The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
and committed to him the entire management of his house. And he behaved
himself in every affair in such a manner, that Xeniades, when looking
over his property, said, “A good genius has come into my house.” And
Cleomenes, in his book which is called the Schoolmaster, says, that he
wished to ransom all his relations, but that Diogenes told him that they
were all fools; for that lions did not become the slaves of those who
kept them, but, on the contrary, those who maintained lions were their
slaves. For that it was the part of a slave to fear, but that wild beasts
were formidable to men.
X. And the man had the gift of persuasion in a wonderful degree; so
that he could easily overcome any one by his arguments. Accordingly, it
is said that an Æginetan of the name of Onesicritus, having two sons,
sent to Athens one of them, whose name was Androsthenes, and that he,
after having heard Diogenes lecture, remained there; and that after
that, he sent the elder, Philiscus, who has been already mentioned,
and that Philiscus was charmed in the same manner. And last of all, he
came himself, and then he too remained, no less than his son, studying
philosophy at the feet of Diogenes. So great a charm was there in the
discourses of Diogenes. Another pupil of his was Phocion, who was
surnamed the Good; and Stilpon, the Megarian, and a great many other men
of eminence as statesmen.
XI. He is said to have died when he was nearly ninety years of age, but
there are different accounts given of his death. For some say that he ate
an ox’s foot raw, and was in consequence seized with a bilious attack,
of which he died; others, of whom Cercidas, a Megalopolitan or Cretan,
is one, say that he died of holding his breath for several days; and
Cercidas speaks thus of him in his Meliambics:—
He, that Sinopian who bore the stick,
Wore his cloak doubled, and in th’ open air
Dined without washing, would not bear with life
A moment longer: but he shut his teeth,
And held his breath. He truly was the son
Of Jove, and a most heavenly-minded dog,
The wise Diogenes.
Others say that he, while intending to distribute a polypus to his dogs,
was bitten by them through the tendon of his foot, and so died. But
his own greatest friends, as Antisthenes tells us in his Successions,
rather sanction the story of his having died from holding his breath.
For he used to live in the Craneum, which was a Gymnasium at the gates
of Corinth. And his friends came according to their custom, and found
him with his head covered; and as they did not suppose that he was
asleep, for he was not a man much subject to the influence of night or
sleep, they drew away his cloak from his face, and found him no longer
breathing; and they thought that he had done this on purpose, wishing to
escape the remaining portion of his life.
On this there was a quarrel, as they say, between his friends, as to who
should bury him, and they even came to blows; but when the elders and
chief men of the city came there, they say that he was buried by them at
the gate which leads to the Isthmus. And they placed over him a pillar,
and on that a dog in Parian marble. And at a later period his fellow
citizens honoured him with brazen statues, and put this inscription on
them:—
E’en brass by lapse of time doth old become,
But there is no such time as shall efface
Your lasting glory, wise Diogenes;
Since you alone did teach to men the art
Of a contented life: the surest path
To glory and a lasting happiness.
We ourselves have also written an epigram on him in the proceleusmatic
metre.
_A._ Tell me, Diogenes, tell me true, I pray,
How did you die; what fate to Pluto bore you?
_B._ The savage bite of an envious dog did kill me.
Some, however, say that when he was dying, he ordered his friends to
throw his corpse away without burying it, so that every beast might tear
it, or else to throw it into a ditch, and sprinkle a little dust over it.
And others say that his injunctions were, that he should be thrown into
the Ilissus; that so he might be useful to his brethren. But Demetrius,
in his treatise on Men of the Same Name, says that Diogenes died in
Corinth the same day that Alexander died in Babylon. And he was already
an old man, as early as the hundred and thirteenth olympiad.
XII. The following books are attributed to him. The dialogues entitled
the Cephalion; the Icthyas; the Jackdaw; the Leopard; the People of the
Athenians; the Republic; one called Moral Art; one on Wealth; one on
Love; the Theodorus; the Hypsias; the Aristarchus; one on Death; a volume
of Letters; seven Tragedies, the Helen, the Thyestes, the Hercules, the
Achilles, the Medea, the Chrysippus, and the Œdipus.
But Sosicrates, in the first book of his Successions, and Satyrus, in
the fourth book of his Lives, both assert that none of all these are the
genuine composition of Diogenes. And Satyrus affirms that the tragedies
are the work of Philiscus, the Æginetan, a friend of Diogenes. But
Sotion, in his seventh book, says that these are the only genuine works
of Diogenes: a dialogue on Virtue; another on the Good; another on Love;
the Beggar; the Tolmæus; the Leopard; the Cassander; the Cephalion;
and that the Aristarchus, the Sisyphus, the Ganymede, a volume of
Apophthegms, and another of Letters, are all the work of Philiscus.
XIII. There were five persons of the name of Diogenes. The first a native
of Apollonia, a natural philosopher; and the beginning of his treatise
on Natural Philosophy is as follows: “It appears to me to be well for
every one who commences any kind of philosophical treatise, to lay down
some undeniable principle to start with.” The second was a Sicyonian, who
wrote an account of Peloponnesus. The third was the man of whom we have
been speaking. The fourth was a Stoic, a native of Seleucia, but usually
called a Babylonian, from the proximity of Seleucia to Babylon. The
fifth was a native of Tarsus, who wrote on the subject of some questions
concerning poetry which he endeavours to solve.
