Vitae philosophorum

But some make his answer to have been, When I needed wisdom, I went to Socrates; now that I am in need of money, I come to you. He used to complain of mankind that in purchasing earthenware they made trial whether it rang true, but had no regular standard by which to judge life. Others attribute this remark to Diogenes. One day Dionysius over the wine commanded everybody to put on purple and dance. Plato declined, quoting the line[*](Eur. Bacch. 836.):

I could not stoop to put on women’s robes.

Even amid the Bacchic revelry
1. True modesty will not be put to shame.[*](ib. 317.)

He made a request to Dionysius on behalf of a friend and, failing to obtain it, fell down at his feet. And when some one jeered at him, he made reply, It is not I who am to blame, but Dionysius who has his ears in his feet. He was once staying in Asia and was taken prisoner by Artaphernes, the satrap. Can you be cheerful under these circumstances?

A similar remark is ascribed to Ariston. For, he said, when Odysseus went down into the under-world, he saw nearly all the dead and made their acquaintance, but he never set eyes upon their queen herself.

Again, when Aristippus was asked what are the subjects which handsome boys ought to learn, his reply was, Those which will be useful to them when they are grown up. To the critic who censured him for leaving Socrates to go to Dionysius, his rejoinder was, Yes, but I came to Socrates for education and to Dionysius for recreation. When he had made some money by teaching, Socrates asked him, Where did you get so much? to which he replied, Where you got so little.

A courtesan having told him that she was with child by him, he replied, You are no more sure of this than if, after running through coarse rushes, you were to say you had been pricked by one in particular. Someone accused him of exposing his son as if it was not his offspring Whereupon he replied, Phlegm, too, and vermin we know to be of our own begetting, but for all that, because they are useless, we cast them as far from us as possible. He received a sum of money from Dionysius at the same time that Plato carried off a book and, when

Dionysius met a request of his for money with the words, Nay, but you told me that the wise man would never be in want. To which he retorted, Pay! Pay! and then let us discuss the question; and when he was paid, Now you see, do you not, said he, that I was not found wanting? Dionysius having repeated to him the lines:

Whoso betakes him to a prince’s court
1. Becomes his slave, albeit of free birth,[*](Nauck, T.G.F., Soph. 789.)

he retorted:

If a free man he come, no slave is he.[*](From a lost play of Sophocles: Plutarch, De audiendis poetis, 12, p. 33 d, Vita Pomp. 78, p. 661 s.f.)

Then remember, Aristippus went on, that, though I am your senior, I made the first approaches. Thereupon Aeschines said, Well done, by Hera, you are quite right; you are a much better man than I am. For the quarrel was of my beginning, you make the first move to friendship. Such are the repartees which are attributed to him.

There have been four men called Aristippus, (1) our present subject, (2) the author of a book about

The following books by the Cyrenaic philosopher are in circulation: a history of Libya in three Books, sent to Dionysius; one work containing twenty-five dialogues, some written in Attic, some in Doric, as follows:

Some also maintain that he wrote six Books of

According to Sotion in his second book, and Panaetius, the following treatises are his:

He laid down as the end the smooth motion resulting in sensation.

Having written his life, let me now proceed to pass in review the philosophers of the Cyrenaic school which sprang from him, although some call themselves followers of Hegesias, others followers of Anniceris, others again of Theodorus.[*](This sentence is a sort of preface to the valuable summary of Hedonistic tenets which occupies 86-99 under four heads, Aristippus (86-93), Hegesias (93-96), Anniceris (96, 97), and Theodorus (97-99). Cf. note on i. 19 and Epiphanius(Diels, Dox. Gr. 591). It seems as if the sentence τέλος δὲ. . . ἀναδιδομένην ought to follow, not to precede, this preface. But before the doctrines comes a list of disciples, including Hegesias, Anniceris, and Theodorus, whose divergencies from Aristippus are noted below. The intrusion of Phaedo and the Eretrians at this stage is certainly strange: it looks as if Diogenes Laertius jotted down a direction for his own future guidance.) Not but what we shall notice further the pupils of Phaedo, the chief of whom were called the school of Eretria.

The case stands thus. The disciples of Aristippus were his daughter Arete, Aethiops of Ptolemais,[*](If the city was so named after a Ptolemy, it is impossible that one of its citizens could have been contemporary with the first Aristippus, the companion of Socrates. Even if Aristippus II. was the teacher of Aethiops the difficulty is not removed.)

Those then who adhered to the teaching of Aristippus and were known as Cyrenaics held the following opinions. They laid down that there are two states, pleasure and pain, the former a smooth, the latter a rough motion, and that pleasure does not differ from pleasure nor is one pleasure more pleasant than another.

The one state is agreeable and the other repellent to all living things. However, the bodily pleasure which is the end is, according to Panaetius in his work On the Sects, not the settled pleasure following the removal of pains, or the sort of freedom from discomfort which Epicurus accepts and maintains to be the end. They also hold that there is a difference between end and happiness. Our end is particular pleasure, whereas happiness is the sum total of all particular pleasures, in which are included both past and future pleasures.

