Vitae philosophorum

Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius. Hicks, R. D., editor. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1925.

Simon was a citizen of Athens and a cobbler. When Socrates came to his workshop and began to converse, he used to make notes of all that he could remember. And this is why people apply the term leathern to his dialogues. These dialogues are thirty-three in number, extant in a single volume:

Of the Gods.

Of the Good.

On the Beautiful.

What is the Beautiful.

On the Just: two dialogues.

Of Virtue, that it cannot be taught.

Of Courage: three dialogues.

On Law.

On Guiding the People.

Of Honour.

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Of Poetry.

On Good Eating.

On Love.

On Philosophy.

On Knowledge.

On Music.

On Poetry.

What is the Beautiful

On Teaching.

On the Art of Conversation

Of Judging.

Of Being.

Of Number.

On Diligence.

On Efficiency.

On Greed.

On Pretentiousness.

On the Beautiful

Others are:

On Deliberation.

On Reason, or On Expediency.

On Doing Ill.

He was the first, so we are told, who introduced the Socratic dialogues as a form of conversation. When Pericles promised to support him and urged him to come to him, his reply was, I will not part with my free speech for money.

There was another Simon, who wrote treatises On Rhetoric; another, a physician, in the time of Seleucus Nicanor; and a third who was a sculptor.