XIV. Athenodorus, in the eighth book of his Conversations, says, that the
philosopher always had a shining appearance, from his habit of anointing
himself.
LIFE OF MONIMUS.
I. Monimus was a Syracusan, and a pupil of Diogenes, but also a slave
of some Corinthian money-changer, as Sosicrates tells us. Xeniades, who
bought Diogenes, used often to come to him, extolling the excellency of
Diogenes both in actions and words, till he excited a great affection
for the man in the mind of Monimus. For he immediately feigned madness,
and threw about all the money and all the coins that were on the table,
until his master discarded him, and then he straightway went to Diogenes
and became his pupil. He also followed Crates the Cynic a good deal, and
devoted himself to the same studies as he did; and the sight of this
conduct of his made his master all the more think him mad.
II. And he was a very eminent man, so that even Menander, the comic
poet, speaks of him; accordingly, in one of his plays, namely in the
Hippocomus, he mentions him thus:—
There is a man, O Philo, named Monimus,
A wise man, though but little known, and one
Who bears a wallet at his back, and is not
Content with one but three. He never spoke
A single sentence, by great Jove I swear,
Like this one, “Know thyself,” or any other
Of the oft-quoted proverbs: all such sayings
He scorned, as he did beg his way through dirt;
Teaching that all opinion is but vanity.
But he was a man of such gravity that he despised glory, and sought only
for truth.
III. He wrote some jests mingled with serious treatises, and two essays
on the Appetites, and an Exhortation.
LIFE OF ONESICRITUS.
I. Onesicritus is called by some authors an Æginetan, but Demetrius the
Magnesian affirms that he was a native of Astypalæa. He also was one of
the most eminent of the disciples of Diogenes.
II. And he appears in some points to resemble Xenophon. For Xenophon
joined in the expedition of Cyrus, and Onesicritus in that of Alexander;
and Xenophon wrote the Cyropædia, and Onesicritus wrote an account of the
education of Alexander. Xenophon, too, wrote a Panegyric on Cyrus, and
Onesicritus one on Alexander. They were also both similar to one another
in style, except that a copyist is naturally inferior to the original.
III. Menander, too, who was surnamed Drymus, was a pupil of Diogenes,
and a great admirer of Homer: and so was Hegesæus of Sinope, who was
nicknamed Clœus, and Philiscus the Æginetan, as we have said before.
LIFE OF CRATES.
I. Crates was a Theban by birth, and the son of Ascondus. He also was one
of the eminent disciples of the Cynic. But Hippobotus asserts that he was
not a pupil of Diogenes, but of Bryson the Achæan.
II. There are the following sportive lines of his quoted:—
The waves surround vain Peres’ fruitful soil,
And fertile acres crown the sea-born isle;
Land which no parasite e’er dares invade,
Or lewd seducer of a hapless maid;
It bears figs, bread, thyme, garlic’s savoury charms,
Gifts which ne’er tempt men to detested arms,
They’d rather fight for gold than glory’s dreams.
There is also an account-book of his much spoken of, which is drawn up in
such terms as these:—
Put down the cook for minas half a score,
Put down the doctor for a drachma more:
Five talents to the flatterer; some smoke
To the adviser, an obol and a cloak
For the philosopher; for the willing nymph,
A talent.
He was also nicknamed Door-opener, because he used to enter every house
and give the inmates advice. These lines, too, are his:—
All this I learnt and pondered in my mind,
Drawing deep wisdom from the Muses kind,
But all the rest is vanity.
There is a line, too, which tells us that he gained from philosophy:—
A peck of lupins, and to care for nobody.
This, too, is attributed to him:—
Hunger checks love; and should it not, time does.
If both should fail you, then a halter choose.
III. He flourished about the hundred and thirteenth olympiad.
IV. Antisthenes, in his Successions, says that he, having once, in a
certain tragedy, seen Telephus holding a date basket, and in a miserable
plight in other respects, betook himself to the Cynic philosophy; and
having turned his patrimony into money (for he was of illustrious
extraction), he collected three hundred talents by that means, and
divided them among the citizens. And after that he devoted himself
to philosophy with such eagerness, that even Philemon the comic poet
mentions him. Accordingly he says:—
And in the summer he’d a shaggy gown,
To inure himself to hardship: in the winter
He wore mere rags.
But Diocles says that it was Diogenes who persuaded him to discard all
his estate and his flocks, and to throw his money into the sea; and he
says further, that the house of Crates was destroyed by Alexander, and
that of Hipparchia under Philip. And he would very frequently drive away
with his staff those of his relations who came after him, and endeavoured
to dissuade him from his design; and he remained immoveable.
V. Demetrius, the Magnesian, relates that he deposited his money with
a banker, making an agreement with him, that if his sons turned out
ordinary ignorant people, he was then to restore it to them; but if they
became philosophers, then he was to divide it among the people, for that
they, if they were philosophers, would have no need of anything. And
Eratosthenes tells us that he had by Hipparchia, whom we shall mention
hereafter, a son whose name was Pasicles, and that when he grew up, he