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

passages, and when he came to the end of the book and showed that there was nothing more written: “Be of good cheer, my friends,” exclaimed Diogenes, “I see land.” A man once proved to him syllogistically that he had horns, so he put his hand to his forehead and said: “I do not see them.” And in a similar manner he replied to one who had been asserting that there was no such thing as motion, by getting up and walking away. When a man was talking about the heavenly bodies and meteors: “Pray how many days,” said he to him, “is it since you came down from heaven?”

A profligate eunuch had written on his house: “Let no evil thing enter in.”⁠—“Where,” said Diogenes, “is the master of the house going?” After having anointed his feet with perfume, he said that the ointment from his head mounted up to heaven, and that from his feet up to his nose. When the Athenians entreated him to be initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries, and said that in the shades below the initiated had the best seats: “It will,” he replied, “be an absurd thing if Agesilaus and Epaminondas are to live in the mud, and some miserable wretches who have been initiated are to be in the islands of the blest.” Some mice crept up to his table, and he said: “See, even Diogenes maintains his favorites.” Once when he was leaving the bath, and a man asked him whether many men were bathing, he said: “No;” but when a number of people came out, he confessed that there were a great many. When Plato called him a dog, he said: “Undoubtedly, for I have come back to those who sold me.”

Plato defined man thus: “Man is a two-footed, featherless animal,” and was much praised for the definition; so Diogenes plucked a cock and brought it into his school and said: “This is Plato’s man.” On which account this addition was made to the definition: “With broad flat nails.” A man once asked him what was the proper time for supper, and he made answer: “If you are a rich man, whenever you please; and if you are a poor man, whenever you can.” When he was at Megara he saw some sheep carefully covered over with skins, and the children running about naked; and so he said: “It is better at Megara to be a man’s ram, than his son.” A man once struck him with a beam, and then said: “Take care.”⁠—“What,” said he, “are you going to strike me again?” He used to say that the demagogues were the servants of the people; and garlands the blossoms of glory. Having lighted a candle in the daytime, he said: “I am looking for a man.” On one occasion he stood under a fountain, and as the bystanders were pitying him, Plato, who was present, said to them: “If you wish really to show your pity for him, come away;” intimating that he was only acting thus out of a desire for notoriety. Once, when a man had struck him with his fist, he said: “O Hercules, what a strange thing that I should be walking about with a helmet on without knowing it!”

When Midias struck him with his fist and said: “There are three thousand drachmas for you;” the next day Diogenes took the cestus of a boxer and beat him soundly, and said: “There are three thousand drachmas for you.”59 When Lysias, the drug-seller, asked him whether he thought that there were any Gods: “How,” said he, “can I help thinking so, when I consider you to be hated by them?” but some attribute this reply to Theodorus. Once he saw a man purifying himself by washing, and said to him: “Oh, wretched man, do not you know that as you cannot wash away blunders in grammar by purification, so too, you can no more efface the errors of a life in that same manner?”

He used to say that men were wrong for complaining of fortune; for that they ask of the Gods what appear to be good things, not what are really so. And to those who were alarmed at dreams he said that they did not regard what they do while they are awake, but make a great fuss about what they fancy they see while they are asleep. Once, at the Olympic games, when the herald proclaimed: “Dioxippus is the conqueror of men;” he said: “He is the conqueror of slaves, I am the conqueror of men.”

He was greatly beloved by the Athenians; accordingly, when a youth had broken his cask they beat him, and gave Diogenes another. And Dionysius, the Stoic, says that after the battle of Chaeronea he was taken prisoner and brought to Philip, and being asked who he was, replied: “A spy, to spy upon your insatiability.” And Philip marvelled at him and let him go. Once, when Alexander had sent a letter to Athens to Antipater, by the hands of a man named Athlias, he, being present, said, “Athlias from Athlius, by means of Athlias to Athlius.”60 When Perdiccas threatened that he would put him to death if he did not come to him, he replied: “That is nothing strange, for a scorpion or a tarantula could do as much; you had better threaten me that if I kept away you should be very happy.” He used constantly to repeat with emphasis that an easy life had been given to man by the Gods, but that it had been overlaid by their seeking for honey, cheesecakes, and unguents, and things of that sort. On which account he said to a man who had his shoes put on by his servant: “You are not thoroughly happy unless he also wipes your nose for you; and he will do this, if you are crippled in your hands.” On one occasion, when he had seen the hieromnemones