The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

About the book

Diogenes Laertius gathers the lives and teachings of Greek philosophers into a collection that moves from early sages to the major schools and finally Epicurus. Biographical stories stand beside lists of writings, accounts of philosophical succession, reported conversations, and summaries of arguments. The mixture can be unexpectedly intimate: intellectual positions are accompanied by stories about habits, friendships, deaths, and sharp replies. It also requires care, since the author preserves conflicting traditions rather than consistently resolving them. The work is valuable partly because it transmits material from sources that no longer survive independently. Read as both a record of ideas and a record of reputation, it shows how antiquity remembered people who made the examined life their occupation.

• Philosophical traditions
• Biography and anecdote
• Transmission of knowledge

Why read it

Explore ancient philosophy through the richly mixed testimony preserved about its practitioners.

English translation by C. D. Yonge, 1915 reprint