Vitae philosophorum

Diogenes Laertius

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

Asked once by Arcesilaus why he had come there from Thebes, he replied, Why, to laugh when I have you all in full view ! Yet, while attacking Arcesilaus in his Silli, he has praised him in his work entitled the Funeral Banquet of Arcesilaus.

According to Menodotus he left no successor, but his school lapsed until Ptolemy of Cyrene re-established it. Hippobotus and Sotion, however, say that he had as pupils Dioscurides of Cyprus, Nicolochus of Rhodes, Euphranor of Seleucia, and Praÿlus of the

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Troad.[*](This is probably the same person as is referred to by Clem. Alex. Strom. iv. 56, where the text reads Παῦλος ὁ Λακύδου γνώριμος. His heroic end was also extolled (Clement says) by Timotheus of Pergamum. See Wilamowitz, Phil. Unters. iv. p. 107.) The latter, as we learn from the history of Phylarchus, was a man of such unflinching courage that, although unjustly accused, he patiently suffered a traitor’s death, without so much as deigning to speak one word to his fellow-citizens.

Euphranor had as pupil Eubulus of Alexandria; Eubulus taught Ptolemy, and he again Sarpedon and Heraclides; Heraclides again taught Aenesidemus of Cnossus, the compiler of eight books of Pyrrhonean discourses; the latter was the instructor of Zeuxippus his fellow-citizen, he of Zeuxis of the angular foot (γωνιόπους, Cruickshank), he again of Antiochus of Laodicea on the Lycus, who had as pupils Menodotus of Nicomedia, an empiric physician, and Theiodas of Laodicea; Menodotus was the instructor of Herodotus of Tarsus, son of Arieus, and Herodotus taught Sextus Empiricus, who wrote ten books on Scepticism, and other fine works. Sextus taught Saturninus called Cythenas,[*](Possibly κυδαθηναιεύς, i.e. a member of the well-known Attic deme, into which even Italians with such names as Saturninus might penetrate under the cosmopolitan empire of the Severi.) another empiricist.