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

countryman he was, and he replied: “A Citizen of the world.” Some men were sacrificing to the Gods to prevail on them to send them sons, and he said: “And do you not sacrifice to procure sons of a particular character?” Once he was asking the president of a society for a contribution,73 and said to him:

“Spoil all the rest, but keep your hands from Hector.”

He used to say that courtesans were the queens of kings, for that they asked them for whatever they chose. When the Athenians had voted that Alexander was Bacchus, he said to them: “Vote too that I am Serapis.” When a man reproached him for going into unclean places, he said: “The sun too penetrates into privies, but is not polluted by them.” When supping in a temple, as some dirty loaves were set before him, he took them up and threw them away, saying that nothing dirty ought to come into a temple; and when someone said to him: “You philosophize without being possessed of any knowledge,” he said: “If I only pretend to wisdom, that is philosophizing.” A man once brought him a boy, and said that he was a very clever child, and one of an admirable disposition. “What, then,” said Diogenes, “does he want of me?” He used to say that those who utter virtuous sentiments but do not do them are no better than harps, for that a harp has no hearing or feeling. Once he was going into a theatre while everyone else was coming out of it, and when asked why he did so: “It is,” said he, “what I have been doing all my life.” Once when he saw a young man putting on effeminate airs, he said to him: “Are you not ashamed to have worse plans for yourself than nature had for you? for she has made you a man, but you are trying to force yourself to be a woman.” When he saw an ignorant man tuning a psaltery, he said to him: “Are you not ashamed to be arranging proper sounds on a wooden instrument, and not arranging your soul to a proper life?” When a man said to him: “I am not calculated for philosophy,” he said: “Why then do you live, if you have no desire to live properly?” To a man who treated his father with contempt, he said: “Are you not ashamed to despise him to whom you owe it that you have it in your power to give yourself airs at all?” Seeing a handsome young man chattering in an unseemly manner, he said: “Are you not ashamed to draw a sword cut of lead out of a scabbard of ivory?” Being once reproached for drinking in a vintner’s shop, he said: “I have my hair cut, too, in a barber’s.” At another time, he was attacked for having accepted a cloak from Antipater, but he replied:

“Refuse not thou to heed
The gifts which from the mighty Gods proceed.”74

A man once struck him with a broom, and said: “Take care,” so he struck him in return with his staff, and said: “Take care.”

He once said to a man who was addressing anxious entreaties to a courtesan: “What can you wish to obtain, you wretched man, that you had not better be disappointed in?” Seeing a man reeking all over with unguents, he said to him: “Have a care, lest the fragrance of your head give a bad odor to your life.” One of his sayings was that servants serve their masters, and that wicked men are the slaves of their appetites. Being asked why slaves were called ἀνδράποδα, he replied, “Because they have the feet of men (τοὺς πόδας ἀνδρῶν), and a soul such as you who are asking this question.” He once asked a profligate fellow for a mina; and when he put the question to him, why he asked others for an obol and him for a mina, he said: “Because I hope to get something from the others another time, but the Gods alone know whether I shall ever extract anything from you again.” Once he was reproached for asking favors, while Plato never asked for any; and he said:

“He asks as well as I do, but he does it
Bending his head, that no one else may hear.”

One day he saw an unskillful archer shooting; so he went and sat down by the target, saying: “Now I shall be out of harm’s way.” He used to say that those who were in love were disappointed in regard of the pleasure they expected. When he was asked whether death was an evil, he replied: “How can that be an evil which we do not feel when it is present?” When Alexander was once standing by him, and saying: “Do not you fear me?” He replied: “No; for what are you, a good or an evil?” And as he said that he was good: “Who, then,” said Diogenes, “fears the good?” He used to say that education was for the young sobriety, for the old comfort, for the poor riches, and for the rich an ornament. When Didymus the adulterer was once trying to cure the eye of a young girl (κόρης), he said, “Take care, lest when you are curing the eye of the maiden, you do not hurt the pupil.”75 A man once said to him that his friends laid plots against him; “What then,” said he, “are you to do, if you must look upon both your friends and enemies in the same light?”

On one occasion he was asked, what was the most excellent thing among men; and he said: “Freedom of speech.” He went once into a school and saw many statues of the Muses, but very few pupils, and said: “Gods, and all my good schoolmasters, you have plenty of pupils.” He was in