Lives of the Eminent Philosophers
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5 When asked what was man’s greatest blessing, he said, “To die happy.” When an acquaintance complained to him that he had lost his notes, Antisthenes replied, “You should have inscribed them on your mind instead of on paper.” Just as iron is eaten away by rust, so, he said, are envious men consumed by their own disposition. Those who wished to be immortal must, he maintained, live piously and justly. He said that cities are doomed when they cannot distinguish good men from bad. Once when he was being praised by rogues, he said, “I’m worried I’ve done something wrong.”
6,7 He said the comradeship of brothers who are of one mind is stronger than any fortress. He said the right traveling case is the one that will float with you if you are shipwrecked. Reproached one day for associating with worthless men, he said, “Doctors associate with patients without falling into a fever themselves.” He said it was odd that we separate out the darnel from the grain,13 and in war the unfit, but in public life do not exempt worthless men from service. When asked what advantage he enjoyed from philosophy, he said, “To be able to live in company with oneself.” When someone at a drinking party said, “Sing!” he replied, “Accompany me on the flute!” When Diogenes14 asked him for a coat, Antisthenes advised him to double his cloak. When asked what knowledge is the most necessary,
He used to jeer at Plato for being arrogant. One day, observing a high-tempered horse at a parade, he said to Plato, “It strikes me that you would have been a proud-blooded steed.” (This was because Plato was constantly praising horseflesh.) Visiting Plato one day and seeing a basin into which Plato had vomited, he said, “I see bile there, but no pride.”
Three views of a standing youth, Greek, mid-fifth century BC.
8 He used to advise the Athenians to elect asses to be horses. When they considered this absurd, he said, “Yet some of your generals had no training; they had only to be elected.” To someone who said, “Many are praising you,” he replied, “Why, what have I done wrong?” When he turned the torn part of his cloak so that it was visible, Socrates caught sight of it and said, “I discern your love of glory through your cloak.” Phanias, in his work On the Socratics, says that when someone asked Antisthenes what he should do to be good and noble, he replied, “You should learn from the knowledgeable that the faults you possess can be avoided.” To someone praising luxury he said, “May your enemies’ children live in luxury.”
9 To a young man posing for a sculptor he said, “Tell me, if the bronze could speak,
10 He himself was thought to have been responsible for the banishment of Anytus and the execution of Meletus.15 Lighting upon some young men from Pontus whom Socrates’ fame had drawn to Athens, Antisthenes brought them to Anytus, remarking that the man was wiser in moral conduct than Socrates, whereupon those who were standing near Anytus grew so incensed that they drove him from the city. Whenever Antisthenes saw a woman decked out with ornaments, he would proceed to her house and order her husband to bring out his horse and weapons. If the man possessed them, Antisthenes would let the man’s extravagance alone, since with these he could mount a defense. But if the man had none, Antisthenes urged him to get rid of the finery.
11 His favorite notions were the following. He used to prove that virtue could be taught and that only the virtuous are noble. He held that virtue is sufficient for happiness, since it needs nothing but the strength of a Socrates;16 that virtue is a matter of deeds and requires no abundance of words or learning; that the wise man is self-sufficient, since all the things of others are his; that ill repute is a good thing and analogous to suffering; that the wise man will conduct himself in public life not by the established laws, but by the law of virtue; that he will marry (uniting himself to women of the best nature) for the sake of begetting children; and that he will experience passion, since only the wise man knows who deserves to be loved.
12,13 Diocles records some of his sayings: To the wise man nothing is foreign or inappropriate. The good man deserves to be loved. Good men are friends. Make allies of men who are both brave and just. Virtue is a weapon that cannot be taken away. It is better, with , to fight against all the wicked, than with a multitude of the wicked to fight against a few good men. Pay attention to your enemies; for they are the first to notice your mistakes. Cherish a just man more than a kinsman. The virtue of a man and that of a woman are the same. Good things are beautiful, bad things ugly. Regard everything base as foreign. Wisdom is the safest rampart, for it neither falls in ruins nor is betrayed. Defenses must be built upon our own incorruptible reasoning.
