Vitae philosophorum

Diogenes Laertius

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

When a little sparrow was pursued by a hawk and rushed into his bosom, he stroked it and let it go, declaring that a suppliant must not be betrayed. When bantered by Bion, he said he would make no reply. For neither, said he, does tragedy deign to answer the banter of comedy. To some one who had never learnt either music or geometry or astronomy, but nevertheless wished to attend his lectures, Xenocrates said, Go your ways, for you offer philosophy nothing to lay hold of. Others report him as saying, It is not to me that you come for the carding of a fleece.

When Dionysius told Plato that he would lose his head, Xenocrates, who was present, pointed to his own and added, No man shall touch it till he cut off mine. They say too that, when Antipater came to Athens and greeted him, he did not address him in return until he had finished what he was saying. He was singularly free from pride; more than once

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a day he would retire into himself, and he assigned, it is said, a whole hour to silence.

He left a very large number of treatises, poems and addresses, of which I append a list:

On Nature, six books.

On Wisdom, six books.

On Wealth, one book.

The Arcadian, one book.

On the Indeterminate, one book.

On the Child, one book.

On Continence, one book.

On Utility, one book.

On Freedom, one book.

On Death, one book.[*](Supposed by Marsilius Ficinus to be the extant dialogue Axiochus attributed to Plato (cf. supra, iii. 62).)

On the Voluntary, one book.

On Friendship, two books.

On Equity, one book.

On that which is Contrary, two books.

On Happiness, two books.

On Writing, one book.

On Memory, one book.

On Falsehood, one book.

Callicles, one book.

On Prudence, two books.

The Householder, one book.

On Temperance, one book.

On the Influence of Law, one book.

On the State, one book.

On Holiness, one book.

That Virtue can be taught, one book.

On Being, one book.

On Fate, one book.

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On the Emotions, one book.

On Modes of Life, one book.

On Concord, one book.

On Students, two books.

On Justice, one book.

On Virtue, two books.

On Forms, one book.

On Pleasure, two books.

On Life, one book.

On Bravery, one book.

On the One, one book.

On Ideas, one book.

On Art, one book.

On the Gods, two books.

On the Soul, two books.

On Science, one book.

The Statesman, one book.

On Cognition, one book.

On Philosophy, one book.

On the Writings of Parmenides, one book.

Archedemus or Concerning Justice, one book.

On the Good, one book.

Things relating to the Understanding, eight books.

Solution of Logical Problems, ten books.

Physical Lectures, six books.

Summary, one book.

On Genera and Species, one book.

Things Pythagorean, one book.

Solutions, two books.

Divisions, eight books.

Theses, in twenty books, 30,000 lines.

The Study of Dialectic, in fourteen books, 12,740 lines.

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After this come fifteen books, and then sixteen books of Studies relating to Style.

Nine books on Ratiocination.

Six books concerned with Mathematics.

Two other books entitled Things relating to the Intellect.

On Geometers, five books.

Commentaries, one book.

Contraries, one book.

On Numbers, one book.

Theory of Numbers, one book.

On Dimensions, one book.

On Astronomy, six books.

Elementary Principles of Monarchy, in four books, dedicated to Alexander.

To Arybas.

To Hephaestion.

On Geometry, two books.

These works comprise in all 224,239 lines.

Such was his character, and yet, when he was unable to pay the tax levied on resident aliens, the Athenians put him up for sale. And Demetrius of Phalerum purchased him, thereby making twofold restitution, to Xenocrates of his liberty, and to the Athenians of their tax. This we learn from Myronianus of Amastris in the first book of his Chapters on Historical Parallels. He succeeded Speusippus and was head of the school for twenty-five years from the archonship of Lysimachides, beginning in the second year of the 110th Olympiad.[*](339-338 b.c.) He died in his 82nd year from the effects of a fall over some utensil in the night.

Upon him I have expressed myself as follows[*](Anth. Pal. vii. 102.):

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Xenocrates, that type of perfect manliness, stumbled over a vessel of bronze and broke his head, and, with a loud cry, expired.

There have been six other men named Xenocrates: (1) a tactician in very ancient times; (2) the kinsman and fellow-citizen of the philosopher: a speech by him is extant entitled the Arsinoëtic, treating of a certain deceased Arsinoë[*](In the enumeration of the first three one has accidentally dropped out.); (4) a philosopher and not very successful writer of elegies; it is a remarkable fact that poets succeed when they undertake to write prose, but prose-writers who essay poetry come to grief; whereby it is clear that the one is a gift of nature and the other of art; (5) a sculptor; (6) a writer of songs mentioned by Aristoxenus.

