Vitae philosophorum

But he soared aloft with his lip tightly pressed against his teeth
1. And holding his breath withal. For in truth he was rightly named
2. Diogenes, a true-born son of Zeus, a hound of heaven.

Another version is that, while trying to divide an octopus amongst the dogs, he was so severely bitten on the sinew of the foot that it caused his death. His friends, however, according to Antisthenes in his Successions of Philosophers, conjectured that it was due to the retention of his breath. For he happened to be living in the Craneum, the gymnasium in front of Corinth. When his friends came according to custom and found him wrapped up in his cloak, they thought that he must be asleep, although he was by no means of a drowsy or somnolent habit. They therefore drew aside his cloak and found that

Hence, it is said, arose a quarrel among his disciples as to who should bury him: nay, they even came to blows; but, when their fathers and men of influence arrived, under their direction he was buried beside the gate leading to the Isthmus. Over his grave they set up a pillar and a dog in Parian marble upon it. Subsequently his fellow-citizens honoured him with bronze statues, on which these verses were inscribed:

Time makes even bronze grow old: but thy glory, Diogenes, all eternity will never destroy. Since thou alone didst point out to mortals the lesson of self-sufficingness and the easiest path of life.[*](Anth. Pal. xvi. 334.)

We too have written on him in the proceleusmatic metre:

A. Diogenes, come tell me what fate took you to the world below?
1. D. A dog’s savage tooth.[*](Anth. Pal. vii. 116.)

But some say that when dying he left instructions that they should throw him out unburied, that every wild beast might feed on him, or thrust him into a ditch and sprinkle a little dust over him. But according to others his instructions were that they should throw him into the Ilissus, in order that he might be useful to his brethren.

Demetrius in his work On Men of the Same Name asserts that on the same day on which Alexander died in Babylon Diogenes died in Corinth. He was an old man in the 113th Olympiad.[*](324-321 b.c.)

The following writings are attributed to him. Dialogues:

Seven Tragedies:

Sosicrates in the first book of his Successions, and Satyrus in the fourth book of his Lives, allege that Diogenes left nothing in writing, and Satyrus adds that the sorry tragedies are by his friend Philiscus, the Aeginetan. Sotion in his seventh book declares that only the following are genuine works of Diogenes: On Virtue, On Good, On Love, A Mendicant, Tolmaeus, Pordalus, Casandrus, Cephalion, Philiscus, Aristarchus, Sisyphus, Ganymedes, Anecdotes, Letters.

There have been five men who were named Diogenes. The first, of Apollonia, a natural philosopher.

Now the philosopher is said by Athenodorus in the eighth book of his Walks to have always had a sleek appearance owing to his use of unguents.[*](Cf. Epictet. iii. 22. 88 ὡς Διογένης ἐποίει· στίλβων γὰρ περιήρχετο καὶ αὐτὸ τὸ σῶμα ἐπέστρε φε τοὺς πολλούς.)

Monimus of Syracuse was a pupil of Diogenes; and, according to Sosicrates, he was in the service of a certain Corinthian banker, to whom Xeniades, the purchaser of Diogenes, made frequent visits, and by the account which he gave of his goodness in word and deed, excited in Monimus a passionate admiration of Diogenes. For he forthwith pretended to be mad and proceeded to fling away the small change and all the money on the banker’s table, until at length his master dismissed him; and he then straightway devoted himself to Diogenes. He often followed Crates the Cynic as well, and embraced the like pursuits; whereupon his master, seeing him do this, was all the more persuaded that he was mad.

He came to be a distinguished man; so much so that he is even mentioned by the comic poet Menander. At any rate in one of his plays, The Groom, his words are:

One Monimus there was, a wise man, Philo,
1. But not so very famous.
2. A. He, you mean,
3. Who carried the scrip?
4. B. Nay, not one scrip, but three.
5. Yet never a word, so help me Zeus, spake he
6. To match the saying, Know thyself, nor such
7. Famed watchwords. Far beyond all these he went,
8. Your dusty mendicant, pronouncing wholly vain
9. All man’s supposings.

He has left us, besides some trifles blended with covert earnestness, two books, On Impulses and an Exhortation to Philosophy.

Onesicritus some report to have been an Aeginetan, but Demetrius of Magnesia says that he was a native of Astypalaea. He too was one of the distinguished pupils of Diogenes. His career seems to have resembled that of Xenophon; for Xenophon joined the expedition of Cyrus, Onesicritus that of Alexander; and the former wrote the Cyropaedia, or Education of Cyrus, while the latter has described how Alexander was educated: the one a laudation of Cyrus, the other of Alexander. And in their diction they are not unlike: except that Onesicritus, as is to be expected in an imitator, falls short of his model.

Amongst other pupils of Diogenes were Menander, who was nicknamed Drymus or Oakwood, a great

Crates, son of Ascondas, was a Theban. He too was amongst the Cynic’s famous pupils. Hippobotus, however, alleges that he was a pupil not of Diogenes, but of Bryson[*](Not the same as Bryson of Heracleia, whom we know from the Platonic Epistles, from Aristotle, and from Athenaeus (xi. p. 508). He may, however, have been the disciple of Pythagoras mentioned by Iamblichus (Vita Pyth. c. 23).) the Achaean. The following playful lines are attributed to him[*](Anth. Plan. v. 13.):

There is a city Pera in the midst of wine-dark vapour,
1. Fair, fruitful, passing squalid, owning nought,
2. Into which sails nor fool nor parasite
3. Nor glutton, slave of sensual appetite,
4. But thyme it bears, garlic, and figs and loaves,
5. For which things’ sake men fight not each with other,
6. Nor stand to arms for money or for fame.

