The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
that the day before no one had thanked him for coming. He used to go bare
foot through the snow, and to do a number of other things which have been
already mentioned. Once he attempted to eat raw meat, but he could not
digest it. On one occasion he found Demosthenes, the orator, dining in
an inn; and as he was slipping away, he said to him, “You will now be
ever so much more in an inn.”[57] Once, when some strangers wished to
see Demosthenes, he stretched out his middle finger, and said, “This is
the great demagogue of the Athenian people.” When some one had dropped
a loaf, and was ashamed to pick it up again, he, wishing to give him a
lesson, tied a cord round the neck of a bottle and dragged it all through
the Ceramicus. He used to say, that he imitated the teachers of choruses,
for that they spoke too loud, in order that the rest might catch the
proper tone. Another of his sayings, was that most men were within a
finger’s breadth of being mad. If, then, any one were to walk along,
stretching out his middle finger, he will seem to be mad; but if he puts
out his fore finger, he will not be thought so. Another of his sayings
was, that things of great value were often sold for nothing, and _vice
versâ_. Accordingly, that a statue would fetch three thousand drachmas,
and a bushel of meal only two obols; and when Xeniades had bought him, he
said to him, “Come, do what you are ordered to.” And when he said—
“The streams of sacred rivers now
Run backwards to their source!”
“Suppose,” rejoined Diogenes, “you had been sick, and had bought a
physician, could you refuse to be guided by him, and tell him—
“The streams of sacred rivers now
Run backwards to their source?”
Once a man came to him, and wished to study philosophy as his pupil; and
he gave him a saperda[58] and made him follow him. And as he from shame
threw it away and departed, he soon afterwards met him and, laughing,
said to him, “A saperda has dissolved your friendship for me.” But
Diocles tells this story in the following manner; that when some one said
to him, “Give me a commission, Diogenes,” he carried him off, and gave
him a halfpenny worth of cheese to carry. And as he refused to carry it,
“See,” said Diogenes, “a halfpenny worth of cheese has broken off our
friendship.”
On one occasion he saw a child drinking out of its hands, and so he threw
away the cup which belonged to his wallet, saying, “That child has beaten
me in simplicity.” He also threw away his spoon, after seeing a boy, when
he had broken his vessel, take up his lentils with a crust of bread. And
he used to argue thus,—“Everything belongs to the gods; and wise men
are the friends of the gods. All things are in common among friends;
therefore everything belongs to wise men.” Once he saw a woman falling
down before the Gods in an unbecoming attitude; he, wishing to cure her
of her superstition, as Zoilus of Perga tells us, came up to her, and
said, “Are you not afraid, O woman, to be in such an indecent attitude,
when some God may be behind you, for every place is full of him?” He
consecrated a man to Æsculapius, who was to run up and beat all these who
prostrated themselves with their faces to the ground; and he was in the
habit of saying that the tragic curse had come upon him, for that he was—
Houseless and citiless, a piteous exile
From his dear native land; a wandering beggar,
Scraping a pittance poor from day to day.
And another of his sayings was that he opposed confidence to fortune,
nature to law, and reason to suffering. Once, while he was sitting in
the sun in the Craneum, Alexander was standing by, and said to him, “Ask
any favour you choose of me.” And he replied, “Cease to shade me from
the sun.” On one occasion a man was reading some long passages, and when
he came to the end of the book and showed that there was nothing more
written, “Be of good cheer, my friends,” exclaimed Diogenes, “I see
land.” A man once proved to him syllogistically that he had horns, so
he put his hand to his forehead and said, “I do not see them.” And in a
similar manner he replied to one who had been asserting that there was
no such thing as motion, by getting up and walking away. When a man was
talking about the heavenly bodies and meteors, “Pray how many days,” said
he to him, “is it since you came down from heaven?”
A profligate eunuch had written on his house, “Let no evil thing enter
in.” “Where,” said Diogenes, “is the master of the house going?” After
having anointed his feet with perfume, he said that the ointment from his
head mounted up to heaven, and that from his feet up to his nose. When
the Athenians entreated him to be initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries,
and said that in the shades below the initiated had the best seats; “It
will,” he replied, “be an absurd thing if Agesilaus and Epaminondas are
to live in the mud, and some miserable wretches, who have been initiated,
are to be in the islands of the blest.” Some mice crept up to his table,
and he said, “See, even Diogenes maintains his favourites.” Once, when he
was leaving the bath, and a man asked him whether many men were bathing,
he said, “No;” but when a number of people came out, he confessed
that there were a great many. When Plato called him a dog, he said,
“Undoubtedly, for I have come back to those who sold me.”
Plato defined man thus: “Man is a two-footed, featherless animal,” and
was much praised for the definition; so Diogenes plucked a cock and
brought it into his school, and said, “This is Plato’s man.” On which
account this addition was made to the definition, “With broad flat
nails.” A man once asked him what was the proper time for supper, and he
made answer, “If you are a rich man, whenever you please; and if you are
a poor man, whenever you can.” When he was at Megara he saw some sheep
carefully covered over with skins, and the children running about naked;
and so he said, “It is better at Megara to be a man’s ram, than his son.”