Polemo, the son of Philostratus, was an Athenian who belonged to the deme of Oea. In his youth he was so profligate and dissipated that he actually carried about with him money to procure the immediate gratification of his desires, and would even keep sums concealed in lanes and alleys.[*](Cf. Lucian’s account of his follies (Bis accusatus, 16), the more piquant because put into the mouth of Academy pleading against Carouse, Μέθη.) Even in the Academy a piece of three obols was found close to a pillar, where he had buried it for the same purpose. And one day, by agreement with his young friends, he burst into the school of Xenocrates quite drunk, with a garland on his head. Xenocrates, however, without being at all disturbed, went on with his discourse as before, the subject being temperance. The lad, as he listened, by degrees was taken in the toils. He became so industrious

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as to surpass all the other scholars, and rose to be himself head of the school in the 116th Olympiad.[*](316-312 b.c.)

Antigonus of Carystus in his Biographies says that his father was foremost among the citizens and kept horses to compete in the chariot-race; that Polemo himself had been defendant in an action brought by his wife, who charged him with cruelty owing to the irregularities of his life; but that, from the time when he began to study philosophy, he acquired such strength of character as always to maintain the same unruffled calm of demeanour. Nay more, he never lost control of his voice. This in fact accounts for the fascination which he exercised over Crantor. [*](Cf. infra, §24.) Certain it is that, when a mad dog bit him in the back of his thigh, he did not even turn pale, but remained undisturbed by all the clamour which arose in the city at the news of what had happened. In the theatre too he was singularly unmoved.

For instance, Nicostratus, who was nicknamed Clytemnestra, was once reading to him and Crates something from Homer; and, while Crates was deeply affected, he was no more moved than if he had not heard him. Altogether he was a man such as Melanthius the painter describes in his work On Painting. There he says that a certain wilfulness and stubbornness should be stamped on works of art, and that the same holds good of character. Polemo used to say that we should exercise ourselves with facts and not with mere logical speculations, which leave us, like a man who has got by heart some paltry handbook on harmony but never practised, able, indeed, to win admiration for skill in asking questions, but utterly at variance with ourselves in the ordering of our lives.

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He was, then, refined and generous, and would beg to be excused, in the words of Aristophanes about Euripides, the acid, pungent style,

which, as the same author says, is strong seasoning for meat when it is high.[*](Frag. 180 Dind.) Further, he would not, they say, even sit down to deal with the themes of his pupils, but would argue walking up and down. It was, then, for his love of what is noble that he was honoured in the state. Nevertheless would he withdraw from society [*](Cf. supra,i. § 112 note.) and confine himself to the Garden of the Academy, while close by his scholars made themselves little huts and lived not far from the shrine of the Muses and the lecture-hall. It would seem that in all respects Polemo emulated Xenocrates. And Aristippus in the fourth book of his work On the Luxury of the Ancients affirms him to have been his favourite. Certainly he always kept his predecessor before his mind and, like him, wore that simple austere dignity which is proper to the Dorian mode.

He loved Sophocles, particularly in those passages where it seemed as if, in the phrase of the comic poet,

A stout Molossian mastiff lent him aid,

and where the poet was, in the words of Phrynichus,[*](Meineke, C.G.F. ii. 605.)

Nor must, nor blended vintage, but true Pramnian.

Thus he would call Homer the Sophocles of epic, and Sophocles the Homer of tragedy

He died at an advanced age of gradual decay, leaving behind him a considerable number of works. I have composed the following epigram upon him[*](Anth. Plan. ii. 380.):>

Dost thou not hear? We have buried Polemo, laid here by that fatal scourge of wasted strength. Yet not Polemo,
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but merely his body, which on his way to the stars he left to moulder in the ground.

Crates, whose father was Antigenes, was an Athenian belonging to the deme of Thria. He was a pupil and at the same time a favourite of Polemo, whom he succeeded in the headship of the school. The two were so much attached to each other that they not only shared the same pursuits in life but grew more and more alike to their latest breath, and, dying, shared the same tomb. Hence Antagoras, writing of both, employed this figure[*](Anth. Pal. vii. 103.):

Passing stranger, say that in this tomb rest godlike Crates and Polemo, men magnanimous in concord, from whose inspired lips flowed sacred speech, and whose pure life of wisdom, in accordance with unswerving tenets, decked them for a bright immortality.