Antisthenes used to converse in the gymnasium of Cynosarges,17 a short distance from the gates, and it is supposed by some that the Cynic school took its name from this gymnasium. Antisthenes himself was nicknamed Haplocy on. And he was the first, as Diocles says, to double his cloak, to use only one garment, and to take up a staff and a knapsack. Neanthes too claims that Antisthenes was the first to make his mantle single.18 Sosicrates, however, in his third book of Successions, says this was done by Diodorus of Aspendus,19 who also let his beard grow and used a staff and a knapsack.
Marble portrait head of Antisthenes. Roman copy of a Greek original of late third or second century BC.
14 Antisthenes alone, among all the Socratics, elicits praise from Theopompus, who says that he was a clever man and could with his witty discourse subdue anyone at all. This is clear from his writings and from Xenophon’s Symposium.20 He seems to have originated the most manly branch of the Stoic school. Hence Athenaeus the epigrammatist writes about them thus:
You who are adepts in Stoic learning,
And have committed to your tablets the finest doctrines,
Teaching the soul’s virtue is the only good.
For it alone protects the lives and cities of men.
But pleasure of the flesh, an end adored by other men,
Only one of the daughters of Memory attains.21
15 Antisthenes provided the inspiration for Diogenes’ impassivity, Crates’ self-control, and Zeno’s hardiness, he himself having laid the groundwork for the city.22 Xenophon says he was the pleasantest of men to converse with and the most self-disciplined in everything else.
His writings are contained in ten volumes. The first includes:
On Diction or On Styles
Ajax or The Speech of Ajax
Odysseus or On Odysseus
A Defense of Orestes
On the Forensic Writers
Isography
A Reply to Isocrates’ Speech “Without Witnesses”
16 The second contains:
On the Nature of Animals
On Procreation or On Marriage: A Discourse on Passion
On the Sophists: A Discourse on Physiognomy
On Justice and Courage: A Hortatory Work, three books
On Theognis, books four and five24
The third contains:
On the Good
On Courage
On Law or On Government
On Law or On Honor and Justice
On Freedom and Slavery
On Belief
On the Guardian or On Obedience
On Victory: A Treatise on Management
The fourth contains:
Cyrus
Heracles Major or On Strength
The fifth contains:
Cyrus or On Sovereignty
Aspasia
The sixth contains:
Truth
On Discussion: A Treatise on Debate
Sathon
On Contradiction, three books
On Argument
17 The seventh contains:
On Education or On Names, five books
{On Dying
On Life and Death}
On the Use of Names or A Treatise on Eristics25
On Questioning and Answering
On Opinion and Knowledge, four books
On Dying
On Life and Death
On What Happens in Hades
On Nature, two books
A Question about Nature, two books
Opinions or A Treatise on Eristics
Problems about Learning
The eighth contains:
On Music
On Commentators
On Homer
On Injustice and Impiety
On Calchas
On the Scout
On Pleasure
18 The ninth contains:
On Odysseus
On the Wand
Athena or Telemachus
On Helen and Penelope
On Proteus
Cyclops or On Odysseus
On the Use of Wine or On Drunkenness or On the Cyclops
On Circe
On Amphiaraus
On Odysseus and Penelope
On the Dog
The tenth contains:
Heracles and Midas
Heracles or On Wisdom and Strength
The Master26 or The Beloved
The Master or The Scouts
Menexenus or On Ruling
Alcibiades
Archelaus or On Sovereignty
These are his written works.
19 Timon, disparaging Antisthenes for writing so much, calls him “a prolific babbler.” He was wasting away toward death at the very moment when Diogenes, who had come in, said, “Any need for a friend?”27 On one visit Diogenes had brought a dagger. And when Antisthenes cried, “Who would free me from my pains?” Diogenes said, “This,” showing him the dagger. To which Antisthenes replied, “I said from my pains, not from my life.” He was thought to have borne his illness without fortitude, wanting so much to live. Here are my verses about him:
So much the natural dog in life, Antisthenes,
You lacerated the heart with words and not with teeth.
But you died of consumption. Perhaps one might say,
What of it? We must surely have a guide to Hades.
There have been three other men named Antisthenes: one was a follower of Heraclitus,28 the second a native of Ephesus, and the third a historian from Rhodes.
Since we have reviewed the pupils of Aristippus and Phaedo, let us now proceed with an account of the Cynics and Stoics who derive from Antisthenes. And let us adopt the following order.