There is also his widely circulated day-book, which runs as follows:

1. Set down for the chef ten minas, for the doctor
2. One drachma, for a flatterer talents five,
3. For counsel smoke, for mercenary beauty
4. A talent, for a philosopher three obols.

He was known as the Door-opener—the caller to whom all doors fly open—from his habit of entering every house and admonishing those within. Here is another specimen of his composition[*](Anth. Pal. vii. 326.):

That much I have which I have learnt and thought,
1. The noble lessons taught me by the Muses:
2. But wealth amassed is prey to vanity.

A quart of lupins and to care for no one.

Hunger stops love, or, if not hunger, Time,
1. Or, failing both these means of help,—a halter.

He flourished in the 113th Olympiad.[*](328-324 B.C.)

According to Antisthenes in his Successions, the first impulse to the Cynic philosophy was given to him when he saw Telephus in a certain tragedy carrying a little basket and altogether in a wretched plight. So he turned his property into money,—for he belonged to a distinguished family,—and having thus collected about 200 talents, distributed that sum among his fellow-citizens. And (it is added) so sturdy a philosopher did he become that he is mentioned by the comic poet Philemon. At all events the latter says:

In summer-time a thick cloak he would wear
1. To be like Crates, and in winter rags.

In the home of Crates Alexander is said to have lodged, as Philip once lived in Hipparchia’s. Often, too, certain of his kinsmen would come to visit him and try to divert him from his purpose. These he would drive from him with his stick, and his resolution was unshaken. Demetrius of Magnesia tells a story that he entrusted a banker with a sum of money on condition that, if his sons proved ordinary men he was to pay it to them, but, if they became

The marriage of intrigue and adultery, he said, belonged to tragedy, having exile or assassination as its rewards; while the weddings of those who take up with courtesans are material for comedy, for as a result of extravagance and drunkenness they bring about madness.

This man had a brother named Pasicles, who was a disciple of Euclides.

Favorinus, in the second book of his Memorabilia, tells a pleasant story of Crates. For he relates how, when making some request of the master of the gymnasium, he laid hold on his hips; and when he demurred, said, What, are not these hip-joints yours as much as your knees? It was, he used to say, impossible to find anybody wholly free from flaws; but, just as in a pomegranate, one of the seeds is always going bad. Having exasperated the musician Nicodromus, he was struck by him on the face. So he stuck a plaster on his forehead with these words on it, Nicodromus’s handiwork.

He carried on a regular campaign of invective against the courtesans, habituating himself to meet their abuse.

When Demetrius of Phalerum sent him loaves of bread and some wine, he reproached him, saying, Oh that the springs yielded bread as well as water! It is clear, then, that he was a water-drinker. When

Seized by the foot and dragged o’er heaven’s high threshold:

Diocles, however, says that it was by Menedemus of Eretria that he was thus dragged. For he being handsome and being thought to be intimate with Asclepiades the Phliasian, Crates slapped him on the side with a brutal taunt; whereupon Menedemus, full of indignation, dragged him along, and he declaimed as above.

Zeno of Citium in his Anecdotes relates that in a fit of heedlessness he sewed a sheepskin to his cloak. He was ugly to look at, and when performing his gymnastic exercises used to be laughed at. He was accustomed to say, raising his hands, Take heart, Crates, for it is for the good of your eyes and of the rest of your body.

You will see these men, who are laughing at you, tortured before long by disease, counting you happy, and reproaching themselves for their sluggishness. He used to say that we should study philosophy to the point of seeing in generals nothing but donkey-drivers. Those who live with flatterers he declared to be as defenceless as calves in the midst of wolves; for neither these nor those have any to protect them, but only such as plot against them. Perceiving that he was

When Alexander inquired whether he would like his native city to be rebuilt, his answer was, Why should it be? Perhaps another Alexander will destroy it again. Ignominy and Poverty he declared to be his country, which Fortune could never take captive. He was, he said, a fellow-citizen of Diogenes, who defied all the plots of envy. Menander alludes to him in the Twin Sisters in the following lines:

Wearing a cloak you’ll go about with me,
1. As once with Cynic Crates went his wife:
2. His daughter too, as he himself declared,
3. He gave in marriage for a month on trial.

We come now to his pupils.

Metrocles of Maroneia was the brother of Hipparchia. He had been formerly a pupil of Theophrastus the Peripatetic, and had been so far corrupted by weakness that, when he made a breach of good manners in the course of rehearsing a speech, it drove him to despair, and he shut himself up at home, intending to starve himself to death. On learning this Crates came to visit him as he had been asked to do, and after advisedly making a meal of lupins, he tried to persuade him by argument as well that he had committed no crime, for a prodigy would have happened if he had not taken the natural means of relieving

Hecato in the first book of his Anecdotes tells us he burned his compositions with the words[*](Nauck, T.G.F.2, Adesp. 285.):

Phantoms are these of dreams o’ the world below.

Come hither, Hephaestus, Thetis now needeth thee.

He died of old age, having choked himself.

His disciples were Theombrotus and Cleomenes: Theombrotus had for his pupil Demetrius of Alexandria, while Cleomenes instructed Timarchus of Alexandria and Echecles of Ephesus. Not but what Echecles also heard Theombrotus, whose lectures were attended by Menedemus, of whom we shall speak presently. Menippus of Sinope also became renowned amongst them.