make eunuchs of men, but no one can ever make a man out of an eunuch.”

At last, when he was near his end, he left all his property to his brother Pylades, because he, without the knowledge of Maereas, had taken him to Chios and had brought him from thence to Athens. He never married a wife, and never had any children. He made three copies of his will, and deposited one in Eretria with Amphicritus, and one at Athens with some of his friends, and the third he sent to his own home to Thaumasias, one of his relations, entreating him to keep it. And he also wrote him the following letter:

Arcesilaus to Thaumasias

I have given Diogenes a copy of my will to convey to you. For, because I am frequently unwell and have got very infirm, I have thought it right to make a will, that, if anything should happen to me I might not depart with the feelings of having done you any injury, who have been so constantly affectionate to me. And as you have been at all times the most faithful to me of all my friends, I entreat you to preserve this for me out of regard for my old age and your regard for me. Take care then to behave justly towards me, remembering how much I entrust to your integrity, so that I may appear to have managed my affairs well, as far as depends on you; and there is another copy of this will at Athens, in the care of some of my friends, and another at Eretria, in the hands of Amphicritus.

He died, as Hermippus relates, after having drunk an excessive quantity of wine, and then became delirious, when he was seventy-five years old; and he was more beloved by the Athenians than anyone else had ever been. And we have written the following epigram on him:

O wise Arcesilaus, why didst thou drink
So vast a quantity of unmixed wine,
As to lose all your senses, and then die?
I pity you not so much for your death,
As for the insult that you thus did offer
The Muses, by your sad excess in wine.

There were also three other persons of the name of Arcesilaus: one a poet of the old Comedy; another an elegiac poet; the third a sculptor, on whom Simonides wrote the following epigram:

This is a statue of chaste Dian’s self
The price two hundred Parian drachmas fine,
Stamp’d with the image of the wanton goat.
It is the work of wise Arcesilaus,
The son of Aristodicus: a man,
Whose hands Minerva guided in his art.

The philosopher of whom we have been speaking flourished, as Apollodorus tells us in his Chronicles, about the hundred and twentieth olympiad.

Bion

Bion was a native of the country around the Borysthenes; but as to who his parents were, and to what circumstances it was owing that he applied himself to the study of philosophy, we know no more than what he himself told Antigonus. For when Antigonus asked him:

What art thou, say! from whence, from whom you came,
Who are your parents? tell thy race, thy name;39

He, knowing that he had been misrepresented to the king, said to him, “My father was a freedman, who used to wipe his mouth with his sleeve,” (by which he meant that he used to sell salt fish). “As to his race, he was a native of the district of the Borysthenes; having no countenance, but only a brand in his face, a token of the bitter cruelty of his master. My mother was such a woman as a man of that condition might marry, taken out of a brothel. Then, my father being in arrears to the tax-gatherers, was sold with all his family, and with me among them; and as I was young and good looking, a certain orator purchased me, and when he died he left me everything. And I, having burnt all his books, and torn up all his papers, came to Athens and applied myself to the study of Philosophy:

Such was my father, and from him I came,
The honored author of my birth and name.40

This is all that I can tell you of myself: so that Persaeus and Philonides may give up telling these stories about me: and you may judge of me on my own merits.”

And Bion was truly a man of great versatility, and a very subtle philosopher, and a man who gave all who chose great opportunities of practising philosophy. In some respects he was of a gentle disposition, and very much inclined to indulge in vanity.

And he left behind him many memorials of himself in the way of writings, and also many apothegms full of useful sentiments. As for instance, once when he was reproved for having failed to charm a young man, he replied: “You cannot possibly draw up cheese with a hook before it has got hard.” On another occasion he was asked who was the most miserable of men, and replied: “He who has set his heart on the greatest prosperity.” When he was asked whether it was advisable to marry (for this answer also is attributed to him), he replied: “If you marry an ugly woman you will have a punishment (ποινὴ), and if a handsome woman you will have one who is common (κοινή).” He called old age a port to shelter one from misfortune; and accordingly, he said that everyone fled to it. He said that glory was the mother of years; that beauty was a good which concerned others rather than oneself; that riches were the sinews of business. To a man who had squandered his estate he said: “The earth swallowed up Amphiaraus, but you have swallowed up the earth.” Another saying of his was that it was a great evil not to be able to bear evil. And he condemned those