The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
The following were poets:—The first a poet of the Old Comedy. The second
an Epic poet, who has left nothing behind him that has come down to us,
except these lines which he wrote against some envious people:—
They disregard a man while still alive,
Whom, when he’s dead, they honour; cities proud,
And powerful nations, have with contest fierce,
Fought o’er a tomb and unsubstantial shade
The third was a native of Tarsus; a writer of Satires. The fourth was
a composer of Iambics, a bitter man. The fifth was a statuary, who
is mentioned by Polemo. The sixth was a native of Erythræ, a man who
wrote on various subjects, and who composed volumes of histories and
relations.[52]
LIFE OF HERACLIDES.
I. Heraclides was the son of Euthyphron, and was born at Heraclea, in
Pontus; he was also a wealthy man.
II. After he came to Athens, he was at first a disciple of Speusippus,
but he also attended the schools of the Pythagorean philosophers, and
he adopted the principles of Plato; last of all he became a pupil of
Aristotle, as we are told by Sotion in his book entitled the Successions.
III. He used to wear delicate garments, and was a man of great size, so
that he was nicknamed by the Athenians Pompicus[53] instead of Ponticus.
But he was of quiet manners and noble aspect.
IV. There are several books extant by him, which are exceedingly good
and admirable. They are in the form of dialogue; some being Ethical
dialogues; three on the subject of Justice; one on Temperance; five on
Piety; one on Manly Courage; one, and a second which is distinct from it,
on Virtue; one on Happiness; one on Supremacy; one on Laws and questions
connected with them; one on Names; one called Covenants; one called The
Unwilling Lover; and the Clinias.
Of the physical dialogues, one is on the Mind; one on the Soul; one on
the Soul, and Nature and Appearances; one addressed to Democritus; one
on the Heavenly Bodies; one on the State of Things in the Shades below;
two on Lives; one on the Causes of Diseases; one on the Good; one on the
doctrines of Zeno; one on the Doctrines of Metron.
Of his grammatical dialogues, there are two on the Age of Homer and
Hesiod; two on Archilochus and Homer.
There are some on Music too; three on Euripides and Sophocles, and two
on Music. There are also two volumes, Solutions of Questions concerning
Homer; one on Speculations; one, the Three Tragedians; one volume of
Characters; one dialogue on Poetry and the Poets; one on Conjecture; one
on Foresight; four, being Explanations of Heraclitus; one, Explanations
with reference to Democritus; two books of Solutions of Disputed
Points; one, the Axiom; one on Species; one book of Solutions; one of
Suppositions; one addressed to Dionysius.
Of rhetorical works, there is the dialogue on the being an Orator, or the
Protagoras.
Of historical dialogues, there are some on the Pythagoreans, and on
Inventions. Of these, some he has drawn up after the manner of Comic
writers; as, for instance, the one about Pleasure, and that about
Temperance. And some in the style of the Tragedians, as, for instance,
the dialogues on the State of Things in the Shades below; and one on
Piety, and that on Supremacy. And his style is a conversational and
moderate one, suited to the characters of philosophers and men occupied
in the military or political affairs conversing together. Some of his
works also are on Geometry, and on Dialectics; and in all of them he
displays a very varied and elevated style; and he has great powers of
persuasion.
V. He appears to have delivered his country when it was under the yoke of
tyrants, by slaying the monarch, as Demetrius of Magnesia tells us, in
his treatise on People of the Same Name.
VI. And he gives the following account of him. That he brought up a
young serpent, and kept it till it grew large; and that when he was at
the point of death, he desired one of his faithful friends to hide his
body, and to place the serpent in his bed, that he might appear to have
migrated to the Gods. And all this was done; and while the citizens
were all attending his funeral and extolling his character, the serpent
hearing the noise, crept out of his clothes and threw the multitude into
confusion. And afterwards everything was revealed, and Heraclides was
seen, not as he hoped to have been, but as he really was. And we have
written an epigram on him which runs thus:—
You wish’d, O Heraclides, when you died,
To leave a strange belief among mankind,
That you, when dead, a serpent had become.
But all your calculations were deceived,
For this your serpent was indeed a beast,
And you were thus discovered and pronounced another.
And Hippobotus gives the same account.
But Hermippus says that once, when a famine oppressed the land, the
people of Heraclea consulted the Pythian oracle for the way to get rid
of it; and that Heraclides corrupted the ambassadors who were sent to
consult the oracle, and also the priestess, with bribes; and that she
answered that they would obtain a deliverance from their distresses,
if Heraclides, the son of Euthyphron, was presented by them with a
golden crown, and if when he was dead they paid him honours as a hero.
Accordingly, this answer was brought back from the oracle to Heraclea,
but they who brought it got no advantage from it; for as soon as
Heraclides had been crowned in the theatre, he was seized with apoplexy,
and the ambassadors who had been sent to consult the oracle were stoned,
and so put to death; and at the very same moment the Pythian priestess
was going down to the inner shrine, and while standing there was bitten
by a serpent, and died immediately. This then is the account given of his
death.
