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

were a bitter dog, Antisthenes,
Born to bite people’s minds with sayings sharp,
Not with your actual teeth. Now you are slain
By fell consumption, passers by may say,
Why should he not, one wants a guide to Hell.

There were also three other people of the name of Antisthenes: One, a disciple of Heraclitus; the second, an Ephesian; the third, a historian of Rhodes. And since we have spoken of those who proceeded from the school of Aristippus and Phaedon, we may now go on to the Cynics and Stoics, who derived their origin from Antisthenes. And we will take them in the following order.

Diogenes

Diogenes was a native of Sinope, the son of Hicesius, a money-changer. And Diocles says that he was forced to flee from his native city, as his father kept the public bank there, and had adulterated the coinage. But Eubulides, in his essay on Diogenes, says that it was Diogenes himself who did this, and that he was banished with his father. And indeed he himself, in his Pordalus, says of himself that he had adulterated the public money. Others say that he was one of the curators, and was persuaded by the artisans employed, and that he went to Delphi, or else to the oracle at Delos, and there consulted Apollo as to whether he should do what people were trying to persuade him to do; and that, as the God gave him permission to do so, Diogenes, not comprehending that the God meant that he might change the political customs56 of his country if he could, adulterated the coinage; and being detected was banished, as some people say, but as other accounts have it, took the alarm and fled away of his own accord. Some again say that he adulterated the money which he had received from his father, and that his father was thrown into prison and died there, but that Diogenes escaped and went to Delphi and asked, not whether he might tamper with the coinage, but what he could do to become very celebrated, and that in consequence he received the oracular answer which I have mentioned.

And when he came to Athens he attached himself to Antisthenes; but as he repelled him, because he admitted no one, he at last forced his way to him by his pertinacity. And once, when he raised his stick at him, he put his head under it and said: “Strike, for you will not find any stick hard enough to drive me away as long as you continue to speak.” And from this time forth he was one of his pupils; and being an exile, he naturally betook himself to a simple mode of life.

And when, as Theophrastus tells us in his Megaric Philosopher, he saw a mouse running about and not seeking for a bed, nor taking care to keep in the dark, nor looking for any of those things which appear enjoyable to such an animal, he found a remedy for his own poverty. He was, according to the account of some people, the first person who doubled up his cloak out of necessity, and who slept in it; and who carried a wallet, in which he kept his food; and who used whatever place was near for all sorts of purposes: eating and sleeping and conversing in it. In reference to which habit he used to say, pointing to the Colonnade of Jupiter, and to the Public Magazine, “that the Athenians had built him places to live in.” Being attacked with illness, he supported himself with a staff; and after that he carried it continually, not indeed in the city, but whenever he was walking in the roads, together with his wallet, as Olympiodorus, the chief man of the Athenians tells us; and Polyeuctus the orator, and Lysanias the son of Aeschrion, tell the same story.

When he had written to someone to look out and get ready a small house for him, as he delayed to do it, he took a cask which he found in the Temple of Cybele for his house, as he himself tells us in his letters. And during the summer he used to roll himself in the warm sand, but in winter he would embrace statues all covered with snow, practising himself on every occasion to endure anything.

He was very violent in expressing his haughty disdain of others. He said that the σχολὴ (school) of Euclides was χολὴ (gall). And he used to call Plato’s διατριβὴ (discussions) κατατριβὴ (disguise). It was also a saying of his that the Dionysian games were a great marvel to fools; and that the demagogues were the ministers of the multitude. He used likewise to say: “That when in the course of his life he beheld pilots, and physicians, and philosophers, he thought man the wisest of all animals; but when again he beheld interpreters of dreams, and soothsayers, and those who listened to them, and men puffed up with glory or riches, then he thought that there was not a more foolish animal than man.” Another of his sayings was: “That he thought a man ought oftener to provide himself with a reason than with a halter.” On one occasion, when he noticed Plato at a very costly entertainment tasting some olives, he said: “O you wise man! why, after having sailed to Sicily for the sake of such a feast, do you not now enjoy what you have before you?” And Plato replied: “By the Gods, Diogenes, while I was there I ate olives and all such things a great deal.” Diogenes rejoined: “What then did you want to sail to Syracuse for? Did not Attica at that time produce any olives?” But Phavorinus, in his Universal History, tells this story of Aristippus. At another time he was eating dried figs, when Plato met him, and he said to him: “You may have a share of these;” and