Vitae philosophorum

He was returning from Olympia, and when somebody inquired whether there was a great crowd, Yes, he said, a great crowd, but few who could be called men. Libertines he compared to figtrees growing upon a cliff: whose fruit is not enjoyed by any man, but is eaten by ravens and vultures. When Phryne set up a golden statue of Aphrodite in Delphi, Diogenes is said to have written upon it: From the licentiousness of Greece.

He was gathering figs, and was told by the keeper that not long before a man had hanged himself on that very fig-tree. Then, said he, I will now purge it. Seeing an Olympian victor casting repeated glances at a courtesan, See, he said, yonder ram frenzied for battle, how he is held fast by the neck fascinated by a common minx. Handsome courtesans he would compare to a deadly honeyed potion. He was breakfasting in the marketplace, and the bystanders gathered round him with cries of dog. It is you who are dogs, cried he, when you stand round and watch me at my breakfast. When two cowards hid away from him, he called out, Don’t be afraid, a hound is not fond of beetroot.

After seeing a stupid wrestler practising as a doctor he inquired of him, What does this mean? Is it that you may now have your revenge on the rivals who formerly beat you? Seeing the child of a courtesan throw stones at a crowd, he cried out, Take care you don’t hit your father.

A boy having shown him a dagger that he had received from an admirer, Diogenes remarked, A pretty blade with an ugly handle. When some people commended a person who had given him a gratuity, he broke in with You have no praise for me who was worthy to receive it. When some one asked that he might have back his cloak, If it was

On being asked what he had gained from philosophy, he replied, This at least, if nothing else—to be prepared for every fortune. Asked where he came from, he said, I am a citizen of the world.[*](If this answer is authentic, it apparently shows that the famous term cosmopolitan originated with Diogenes.) Certain parents were sacrificing to the gods, that a son might be born to them. But, said he, do you not sacrifice to ensure what manner of man he shall turn out to be? When asked for a subscription towards a club, he said to the president:

Despoil the rest; off Hector keep thy hands.[*](There is no such line in our mss. of Homer; it is unknown to the Scholiasts and to Eustathius. Joshua Barnes, in his edition of the Iliad, introduced it as xvi. 82a. Pope rendered it, about 1718, as follows (Il. xvi. 86): Rage uncontrolled through all the hostile crew, But touch not Hector, Hector is my due. In Clarke’s edition of 1740 it is expelled from the text and relegated to a footnote. J. H. Voss, however, making a German translation of the Iliad, probably between 1781 and 1793, still regarded it as Homeric, but found a fresh place for it, after xvi. 90. )

The mistresses of kings he designated queens; for, said he, they make the kings do their bidding. When the Athenians gave Alexander the title of Dionysus, he said, Me too you might make Sarapis.[*](Sarapis was represented, like Pluto, as seated with an animal by his side having the head of a dog, lion, or wolf combined (according to Baumeister) in a three-headed Cerberus.) Some one having reproached him for going into dirty places, his reply was that the sun too visits cesspools without being defiled.

When he was dining in a temple, and in the course of the meal loaves not free from dirt were put on the table, he took them up and threw them away, declaring that nothing unclean ought to enter a temple. To the man who said to him, You don’t know anything, although you are a philosopher, he replied, Even if I am but a pretender to wisdom,

Seeing a young man behaving effeminately, Are you not ashamed, he said, that your own intention about yourself should be worse than nature’s: for nature made you a man, but you are forcing yourself to play the woman. Observing a fool tuning a psaltery, Are you not ashamed, said he, to give this wood concordant sounds, while you fail to harmonize your soul with life? To one who protested that he was ill adapted for the study of philosophy, he said, Why then do you live, if you do not care to live well? To one who despised his father, Are you not ashamed, he said, to despise him to whom you owe it that you can so pride yourself? Noticing a handsome youth chattering in unseemly fashion, Are you not ashamed, he said, to draw a dagger of lead from an ivory scabbard?

Being reproached with drinking in a tavern, Well, said he, I also get my hair cut in a barber’s shop. Being reproached with accepting a cloak from Antipater, he replied:

The gods’ choice gifts are nowise to be spurned.[*](Il. iii. 65.)