VII. And Aristoxenus the musician says, that he composed tragedies,
and inscribed them with the name of Thespis. And Chamæleon says, that
he stole essays from him on the subject of Homer and Hesiod, and
published them as his own. And Autodorus the Epicurean reproaches him,
and contradicts all the arguments which he advanced in his treatise
on Justice. Moreover, Dionysius, called the Deserter, or as some say
Spintharus, wrote a tragedy called Parthenopæus, and forged the name
of Sophocles to it. And Heraclides was so much deceived that he took
some passages out of one of his works, and cited them as the words of
Sophocles; and Dionysius, when he perceived it, gave him notice of the
real truth; and as he would not believe it, and denied it, he sent him
word to examine the first letters of the first verses of the book, and
they formed the name of Pancalus, who was a friend of Dionysius. And as
Heraclides still refused to believe it, and said that it was possible
that such a thing might happen by chance, Dionysius sent him back word
once more, “You will find this passage too:—
“An aged monkey is not easily caught;
He’s caught indeed, but only after a time.”
And he added, “Heraclides knows nothing of letters, and has no shame.”
VIII. And there were fourteen persons of the name of Heraclides. First,
this man of whom we are speaking; the second was a fellow citizen of his,
who composed songs for Pyrrhic dances, and other trifles; the third was
a native of Cumæ, who wrote a history of the Persian war in five books;
the fourth was also a citizen of Cumæ, who was an orator, and wrote a
treatise on his art; the fifth was a native of Calatia or Alexandria,
who wrote a Succession in six books, and a treatise on Ships, from which
he was called Lembos; the sixth was an Alexandrian, who wrote an account
of the peculiar habits of the Persians; the seventh was a dialectician
of Bargyleia, who wrote against Epicurus; the eighth was a physician, a
pupil of Hicesius; the ninth was a physician of Tarentum, a man of great
skill; the tenth was a poet, who wrote Precepts; the eleventh was a
sculptor of Phocæa; the twelfth was an Epigrammatic poet of considerable
beauty; the thirteenth was a Magnesian, who wrote a history of the reign
of Mithridates; the fourteenth was an astronomer, who wrote a treatise on
Astronomy.
BOOK VI.
LIFE OF ANTISTHENES.
I. Antisthenes was an Athenian, the son of Antisthenes. And he was
said not to be a legitimate Athenian; in reference to which he said to
some one who was reproaching him with the circumstance, “The mother of
the Gods too is a Phrygian;” for he was thought to have had a Thracian
mother. On which account, as he had borne himself bravely in the battle
of Tanagra, he gave occasion to Socrates to say that the son of two
Athenians could not have been so brave. And he himself, when disparaging
the Athenians who gave themselves great airs as having been born out of
the earth itself, said that they were not more noble as far as that went
than snails and locusts.
II. Originally he was a pupil of Gorgias the rhetorician; owing to
which circumstance he employs the rhetorical style of language in
his Dialogues, especially in his Truth and in his Exhortations. And
Hermippus says, that he had originally intended in his address at the
assembly, on account of the Isthmian games, to attack and also to praise
the Athenians, and Thebans, and Lacedæmonians; but that he afterwards
abandoned the design, when he saw that there were a great many spectators
come from those cities. Afterwards, he attached himself to Socrates, and
made such progress in philosophy while with him, that he advised all his
own pupils to become his fellow pupils in the school of Socrates. And
as he lived in the Piræus, he went up forty furlongs to the city every
day, in order to hear Socrates, from whom he learnt the art of enduring,
and of being indifferent to external circumstances, and so became the
original founder of the Cynic school.
III. And he used to argue that labour was a good thing, by adducing the
examples of the great Hercules, and of Cyrus, one of which he derived
from the Greeks and the other from the barbarians.
IV. He was also the first person who ever gave a definition of discourse,
saying, “Discourse is that which shows what anything is or was.” And
he used continually to say, “I would rather go mad than feel pleasure.”
And, “One ought to attach one’s self to such women as will thank one for
it.” He said once to a youth from Pontus, who was on the point of coming
to him to be his pupil, and was asking him what things he wanted, “You
want a new book, and a new pen, and a new tablet;”—meaning a new mind.
And to a person who asked him from what country he had better marry a
wife, he said, “If you marry a handsome woman, she will be common;[54]
if an ugly woman, she will be a punishment to you.” He was told once
that Plato spoke ill of him, and he replied, “It is a royal privilege
to do well, and to be evil spoken of.” When he was being initiated
into the mysteries of Orpheus, and the priest said that those who were
initiated enjoyed many good things in the shades below, “Why, then,” said
he “do not you die?” Being once reproached as not being the son of two
free citizens, he said, “And I am not the son of two people skilled in
wrestling; nevertheless, I am a skilful wrestler.” On one occasion he was
asked why he had but few disciples, and said, “Because I drove them away
with a silver rod.” When he was asked why he reproved his pupils with
bitter language, he said, “Physicians too use severe remedies for their
patients.” Once he saw an adulterer running away, and said, “O unhappy
man! how much danger could you have avoided for one obol!” He used to
say, as Hecaton tells us in his Apophthegms, “That it was better to fall
among crows,[55] than among flatterers; for that they only devour the
dead, but the others devour the living.” When he was asked what was the
most happy event that could take place in human life, he said, “To die