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

The fourth was a Stoic, a native of Seleucia, but usually called a Babylonian, from the proximity of Seleucia to Babylon. The fifth was a native of Tarsus, who wrote on the subject of some questions concerning poetry which he endeavors to solve.

Athenodorus, in the eighth book of his Conversations, says that the philosopher always had a shining appearance, from his habit of anointing himself.

Monimus

Monimus was a Syracusan and a pupil of Diogenes, but also a slave of some Corinthian money-changer, as Sosicrates tells us. Xeniades, who bought Diogenes, used often to come to him, extolling the excellency of Diogenes both in actions and words, till he excited a great affection for the man in the mind of Monimus. For he immediately feigned madness, and threw about all the money and all the coins that were on the table, until his master discarded him, and then he straightway went to Diogenes and became his pupil. He also followed Crates the Cynic a good deal, and devoted himself to the same studies as he did; and the sight of this conduct of his made his master all the more think him mad.

And he was a very eminent man, so that even Menander the comic poet speaks of him accordingly; in one of his plays, namely in the Hippocomus, he mentions him thus:

There is a man, O Philo, named Monimus,
A wise man, though but little known, and one
Who bears a wallet at his back, and is not
Content with one but three. He never spoke
A single sentence, by great Jove I swear,
Like this one, “Know thyself,” or any other
Of the oft-quoted proverbs: all such sayings
He scorned, as he did beg his way through dirt;
Teaching that all opinion is but vanity.

But he was a man of such gravity that he despised glory, and sought only for truth.

He wrote some jests mingled with serious treatises, and two essays on the Appetites, and an Exhortation.

Onesicritus

Onesicritus is called by some authors an Aeginetan, but Demetrius the Magnesian affirms that he was a native of Astypalaea. He also was one of the most eminent of the disciples of Diogenes.

And he appears in some points to resemble Xenophon. For Xenophon joined in the expedition of Cyrus, and Onesicritus in that of Alexander; and Xenophon wrote the Cyropaedia, and Onesicritus wrote an account of the education of Alexander. Xenophon, too, wrote a Panegyric on Cyrus, and Onesicritus one on Alexander. They were also both similar to one another in style, except that a copyist is naturally inferior to the original.

Menander too, who was surnamed Drymus, was a pupil of Diogenes, and a great admirer of Homer; and so was Hegesaeus of Sinope, who was nicknamed Cloeus, and Philiscus the Aeginetan, as we have said before.

Crates

Crates was a Theban by birth, and the son of Ascondus. He also was one of the eminent disciples of the Cynic. But Hippobotus asserts that he was not a pupil of Diogenes, but of Bryson the Achaean.

There are the following sportive lines of his quoted:

The waves surround vain Peres’ fruitful soil,
And fertile acres crown the sea-born isle;
Land which no parasite e’er dares invade,
Or lewd seducer of a hapless maid;
It bears figs, bread, thyme, garlic’s savoury charms,
Gifts which ne’er tempt men to detested arms,
They’d rather fight for gold than glory’s dreams.

There is also an account-book of his much spoken of, which is drawn up in such terms as these:

Put down the cook for minas half a score,
Put down the doctor for a drachma more:
Five talents to the flatterer; some smoke
To the adviser, an obol and a cloak
For the philosopher; for the willing nymph,
A talent.

He was also nicknamed Door-opener, because he used to enter every house and give the inmates advice. These lines, too, are his:

All this I learnt and pondered in my mind,
Drawing deep wisdom from the Muses kind,
But all the rest is vanity.

There is a line, too, which tells us that he gained from philosophy:

A peck of lupins, and to care for nobody.

This, too, is attributed to him:

Hunger checks love; and should it not, time does.
If both should fail you, then a halter choose.

He flourished about the hundred and thirteenth olympiad.

Antisthenes, in his Successions, says that he, having once, in a certain tragedy, seen Telephus holding a date basket, and in a miserable plight in other respects, betook himself to the Cynic philosophy; and having turned his patrimony into money (for he was of illustrious extraction), he collected three hundred talents by that means, and divided them among the citizens. And after that he devoted himself to philosophy with such eagerness, that even Philemon the comic poet mentions him. Accordingly he says:

And in the summer he’d a shaggy gown,
To inure himself to hardship: in the winter
He wore mere rags.

But Diocles says that it was Diogenes who persuaded him to discard all his estate and his flocks, and to throw his money into the sea; and he says further that the house of Crates was destroyed by Alexander, and that of Hipparchia under Philip. And he would very frequently drive away with his staff those of his relations who came after him, and endeavored to dissuade him from his design; and he remained immoveable.

Demetrius the Magnesian relates that he deposited his money with a banker, making an agreement with him that if his sons turned out ordinary ignorant people, he was then to restore it to them; but if they became philosophers, then he was to divide it among the people, for that they, if they were philosophers, would have no need of anything. And Eratosthenes tells us that he had by Hipparchia, whom we shall mention hereafter, a son whose name was Pasicles, and that when he grew up, he took him to a brothel kept by a female slave, and told him that that was all the marriage that his father designed for him; but that marriages which resulted in adultery were themes for