Vitae philosophorum

Through watching a mouse running about, says Theophrastus in the Megarian dialogue, not looking for a place to lie down in, not afraid of the dark, not seeking any of the things which are considered to be dainties, he discovered the means of adapting himself to circumstances. He was the first, say some, to fold his cloak because he was obliged to sleep in it as well, and he carried a wallet to hold his victuals, and he used any place for any purpose, for breakfasting, sleeping, or conversing. And then he would say, pointing to the portico of Zeus and the Hall of Processions, that the Athenians had provided him with places to live in.

He did not lean upon a staff until he grew infirm; but afterwards he would carry it everywhere, not indeed in the city, but when walking along the road with it and with his wallet; so say Olympiodorus,[*](An eminent politician. Pausanias, i. cc. 25, 26, describes a statue of Olympiodorus in the Acropolis, and takes occasion to recount his exploits, how (c. 288 b.c.) he delivered Athens from the Macedonians (cf. Plut. Demetr. c. 46). As to the variant Ἀθηνόδωρος, nothing is known of any Athenian politician of that name.) once a magistrate at Athens, Polyeuctus the orator, and Lysanias the son of Aeschrio. He had written to some one to try and procure a cottage for him. When this man was a long time about it, he took for his abode the tub in the Metroön, as he himself explains in his letters. And in summer he used to roll in it over hot sand,

He was great at pouring scorn on his contemporaries. The school of Euclides he called bilious, and Plato’s lectures waste of time, the performances at the Dionysia great peep-shows for fools, and the demagogues the mob’s lacqueys. He used also to say that when he saw physicians, philosophers and pilots at their work, he deemed man the most intelligent of all animals; but when again he saw interpreters of dreams and diviners and those who attended to them, or those who were puffed up with conceit of wealth, he thought no animal more silly. He would continually say[*](Some of the stories which follow are so much alike that it is charitable to suppose that Laertius drew from more than one collection of the sayings of Diogenes.) that for the conduct of life we need right reason or a halter.

Observing Plato one day at a costly banquet taking olives, How is it, he said,[*](Obviously Favorinus was not the author (vide infra) whom Laertius followed here.) that you the philosopher who sailed to Sicily for the sake of these dishes, now when they are before you do not enjoy them? Nay, by the gods, Diogenes, replied Plato, there also for the most part I lived upon olives and such like. Why then, said Diogenes, did you need to go to Syracuse? Was it that Attica at that time did not grow olives? But Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History attributes this to Aristippus. Again, another time he was eating dried figs when he encountered Plato and offered him a share of them. When Plato took them and ate them, he said, I said you might share them, not that you might eat them all up.

And one day when Plato had invited to his house