A man once struck him with a beam, and then said, “Take care.” “What,”
said he, “are you going to strike me again?” He used to say that the
demagogues were the servants of the people; and garlands the blossoms of
glory. Having lighted a candle in the day time, he said, “I am looking
for a man.” On one occasion he stood under a fountain, and as the
bystanders were pitying him, Plato, who was present, said to them, “If
you wish really to show your pity for him, come away;” intimating that he
was only acting thus out of a desire for notoriety. Once, when a man had
struck him with his fist, he said, “O Hercules, what a strange thing that
I should be walking about with a helmet on without knowing it!”
When Midias struck him with his fist and said, “There are three thousand
drachmas for you;” the next day Diogenes took the cestus of a boxer
and beat him soundly, and said, “There are three thousand drachmas for
you.”[59] When Lysias, the drug-seller, asked him whether he thought
that there were any Gods: “How,” said he, “can I help thinking so, when
I consider you to be hated by them?” but some attribute this reply to
Theodorus. Once he saw a man purifying himself by washing, and said to
him, “Oh, wretched man, do not you know that as you cannot wash away
blunders in grammar by purification, so, too, you can no more efface the
errors of a life in that same manner?”
He used to say that men were wrong for complaining of fortune; for that
they ask of the Gods what appear to be good things, not what are really
so. And to those who were alarmed at dreams he said, that they did not
regard what they do while they are awake, but make a great fuss about
what they fancy they see while they are asleep. Once, at the Olympic
games, when the herald proclaimed, “Dioxippus is the conqueror of men;”
he said, “He is the conqueror of slaves, I am the conqueror of men.”
He was greatly beloved by the Athenians; accordingly, when a youth had
broken his cask they beat him, and gave Diogenes another. And Dionysius,
the Stoic, says that after the battle of Chæronea he was taken prisoner
and brought to Philip; and being asked who he was, replied, “A spy, to
spy upon your insatiability.” And Philip marvelled at him and let him
go. Once, when Alexander had sent a letter to Athens to Antipater, by
the hands of a man named Athlias, he, being present, said, “Athlias from
Athlius, by means of Athlias to Athlius.”[60] When Perdiccas threatened
that he would put him to death if he did not come to him, he replied,
“That is nothing strange, for a scorpion or a tarantula could do as
much: you had better threaten me that, if I kept away, you should be
very happy.” He used constantly to repeat with emphasis that an easy
life had been given to man by the Gods, but that it had been overlaid
by their seeking for honey, cheese-cakes, and unguents, and things of
that sort. On which account he said to a man, who had his shoes put on
by his servant, “You are not thoroughly happy, unless he also wipes
your nose for you; and he will do this, if you are crippled in your
hands.” On one occasion, when he had seen the hieromnemones[61] leading
off one of the stewards who had stolen a goblet, he said, “The great
thieves are carrying off the little thief.” At another time, seeing a
young man throwing stones at a cross, he said, “Well done, you will be
sure to reach the mark.” Once, too, some boys got round him and said,
“We are taking care that you do not bite us;” but he said, “Be of good
cheer, my boys, a dog does not eat beef.” He saw a man giving himself
airs because he was clad in a lion’s skin, and said to him, “Do not go
on disgracing the garb of nature.” When people were speaking of the
happiness of Callisthenes, and saying what splendid treatment he received
from Alexander, he replied, “The man then is wretched, for he is forced
to breakfast and dine whenever Alexander chooses.” When he was in want of
money, he said that be reclaimed it from his friends and did not beg for
it.
On one occasion he was working with his hands in the market-place, and
said, “I wish I could rub my stomach in the same way, and so avoid
hunger.” When he saw a young man going with some satraps to supper, he
dragged him away and led him off to his relations, and bade them take
care of him. He was once addressed by a youth beautifully adorned, who
asked him some question; and he refused to give him any answer, till
he satisfied him whether he was a man or a woman. And on one occasion,
when a youth was playing the cottabus in the bath, he said to him, “The
better you do it, the worse you do it.” Once at a banquet, some of the
guests threw him bones, as if he had been a dog; so he, as he went away,
put up his leg against them as if he had been a dog in reality. He used
to call the orators, and all those who speak for fame τρισάνθρωποι
(thrice men), instead of τρισάθλιοι (thrice miserable). He said that a
rich but ignorant man, was like a sheep with a golden fleece. When he
saw a notice on the house of a profligate man, “To be sold.” “I knew,”
said he, “that you who are so incessantly drunk, would soon vomit up
your owner.” To a young man, who was complaining of the number of people
who sought his acquaintance, he said, “Do not make such a parade of your
vanity.”
Having been in a very dirty bath, he said, “I wonder where the people,
who bathe here, clean themselves.” When all the company was blaming an
indifferent harp-player, he alone praised him, and being asked why he
did so, he said, “Because, though he is such as he is, he plays the harp
and does not steal.” He saluted a harp player who was always left alone
by his hearers, with, “Good morning, cock;” and when the man asked him,
“Why so?” he said, “Because you, when you sing, make every one get up.”