When some one first shook a beam at him and then shouted Look out, Diogenes struck the man with

The question being asked why footmen are so called, he replied, Because they have the feet of men, but souls such as you, my questioner, have. He asked a spendthrift for a mina. The man inquired why it was that he asked others for an obol but him for a mina. Because, said Diogenes, I expect to receive from others again, but whether I shall ever get anything from you again lies on the knees of the gods. Being reproached with begging when Plato did not beg, Oh yes, says he, he does, but when he does so—

He holds his head down close, that none may hear.[*](Od. i. 157, iv. 70.)

Seeing a bad archer, he sat down beside the target with the words in order not to get hit. Lovers, he declared, derive their pleasures from their misfortune.

Being asked whether death was an evil thing, he replied, How can it be evil, when in its presence we are not aware of it? When Alexander stood opposite him and asked, Are you not afraid of me? Why, what are you? said he, a good thing or a bad? Upon Alexander replying A good thing, Who then, said Diogenes, is afraid of the good? Education, according to him, is a controlling grace to the young, consolation to the

Being asked what was the most beautiful thing in the world, he replied, Freedom of speech. On entering a boys’ school, he found there many statues of the Muses, but few pupils. By the help of the gods, said he, schoolmaster, you have plenty of pupils. It was his habit to do everything in public, the works of Demeter and of Aphrodite alike. He used to draw out the following arguments. If to breakfast be not absurd, neither is it absurd in the market-place; but to breakfast is not absurd, therefore it is not absurd to breakfast in the marketplace. Behaving indecently in public, he wished it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing the belly. Many other sayings are attributed to him, which it would take long to enumerate.[*](§§ 70-73. As § 74 joins on well to § 69, the intermediate specimens of Cynic maxims(cf.note on § 10) are clearly an insertion, probably from a different source.)

He used to affirm that training was of two kinds, mental and bodily: the latter being that whereby, with constant exercise, perceptions are formed such as secure freedom of movement for virtuous deeds; and the one half of this training is incomplete without the other, good health and strength being just as much included among the essential things, whether for body or soul. And he would adduce indisputable evidence to show how easily from

Nothing in life, however, he maintained, has any chance of succeeding without strenuous practice; and this is capable of overcoming anything. Accordingly, instead of useless toils men should choose such as nature recommends, whereby they might have lived happily. Yet such is their madness that they choose to be miserable. For even the despising of pleasure is itself most pleasurable, when we are habituated to it; and just as those accustomed to a life of pleasure feel disgust when they pass over to the opposite experience, so those whose training has been of the opposite kind derive more pleasure from despising pleasure than from the pleasures themselves. This was the gist of his conversation; and it was plain that he acted accordingly, adulterating currency in very truth, allowing convention no such authority as he allowed to natural right, and asserting that the manner of life he lived was the same as that of Heracles when he preferred liberty to everything.

He maintained that all things are the property of the wise, and employed such arguments as those cited above. All things belong to the gods. The gods are friends to the wise, and friends share all property in common; therefore all things are the property of the wise. Again as to law: that it is

And he saw no impropriety either in stealing anything from a temple or in eating the flesh of any animal; nor even anything impious in touching human flesh, this, he said, being clear from the custom of some foreign nations. Moreover, according to right reason, as he put it, all elements are contained in all things and pervade everything: since not only is meat a constituent of bread, but bread of vegetables; and all other bodies also, by means of certain invisible passages and particles, find their way in and unite with all substances in the form of vapour. This he makes plain in the Thyestes, if the tragedies are really his and not the work of his friend Philiscus of Aegina or of Pasiphon, the son of Lucian,[*](It has been conjectured that the Pasiphon meant was the philosopher of Eretria, to whom Persaeus attributed the composition of spurious Socratic Dialogues (v. supra, ii. 61). Modern scholars incline to regard him as the author of the Πίναξ attributed to Cebes by D. L. ii. 125 (v. Susemihl, Griechische Literatur in der Alexandrinerzeit, i. p. 20, Welcker, Kl. Schr. i. p. 422, n. 18). Wilamowitz conjectures that Λουκιανοῦ has displaced the local adjective of his birthplace.) who according to Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History wrote them after the death of Diogenes. He held that we should neglect music, geometry, astronomy, and the like studies, as useless and unnecessary.

