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

we shall speak hereafter, was his pupil. Menippus of Sinope, too, was a very eminent person in his school. Hipparchia

Hipparchia, the sister of Metrocles, was charmed among others by the doctrines of this school.

Both she and Metrocles were natives of Maronea. She fell in love with both the doctrines and manners of Crates, and could not be diverted from her regard for him, by either the wealth, or high birth, or personal beauty, of any of her suitors, but Crates was everything to her; and she threatened her parents to make away with herself if she were not given in marriage to him. Crates accordingly, being entreated by her parents to dissuade her from this resolution, did all he could; and at last, as he could not persuade her, he rose up, and placing all his furniture before her, he said: “This is the bridegroom whom you are choosing, and this is the whole of his property; consider these facts, for it will not be possible for you to become his partner, if you do not also apply yourself to the same studies, and conform to the same habits that he does.” But the girl chose him; and assuming the same dress that he wore, went about with him as her husband, and appeared with him in public everywhere, and went to all entertainments in his company.

And once when she went to sup with Lysimachus, she attacked Theodorus, who was surnamed the Atheist, proposing to him the following sophism: “What Theodorus could not be called wrong for doing, that same thing Hipparchia ought not to be called wrong for doing. But Theodorus does no wrong when he beats himself, therefore Hipparchia does no wrong when she beats Theodorus.” He made no reply to what she said, but only pulled her clothes about; but Hipparchia was neither offended nor ashamed, as many a woman would have been, but when he said to her:

“Who is the woman who has left the shuttle
So near the warp?”78

“I, Theodorus, am that person,” she replied; “but do I appear to you to have come to a wrong decision, if I devote that time to philosophy, which I otherwise should have spent at the loom?” And these and many other sayings are reported of this female philosopher.

There is also a volume of letters of Crates79 extant, in which he philosophizes most excellently; and in style is very little inferior to Plato. He also wrote some tragedies, which are imbued with a very sublime spirit of philosophy, of which the following lines are a specimen:

’Tis not one town, nor one poor single house,
That is my country; but in every land
Each city and each dwelling seems to me,
A place for my reception ready made.

And he died at a great age, and was buried in Boeotia.

Menippus

Menippus was also a Cynic, and a Phoenician by descent, a slave by birth, as Achaicus tells us in his Ethics; and Diocles informs us that his master was a native of Pontus, of the name of Baton; but that subsequently, in consequence of his importunities and miserly habits, he became rich, and obtained the rights of citizenship at Corinth.

He never wrote anything serious, but his writings are full of ridiculous matter, and in some respects similar to those of Meleager, who was his contemporary. And Hermippus tells us that he was a man who lent money at daily interest, and that he was called a usurer; for he used to lend on nautical usury, and take security, so that he amassed a very great amount of riches.

But at last he fell into a snare and lost all his money, and in a fit of despair he hung himself, and so he died. And we have written a playful epigram on him:

This man was a Syrian by birth,
And a Cretan usurious hound,
As the name he was known by sets forth,
You’ve heard of him oft I’ll be bound;
His name was Menippus⁠—men entered his house,
And stole all his goods without leaving a louse,
When (from this the dog’s nature you plainly may tell)
He hung himself up, and so went off to hell.

But some say that the books attributed to him are not really his work, but are the composition of Dionysius and Zopyrus the Colophonians, who wrote them out of joke and then gave them to him as a man well able to dispose of them.

There were six persons of the name of Menippus: the first was the man who wrote a history of the Lydians, and made an abridgment of Xanthus; the second was this man of whom we have been speaking; the third was a sophist of Stratonice, a Carian by descent; the fourth was a statuary; the fifth and the sixth were painters, and they are both mentioned by Apollodorus.

The writings left by the Cynic amount to thirteen volumes; a Description of the Dead; a volume called Wills; a volume of Letters in which the Gods are introduced; treatises addressed to the Natural Philosophers, and Mathematicians, and Grammarians; one on the Generations of Epicurus, and on the Observance of the Twentieth Day by the philosophers of his school; and one or two other essays.

Menedemus

Menedemus was a disciple of Colotes of Lampsacus.

He proceeded, as Hippobotus tells, to such a great degree of superstition that he assumed the garb of a fury, and went about saying that he had come from hell to take notice of all who did wrong, in order that he might descend thither again and make his report to the deities who abode in that country. And this was his dress: a tunic of a dark color reaching to his feet, and a purple girdle round his waist, an Arcadian hat on his head with the twelve signs of the zodiac embroidered on it, tragic buskins, a preposterously long beard, and an ashen staff in his hand.

These then are the lives of each of