Vitae philosophorum

Diogenes Laertius

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

He is said to have had many admirers when a boy; and as Zeno wished to drive them away, he compelled Herillus to have his head shaved, which disgusted them.

His books are the following:

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Of Training.

Of the Passions.

Concerning Opinion or Belief.

The Legislator.

The Obstetrician.

The Challenger.

The Teacher.

The Reviser.

The Controller.

Hermes.

Medea.

Dialogues.

Ethical Themes.

Dionysius, the Renegade,[*](Cf. § 37.) declared that pleasure was the end of action; this under the trying circumstance of an attack of ophthalmia. For so violent was his suffering that he could not bring himself to call pain a thing indifferent.

He was the son of Theophantus and a native of Heraclea. At first, as Diocles relates, he was a pupil of his fellow-townsman, Heraclides, next of Alexinus and Menedemus, and lastly of Zeno.

At the outset of his career he was fond of literature and tried his hand at all kinds of poetry; afterwards he took Aratus[*](i.e. the author of the astronomical poem Φαινόμενα, not the statesman of that name, the protagonist of the Achaean League, whose Life we have in Plutarch.) for his model, whom he strove to imitate. When he fell away from Zeno, he went over to the Cyrenaics, and used to frequent houses of ill fame and indulge in all other excesses without disguise. After living till he was nearly eighty years of age, he committed suicide by starving himself.

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The following works are attributed to him:

Of Apathy, two books

On Training, two books.

Of Pleasure, four books.

Of Wealth, Popularity and Revenge

How to live amongst Men.

Of Prosperity.

Of Ancient Kings.

Of those who are Praised.

Of the Customs of Barbarians.

These three, then, are the heterodox Stoics. The legitimate successor to Zeno, however, was Cleanthes: of whom we have now to speak.

Cleanthes, son of Phanias, was a native of Assos. This man, says Antisthenes in his Successions of Philosophers, was at first a pugilist. He arrived in Athens, as some people say, with four drachmas only, and meeting with Zeno he studied philosophy right nobly and adhered to the same doctrines throughout. He was renowned for his industry, being indeed driven by extreme poverty to work for a living. Thus, while by night he used to draw water in gardens, by day he exercised himself in arguments: hence the nickname Phreantles or Welllifter was given him. He is said to have been brought into court to answer the inquiry how so sturdy a fellow as he made his living,

and then to have been acquitted on producing as his witnesses the gardener in whose garden he drew water and the woman who sold the meal which he used to crush. The Areopagites were satisfied and voted him a

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donation of ten minas, which Zeno forbade him to accept. We are also told that Antigonus made him a present of three thousand drachmas. Once, as he was conducting some youths to a public spectacle, the wind blew his cloak aside and disclosed the fact that he wore no shirt, whereupon he was applauded by the Athenians, as is stated by Demetrius of Magnesia in his work on Men of the Same Name. This then also increased the admiration felt for him. There is another story that Antigonus when attending his lectures inquired of him why he drew water and received the reply, Is drawing water all I do? What? Do I not dig? What? Do I not water the garden? or undertake any other labour for the love of philosophy? For Zeno used to discipline him to this and bid him return him an obol from his wages.[*](A slave allowed by his master to hire himself out to another master was bound by Attic law to refund to his own master a part (ἀποφορά) of the wages he received. Zeno claimed a part of his pupil’s earnings.)