He became very ready also at repartee in verbal debates, as is evident from what has been said above.

Further, when he was sold as a slave, he endured it most nobly. For on a voyage to Aegina he was captured by pirates under the command of Scirpalus,[*](Harpalus according to Cic. N.D. iii. 34. 83.) conveyed to Crete and exposed for sale. When the auctioneer asked in what he was proficient, he replied, In ruling men. Thereupon he pointed to a certain Corinthian with a fine purple border to his robe, the man named Xeniades above-mentioned, and said, Sell me to this man; he needs a master. Thus Xeniades came to buy him, and took him to Corinth and set him over his own children and entrusted his whole household to him. And he administered it in all respects in such a manner that Xeniades used to go about saying, A good genius has entered my house.

Cleomenes in his work entitled Concerning Pedagogues says that the friends of Diogenes wanted to ransom him, whereupon he called them simpletons; for, said he, lions are not the slaves of those who feed them, but rather those who feed them are at the mercy of the lions: for fear is the mark of the slave, whereas wild beasts make men afraid of them. The man had in fact a wonderful gift of persuasion, so that he could easily vanquish anyone he liked in argument. At all events a certain Onesicritus of Aegina is said to have sent to Athens the one of his two sons named Androsthenes, and he having become a pupil of Diogenes stayed there; the father then sent the other also, the aforesaid Philiscus, who was the elder, in search of him; but Philiscus also was detained in the same way.

When, thirdly, the father himself arrived, he was just as much attracted to the

Diogenes is said to have been nearly ninety years old when he died. Regarding his death there are several different accounts. One is that he was seized with colic after eating an octopus raw and so met his end. Another is that he died voluntarily by holding his breath. This account was followed by Cercidas of Megalopolis (or of Crete), who in his meliambics writes thus:

Not so he who aforetime was a citizen of Sinope,
1. That famous one who carried a staff, doubled his cloak, and lived in the open air.

But he soared aloft with his lip tightly pressed against his teeth
1. And holding his breath withal. For in truth he was rightly named
2. Diogenes, a true-born son of Zeus, a hound of heaven.

Another version is that, while trying to divide an octopus amongst the dogs, he was so severely bitten on the sinew of the foot that it caused his death. His friends, however, according to Antisthenes in his Successions of Philosophers, conjectured that it was due to the retention of his breath. For he happened to be living in the Craneum, the gymnasium in front of Corinth. When his friends came according to custom and found him wrapped up in his cloak, they thought that he must be asleep, although he was by no means of a drowsy or somnolent habit. They therefore drew aside his cloak and found that

Hence, it is said, arose a quarrel among his disciples as to who should bury him: nay, they even came to blows; but, when their fathers and men of influence arrived, under their direction he was buried beside the gate leading to the Isthmus. Over his grave they set up a pillar and a dog in Parian marble upon it. Subsequently his fellow-citizens honoured him with bronze statues, on which these verses were inscribed:

Time makes even bronze grow old: but thy glory, Diogenes, all eternity will never destroy. Since thou alone didst point out to mortals the lesson of self-sufficingness and the easiest path of life.[*](Anth. Pal. xvi. 334.)

We too have written on him in the proceleusmatic metre:

A. Diogenes, come tell me what fate took you to the world below?
1. D. A dog’s savage tooth.[*](Anth. Pal. vii. 116.)

But some say that when dying he left instructions that they should throw him out unburied, that every wild beast might feed on him, or thrust him into a ditch and sprinkle a little dust over him. But according to others his instructions were that they should throw him into the Ilissus, in order that he might be useful to his brethren.

Demetrius in his work On Men of the Same Name asserts that on the same day on which Alexander died in Babylon Diogenes died in Corinth. He was an old man in the 113th Olympiad.[*](324-321 b.c.)