Vitae philosophorum
Diogenes Laertius
Diogenes Laertius. Hicks, R. D., editor. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1925.
According to Apollodorus in his Chronology, he departed this life in the fourth year of the 162nd Olympiad[*](129-128 b.c.) at the age of eighty-five years. Letters of his to Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, are extant. Everything else was compiled by his pupils; he himself left nothing in writing. I have written upon him in logaoedic metre as follows[*](Anth. Plan. v. 39.):
Why, Muse, oh why wouldst thou have me censure Carneades? For he is ignorant who knoweth not how he feared death. When wasting away with the worst of diseases, he would not find release. But when he heard that Antipater’s life was quenched by drinking a potion,
Give me too, he cried, a draught to drink. What? pray what? Give me a draught of honeyed wine. He had often on his lips the words, Nature which holds this frame together will surely dissolve it. None the less he too went down to the grave, and he might have got there sooner by cutting short his tale of woes.
It is said that his eyes went blind at night without
He had many other disciples, but the most illustrious of them all was Clitomachus, of whom we have next to speak.
There was another Carneades, a frigid elegiac poet.
Clitomachus was a Carthaginian, his real name being Hasdrubal, and he taught philosophy at Carthage in his native tongue. He had reached his fortieth year when he went to Athens and became a pupil of Carneades. And Carneades, recognizing his industry, caused him to be educated and took part in training him. And to such lengths did his diligence go that he composed more than four hundred treatises. He succeeded Carneades in the headship of the school, and by his writings did much to elucidate his opinions. He was eminently well acquainted with the three sects—the Academy, the Peripatetics, and the Stoics.
The Academics in general are assailed by Timon in the line:
The prolixity of the Academics unseasoned by salt.
Having thus reviewed the Academics who derived from Plato, we will now pass on to the Peripatetics, who also derived from Plato. They begin with Aristotle.