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

href="#note-61" id="noteref-61" epub:type="noteref">61 leading off one of the stewards who had stolen a goblet, he said: “The great thieves are carrying off the little thief.” At another time, seeing a young man throwing stones at a cross, he said: “Well done, you will be sure to reach the mark.” Once too, some boys got round him and said: “We are taking care that you do not bite us;” but he said: “Be of good cheer, my boys, a dog does not eat beef.” He saw a man giving himself airs because he was clad in a lion’s skin, and said to him: “Do not go on disgracing the garb of nature.” When people were speaking of the happiness of Callisthenes, and saying what splendid treatment he received from Alexander, he replied: “The man then is wretched, for he is forced to breakfast and dine whenever Alexander chooses.” When he was in want of money, he said that be reclaimed it from his friends and did not beg for it.

On one occasion he was working with his hands in the marketplace, and said: “I wish I could rub my stomach in the same way, and so avoid hunger.” When he saw a young man going with some satraps to supper, he dragged him away and led him off to his relations, and bade them take care of him. He was once addressed by a youth beautifully adorned, who asked him some question; and he refused to give him any answer till he satisfied him whether he was a man or a woman. And on one occasion, when a youth was playing the cottabus in the bath, he said to him: “The better you do it, the worse you do it.” Once at a banquet, some of the guests threw him bones, as if he had been a dog; so he, as he went away, put up his leg against them as if he had been a dog in reality. He used to call the orators, and all those who speak for fame τρισάνθρωποι (thrice men), instead of τρισάθλιοι (thrice miserable). He said that a rich but ignorant man was like a sheep with a golden fleece. When he saw a notice on the house of a profligate man: “To be sold.”⁠—“I knew,” said he, “that you who are so incessantly drunk, would soon vomit up your owner.” To a young man, who was complaining of the number of people who sought his acquaintance, he said: “Do not make such a parade of your vanity.”

Having been in a very dirty bath, he said: “I wonder where the people who bathe here clean themselves.” When all the company was blaming an indifferent harp-player, he alone praised him, and being asked why he did so, he said: “Because, though he is such as he is, he plays the harp and does not steal.” He saluted a harp player who was always left alone by his hearers, with: “Good morning, cock;” and when the man asked him: “Why so?” he said: “Because you, when you sing, make everyone get up.” When a young man was one day making a display of himself, he, having filled the bosom of his robe with lupins, began to eat them; and when the multitude looked at him, he said: “that he marvelled at their leaving the young man to look at him.” And when a man, who was very superstitious, said to him: “With one blow I will break your head;”⁠—“And I,” he replied, “with one sneeze will make you tremble.” When Hegesias entreated him to lend him one of his books, he said: “You are a silly fellow, Hegesias, for you will not take painted figs, but real ones; and yet you overlook the genuine practice of virtue, and seek for what is merely written.” A man once reproached him with his banishment, and his answer was: “You wretched man, that is what made me a philosopher.” And when, on another occasion, someone said to him: “The people of Sinope condemned you to banishment,” he replied: “And I condemned them to remain where they were.” Once he saw a man who had been victor at the Olympic games, feeding (νέμοντα) sheep, and he said to him: “You have soon come across my friend from the Olympic games, to the Nemean.” When he was asked why athletes are insensible to pain, he said: “Because they are built up of pork and beef.”

He once asked for a statue; and being questioned as to his reason for doing so, he said: “I am practising disappointment.” Once he was begging of someone (for he did this at first out of actual want), he said: “If you have given to anyone else, give also to me; and if you have never given to anyone, then begin with me.” On one occasion, he was asked by the tyrant: “What sort of brass was the best for a statue?” and he replied: “That of which the statues of Harmodius and Aristogiton are made.” When he was asked how Dionysius treats his friends, he said: “Like bags; those which are full he hangs up, and those which are empty he throws away.” A man who was lately married put an inscription on his house: “Hercules Callinicus, the son of Jupiter, lives here; let no evil enter.” And so Diogenes wrote in addition: “An alliance is made after the war is over.” He used to say that covetousness was the metropolis of all evils. Seeing on one occasion a profligate man in an inn eating olives, he said: “If you had dined thus, you would not have supped thus.” One of his apothegms was that good men were the images of the Gods; another, that love was the business of those who had nothing to do. When he was asked what was miserable in life, he answered: “An indigent old man.” And when the question was put to him, what beast