Hence Arcesilaus, who had quitted Theophrastus and gone over to their school, said of them that they were gods or a remnant of the Golden Age. They did not side with the popular party, but were such as Dionysodorus the flute-player is said to have claimed to be, when he boasted that no one ever heard his melodies, as those of Ismenias were heard, either on shipboard or at the fountain. According to Antigonus, their common table was in the house of Crantor; and these two and Arcesilaus lived in harmony together. Arcesilaus and Crantor shared the same house, while Polemo and Crates lived with

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Lysicles, one of the citizens. Crates, as already stated, was the favourite of Polemo and Arcesilaus of Crantor.

According to Apollodorus in the third book of his Chronology, Crates at his death left behind him works, some of a philosophical kind, others on comedy, others again speeches delivered in the assembly or when he was envoy. He also left distinguished pupils; among them Arcesilaus, of whom we shall speak presently—for he was also a pupil of Crates; another was Bion of Borysthenes, who was afterwards known as the Theodorean, from the school which he joined; of him too we shall have occasion to speak next after Arcesilaus.

There have been ten men who bore the name of Crates: (1) the poet of the Old Comedy; (2) a rhetorician of Tralles, a pupil of Isocrates; (3) a sapper and miner who accompanied Alexander; (4) the Cynic, of whom more hereafter; (5) a Peripatetic philosopher; (6) the Academic philosopher described above; (7) a grammarian of Malos; (8) the author of a geometrical work; (9) a composer of epigrams; (10) an Academic philosopher of Tarsus.

Crantor of Soli, though he was much esteemed in his native country, left it for Athens and attended the lectures of Xenocrates at the same time as Polemo. He left memoirs extending to 30,000 lines, some of which are by some critics attributed to Arcesilaus. He is said to have been asked what it was in Polemo that attracted him, and to have

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replied, The fact that I never heard him raise or lower his voice in speaking. He happened to fall ill, and retired to the temple of Asclepius, where he proceeded to walk about. At once people flocked round him in the belief that he had retired thither, not on account of illness, but in order to open a school. Among them was Arcesilaus, who wished to be introduced by his means to Polemo, notwithstanding the affection which united the two, as will be related in the Life of Arcesilaus.

However, when he recovered, he continued to attend Polemo’s lectures, and for this he was universally praised. He is also said to have left Arcesilaus his property, to the value of twelve talents. And when asked by him where he wished to be buried, he answered[*](Nauck, T.G.F.2, Adesp. 281.):

Sweet in some nook of native soil to rest.

It is also said that he wrote poems and deposited them under seal in the temple of Athena in his native place. And Theaetetus the poet writes thus of him[*](Anth. Plan. ii. 28.):

Pleasing to men, more pleasing to the Muses, lived Crantor, and never saw old age. Receive, O earth, the hallowed dead; gently may he live and thrive even in the world below.

Crantor admired Homer and Euripides above all other poets; it is hard, he said, at once to write tragedy and to stir the emotions in the language of everyday life. And he would quote the line from the story of Bellerophon[*](Nauck, T.G.F.2, Eur. 300.):

Alas! But why Alas? We have suffered the lot of mortals.

And it is said that there are extant[*](Anth. Plan. iii. 60.) these lines of the poet Antagoras, spoken by Crantor on Love:

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My mind is in doubt, since thy birth is disputed, whether I am to call thee, Love, the first of the immortal gods, the eldest of all the children whom old Erebus and queenly Night brought to birth in the depths beneath wide Ocean;

or art thou the child of wise Cypris, or of Earth, or of the Winds? So many are the goods and ills thou devisest for men in thy wanderings. Therefore hast thou a body of double form.

He was also clever at inventing terms. For instance, he said of a tragic player’s voice that it was unpolished and unpeeled. And of a certain poet that his verses abounded in miserliness. And that the disquisitions of Theophrastus were written with an oyster-shell. His most highly esteemed work is the treatise On Grief.[*](Legimus omnes Crantoris, veteris Academici, de luctu; est enim non magnus, verum aureolus et, ut Tuberoni Panaetius praecipit, ad verbum ediscendus libellus (Cic. Ac. Pr. ii. 44).) He died before Polemo and Crates, his end being hastened by dropsy. I have composed upon him the following epigram[*](Anth. Plan. ii. 381.):

The worst of maladies overwhelmed you, Crantor, and thus did you descend the black abyss of Pluto. While you fare well even in the world below, the Academy and your country of Soli are bereft of your discourses.