Particular pleasure is desirable for its own sake, whereas happiness is desirable not for its own sake but for the sake of particular pleasures. That pleasure is the end is proved by the fact that from our youth up we are instinctively attracted to it, and, when we obtain it, seek for nothing more, and shun nothing so much as its opposite, pain. Pleasure is good even if it proceed from the most unseemly conduct, as Hippobotus says in his work On the Sects. For even if the action be irregular,

The removal of pain, however, which is put forward in Epicurus, seems to them not to be pleasure at all, any more than the absence of pleasure is pain. For both pleasure and pain they hold to consist in motion, whereas absence of pleasure like absence of pain is not motion, since painlessness is the condition of one who is, as it were, asleep. They assert that some people may fail to choose pleasure because their minds are perverted; not all mental pleasures and pains, however, are derived from bodily counterparts. For instance, we take disinterested delight in the prosperity of our country which is as real as our delight in our own prosperity. Nor again do they admit that pleasure is derived from the memory or expectation of good, which was a doctrine of Epicurus.

For they assert that the movement affecting the mind is exhausted in course of time. Again they hold that pleasure is not derived from sight or from hearing alone. At all events, we listen with pleasure to imitation of mourning, while the reality causes pain. They gave the names of absence of pleasure and absence of pain to the intermediate conditions. However, they insist that bodily pleasures are far better than mental pleasures, and bodily pains far worse than mental pains, and that this is the reason why offenders are punished with the former. For they assumed pain to be more repellent, pleasure more congenial. For these reasons they paid more attention to the body than to the mind. Hence, although pleasure is in itself desirable, yet they hold that the things which are productive of certain pleasures are often of a painful nature, the very

They do not accept the doctrine that every wise man lives pleasantly and every fool painfully, but regard it as true for the most part only. It is sufficient even if we enjoy but each single pleasure as it comes. They say that prudence is a good, though desirable not in itself but on account of its consequences; that we make friends from interested motives, just as we cherish any part of the body so long as we have it; that some of the virtues are found even in the foolish; that bodily training contributes to the acquisition of virtue; that the sage will not give way to envy or love or superstition, since these weaknesses are due to mere empty opinion; he will, however, feel pain and fear, these being natural affections;

and that wealth too is productive of pleasure, though not desirable for its own sake.

They affirm that mental affections can be known, but not the objects from which they come; and they abandoned the study of nature because of its apparent uncertainty, but fastened on logical inquiries because of their utility. But Meleager in his second book On Philosophical Opinions, and Clitomachus in his first book On the Sects, affirm that they maintain Dialectic as well as Physics to be useless, since, when one has learnt the theory of good and evil, it is possible to speak with propriety, to be free from superstition, and to escape the fear of death.

They also held that nothing is just or honourable or base by nature, but only by convention and custom. Nevertheless the good man will be deterred from

The school of Hegesias, as it is called, adopted the same ends, namely pleasure and pain. In their view there is no such thing as gratitude or friendship or beneficence, because it is not for themselves that we choose to do these things but simply from motives of interest, apart from which such conduct is nowhere found.

They denied the possibility of happiness, for the body is infected with much suffering, while the soul shares in the sufferings of the body and is a prey to disturbance, and fortune often disappoints. From all this it follows that happiness cannot be realized. Moreover, life and death are each desirable in turn. But that there is anything naturally pleasant or unpleasant they deny; when some men are pleased and others pained by the same objects, this is owing to the lack or rarity or surfeit of such objects. Poverty and riches have no relevance to pleasure; for neither the rich nor the poor as such have any special share in pleasure.

Slavery and freedom, nobility and low birth, honour and dishonour, are alike indifferent in a calculation of pleasure. To the fool life is advantageous, while to the wise it is a matter of indifference. The wise man will be guided in all he does by his own interests, for there is none other whom he regards as equally deserving. For supposing him to reap the greatest advantages from another, they would not be equal to

This then, they say, is the advantage accruing to those who make no distinction between any of the objects which produce pleasure.

The school of Anniceris in other respects agreed with them, but admitted that friendship and gratitude and respect for parents do exist in real life, and that a good man will sometimes act out of patriotic motives. Hence, if the wise man receive annoyance, he will be none the less happy even if few pleasures accrue to him. The happiness of a friend is not in itself desirable, for it is not felt by his neighbour. Instruction is not sufficient in itself to inspire us with confidence and to make us rise superior to the opinion of the multitude. Habits must be formed because of the bad disposition which has grown up in us from the first.

A friend should be cherished not merely for his utility—for, if that fails, we should then no longer associate with him—but for the good feeling for the sake of which we shall even endure hardships. Nay, though we make pleasure the end and are annoyed when deprived of it, we shall nevertheless cheerfully endure this because of our love to our friend.

The Theodoreans derived their name from Theodorus,