Vitae philosophorum
Diogenes Laertius
Diogenes Laertius. Hicks, R. D., editor. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1925.
On being discovered once talking to himself, he answered, when asked the reason, that he was training to be good. In debate he was looked down upon by no one, for he could both discourse at length and also sustain a cross-examination, so that even Nausiphanes when a young man was captivated by him: at all events he used to say that we should follow Pyrrho in disposition but himself in doctrine; and he would often remark that Epicurus, greatly admiring Pyrrho’s way of life, regularly asked him for information about Pyrrho; and that he was so respected by his native city that they made him high priest, and on his account they voted that all philosophers should be exempt from taxation.
Moreover, there were many who emulated his
And again in the Conceits[*](Fr. 67 D.):O Pyrrho, O aged Pyrrho, whence and how
- Found’st thou escape from servitude to sophists,
- Their dreams and vanities; how didst thou loose
- The bonds of trickery and specious craft?
- Nor reck’st thou to inquire such things as these,
- What breezes circle Hellas, to what end,
- And from what quarter each may chance to blow.
This, Pyrrho, this my heart is fain to know,
- Whence peace of mind to thee doth freely flow,
- Why among men thou like a god dost show?
Athens honoured him with her citizenship, says Diocles, for having slain the Thracian Cotys.
He lived in fraternal piety with his sister, a midwife, so says Eratosthenes in his essay On Wealth and Poverty, now and then even taking things for sale to market, poultry perchance or pigs, and he would dust the things in the house, quite indifferent as to what he did. They say he showed his indifference by washing a porker. Once he got enraged in his sister’s cause (her name was Philista), and he told the man who blamed him that it was not over a weak woman that one should display indifference. When a cur rushed at him and terrified him, he answered his critic that it was not easy entirely to strip oneself of human weakness; but one should strive with all one’s might against facts, by deeds if possible, and if not, in word.
They say that, when septic salves and surgical and caustic remedies were applied to a wound he had sustained, he did not so much as frown. Timon
As leaves on trees, such is the life of man.[*](Il. vi. 146.)He also admired Homer because he likened men to wasps, flies, and birds, and would quote these verses as well:
and all the passages which dwell on the unstable purpose, vain pursuits, and childish folly of man.[*](Here, it would seem, the materials which can be traced to Antigonus of Carystus come to an end. The source of the long passage §§ 69-108, with which must go the Sceptical Succession, §§ 115-116, is not obvious. It may be supposed that D. L. with his seeming partiality for the school (cf. § 109) has here taken pains to collect as much new material as possible. It is hardly likely that, without personal bias, a biographer would draw upon the commentary of Apollonides on the Silli of Timon which he dedicated to Tiberius Caesar, and the like. It has indeed been said that D. L. had access to a sceptical monograph which he either had or wished to have copied for himself. If so, it must have been by a contemporary, or at any rate a writer not earlier than Antiochus of Laodicea (§ 106) and Sextus Empiricus (§ 87).)Ay, friend, die thou; why thus thy fate deplore?
- Patroclus too, thy better, is no more,[*](Il. xxi. 106 f.)
Posidonius, too, relates of him a story of this sort. When his fellow-passengers on board a ship were all unnerved by a storm, he kept calm and confident, pointing to a little pig in the ship that went on eating, and telling them that such was the unperturbed state in which the wise man should keep himself. Numenius alone attributes to him positive tenets. He had pupils of repute, in particular one Eurylochus, who fell short of his professions; for they say that he was once so angry that he seized the spit with the meat on it and chased his cook right into the market-place.
Once in Elis he was so hard pressed by his pupils’ questions that he stripped
Philo, again, who had a habit of very often talking to himself, is also referred to in the lines[*](Cf.Od. xxi. 364.):
Yea, him that is far away from men, at leisure to himself,
- Philo, who recks not of opinion or of wrangling.
Besides these, Pyrrho’s pupils included Hecataeus of Abdera, Timon of Phlius, author of the Silli, of whom more anon, and also Nausiphanes of Teos, said by some to have been a teacher of Epicurus. All these were called Pyrrhoneans after the name of their master, but Aporetics, Sceptics, Ephectics, and even Zetetics, from their principles, if we may call them such—
Zetetics or seekers because they were ever seeking truth, Sceptics or inquirers because they were always looking for a solution and never finding one, Ephectics or doubters because of the state of mind which followed their inquiry, I mean, suspense of judgement, and finally Aporetics or those in perplexity, for not only they but even the dogmatic philosophers themselves in their turn were often perplexed. Pyrrhoneans, of course, they were called from Pyrrho. Theodosius in his Sceptic Chapters denies that Scepticism should be called Pyrrhonism; for if the movement of the mind in either direction is unattainable by us, we shall never know for certain what Pyrrho really intended, and without knowing that, we cannot be called Pyrrhoneans. Besides this (he says), there is the fact that Pyrrho was not the founder of Scepticism; nor had he any positive tenet; but a Pyrrhonean is one who in manners and life resembles Pyrrho.