Vitae philosophorum

Diogenes Laertius

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

Being once asked who suffers most from anxiety, he

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replied, He who is ambitious of the greatest prosperity. Being consulted by some one as to whether he should marry—for this story is also told of Bion— he made answer, If the wife you marry be ugly, she will be your bane; if beautiful, you will not keep her to yourself.[*](Cf. infra, vi. 3.) He called old age the harbour of all ills; at least they all take refuge there. Renown he called the mother of virtues; beauty another’s good; wealth the sinews of success. To some one who had devoured his patrimony he said, The earth swallowed Amphiaraus, but you have swallowed your land. To be unable to bear an ill is itself a great ill. He used to condemn those who burnt men alive as if they could not feel, and yet cauterized them as if they could.

He used repeatedly to say that to grant favours to another was preferable to enjoying the favours of others. For the latter means ruin to both body and soul. He even abused Socrates, declaring that, if he felt desire for Alcibiades and abstained, he was a fool; if he did not, his conduct was in no way remarkable. The road to Hades, he used to say, was easy to travel; at any rate men passed away with their eyes shut. He said in censure of Alcibiades that in his boyhood he drew away the husbands from their wives, and as a young man the wives from their husbands. When the Athenians were absorbed in the practice of rhetoric, he taught philosophy at Rhodes. To some one who found fault with him for this he replied, How can I sell barley when what I brought to market is wheat?

He used to say that those in Hades would be more severely punished if the vessels in which they drew water were whole instead of being pierced with

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holes. To an importunate talker who wanted his help he said, I will satisfy your demand, if you will only get others to plead your cause and stay away yourself. On a voyage in bad company he fell in with pirates. When his companions said, We are lost if we are discovered, And I too, he replied, unless I am discovered. Conceit he styled a hindrance to progress. Referring to a wealthy miser he said, He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. Misers, he said, took care of property as if it belonged to them, but derived no more benefit from it than if it belonged to others. When we are young, said he, we are courageous, but it is only in old age that prudence is at its height.

Prudence, he said, excels the other virtues as much as sight excels the other senses. He used to say that we ought not to heap reproaches on old age, seeing that, as he said, we all hope to reach it. To a slanderer who showed a grave face his words were, I don’t know whether you have met with ill luck, or your neighbour with good. He used to say that low birth made a bad partner for free speech, for—

It cows a man, however bold his heart.[*](Eur. Hipp. 424.)

We ought, he remarked, to watch our friends and see what manner of men they are, in order that we may not be thought to associate with the bad or to decline the friendship of the good.

Bion at the outset used to deprecate the Academic doctrines,[*](i.e. he had his doubts. Reiske, however, by his conjecture προῄρητο gives the statement a totally different turn, viz. that Bion had at the outset preferred the Academy.) even at the time when he was a pupil of Crates. Then he adopted the Cynic discipline, donning cloak and wallet.

For little else was needed to convert him to the doctrine of entire insensibility.

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Next he went over to Theodorean views, after he had heard the lectures of Theodorus the Atheist, who used every kind of sophistical argument. And after Theodorus he attended the lectures of Theophrastus the Peripatetic. He was fond of display and great at cutting up anything with a jest, using vulgar names for things. Because he employed every style of speech in combination, Eratosthenes, we hear, said of him that he was the first to deck philosophy with bright-flowered robes. He was clever also at parody. Here is a specimen of his style:

O gentle Archytas, musician-born, blessed in thine own conceit, most skilled of men to stir the bass of strife.[*](Cf. Hom. Il. iii. 182 ὦ μάκαρ Ἀτρεΐδη, μοιρηγενές, ὀλβιόδαιμον. The address πάντων ἐκπαγλότατʼ ἀνδρῶν occurs in Il. i. 146 and xviii. 170.)