Vitae philosophorum

Diogenes Laertius

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

Heraclides, son of Euthyphro, born at Heraclea in the Pontus, was a wealthy man. At Athens he first attached himself to Speusippus. He also attended the lectures of the Pythagoreans and admired the writings of Plato. Last of all he became a pupil of Aristotle, as Sotion says in his Successions of Philosophers.[*](That Heraclides was a member of the Academy is established beyond all doubt by the fact that he was a candidate for the headship of the School on the death of Speusippus: Index Acad. p. 38 Mekler. However, not only does Diogenes Laertius make him, on Sotion’s authority, a pupil of Aristotle, but Aëtius also seems, iii. 2. 5, to associate him with the Peripatetics (καθάπερ ἀμέλει πάντες οἱ Περιπατητικοί).) He wore fine soft clothes, and he was extremely corpulent, which made the Athenians call him Pompicus rather than Ponticus. He was mild and dignified of aspect. Works by him survive of great beauty and excellence. There are ethical dialogues:

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  • Of Justice, three books.
  • Of Temperance, one book.
  • Of Piety, five books.
  • Of Courage, one book.
  • Of Virtue in general, one book.
  • A second with the same title.
  • Of Happiness, one book.

  • Of Government, one book.
  • On Laws, one book, and on subjects kindred to these.
  • Of Names, one book.
  • Agreements, one book.
  • On the Involuntary, one book.
  • Concerning Love, and Clinias, one book.

    • Others are physical treatises:

  • Of Reason.
  • Of the Soul, and a separate treatise with the same title.
  • Of Nature.
  • Of Images.
  • Against Democritus.
  • Of Celestial Phenomena, one book
  • Of Things in the Under-world.
  • On Various Ways of Life, two books.
  • The Causes of Diseases, one book.
  • Of the Good, one book.
  • Against Zeno’s Doctrines, one book.
  • A Reply to Metron’s Doctrines, one book.

    • To grammar and criticism belong:

  • Of the Age of Homer and Hesiod, two books
  • Of Archilochus and Homer, two books.

    • Of a literary nature are:

  • A work on passages in Euripides and Sophocles, three books.
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  • On Music, two books.

  • Solutions of Homeric Problems, two books.
  • Of Theorems, one book.
  • On the Three Tragic Poets, one book.
  • Characters, one book.
  • Of Poetry and Poets, one book.
  • Of Conjecture, one book.
  • Concerning Prevision, one book.
  • Expositions of Heraclitus, four books.
  • Expositions in Reply to Democritus, one book.
  • Solutions of Eristic Problems, two books.
  • Logical Proposition, one book.
  • Of Species, one book.
  • Solutions, one book.
  • Admonitions, one book.
  • A Reply to Dionysius, one book.

    • To rhetoric belongs:

  • Of Public Speaking, or Protagoras.

    • To history:

  • On the Pythagoreans.
  • Of Discoveries.

    • Some of these works are in the style of comedy, for instance the tracts On Pleasure and On Temperance; others in the style of tragedy, as the books entitled Of those in Hades, Of Piety, and Of Authority.

    Again, he has a sort of intermediate style of conversation which he employs when philosophers, generals and statesmen converse with each other. Furthermore, he wrote geometrical and dialectical works, and is, besides, everywhere versatile and lofty in diction, and a great adept at charming the reader’s mind.

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    It seems that he delivered his native city from oppressions by assassinating its ruler, as is stated in his work on Men of the Same Name by Demetrius of Magnesia, who also tells the following story about him: As a boy, and when he grew up, he kept a pet snake, and, being at the point of death, he ordered a trusted attendant to conceal the corpse but to place the snake on his bier, that he might seem to have departed to the gods.

    All this was done. But while the citizens were in the very midst of the procession and were loud in his praise, the snake, hearing the uproar, popped up out of the shroud, creating widespread confusion. Subsequently, however, all was revealed, and they saw Heraclides, not as he appeared, but as he really was.

    I have written of him as follows[*](Anth. Pal. vii. 104.):

    You wished, Heraclides, to leave to all mankind a reputation that after death you lived as a snake.[*](Or, reading ἄπαρτι for ἄπασι, wished to leave a report behind you that immediately after death you became a living snake.) But you were deceived, you sophist, for the snake was really a brute beast, and you were detected as more of a beast than a sage.
    Hippobotus too has this tale.