Silver drachm, fourth century BC. Left (obverse): head of nymph. Right (reverse): eagle riding on the back of a dolphin, IKEΣIO (magistrate’s name) below wing, ΣIN (Sinope) below dolphin.
Diogenes
20 Diogenes of Sinope was the son of Hicesias, a banker.
Diocles says that Diogenes went into exile when his father, who was in charge of the public treasury, restamped the coinage.29 Eubulides,30 however, in On Diogenes says that Diogenes did this himself and went into exile along with his father. But what is more to the point, Diogenes himself, in his Pordalus,31 admits that he restamped the coinage. Some say that when he became a magistrate he was urged to do this by his clerks, and that he went to Delphi, or to the Delian oracle, in the homeland of Apollo,32 and inquired whether he should do what he had been urged to do. But when the god permitted him to change the civic currency,33 Diogenes, misunderstanding, adulterated the actual coinage. When caught he was banished, as some say, though others maintain that he took fright and voluntarily withdrew from the city.
21 Some say that when his father had entrusted him with the coinage Diogenes adulterated it, and that after his father died in prison he fled and went to Delphi to inquire not whether he should restamp the coinage, but what he should do to become surpassingly famous, and it was then that he received the oracle.
On reaching Athens he met Antisthenes.34 And though he was rejected (since Antisthenes did not take pupils), Diogenes prevailed by sheer obstinacy. On one occasion, when Antisthenes menaced him with a staff, Diogenes offered his head and said, “Strike, for you’ll not find wood hard enough to keep me away from you, as long as I think you have something to say.” From then on he was Antisthenes’ disciple, and adopted, since he was an exile, a simple life.
22 From watching a mouse running about (as Theophrastus reports in his Megarian dialogue), not seeking a shelter or avoiding the dark or searching for any of the things that are generally thought desirable, Diogenes found a way to manage his plight. He was the first, according to some, to double his cloak, since he had to both wear and sleep in it; he carried a knapsack in which he kept his food; and he made use of every place for every purpose: breakfasting, sleeping, and conversing. He used to say, when pointing to the Stoa of Zeus and the Pompeion,35 that the Athenians had provided him with places in which to live.
23 He took to leaning on a staff after he had grown feeble, and from then on carried it constantly (not in town, but on the road)—that and his knapsack, as we are told by Athenodorus the Athenian magistrate, Polyeuctus the orator, and Lysanias, son of Aeschrio. And when he had sent word to someone to provide him with a little house, and the man delayed, he took as his dwelling the tub36 in the Metröon,37 as he makes clear in his letters. In summer he would roll himself over hot sand, and in winter would embrace snow-covered statues, training himself to bear every sort of hardship.
24 He was also adept at heaping scorn on others. He called the school (scholēn) of Euclides38 “bile” (cholēn), Plato’s discourse (diatribēn) a “waste of time” (katatribēn), the contests at the Dionysia39 “a spectacle for morons,” and the demagogues “lackeys of the mob.” He used to say that when he saw pilots, physicians, and philosophers at their work he regarded man as the wisest of all animals; but when he observed dream interpreters, prophets, and those who listen to them, or those who are puffed up with fame or wealth, he found no creature more foolish than man. He often remarked that to get through life one needed either reason (logon) or a noose (brochon).
Diogenes and Plato, by Mattia Preti, 1649.
25 One day, at a lavish banquet, he noticed Plato eating olives,40 and said, “How is it that you, the philosopher who sailed to Sicily for the sake of these dishes, don’t enjoy them now, when they are set before you?”41 And when Plato replied, “But, by the gods, Diogenes, even there I lived mainly on olives and things of that sort,” Diogenes said, “Then why did you have to sail to Syracuse? Or didn’t Attica produce olives then?” Favorinus, however, in his Miscellaneous History, attributes the remark to Aristippus.42 And on another occasion, while eating dried figs, he ran into Plato and said, “Let me share them with you.” And when Plato had accepted and eaten them, Diogenes said, “I said you could share them, not eat them all.”
26 One day, when friends from the court of Dionysius had been invited to Plato’s house, Diogenes, while trampling on his carpets, said, “I trample on Plato’s pomposity,” to which Plato replied, “How much vanity you expose, Diogenes, by not appearing to be vain.” Others relate that Diogenes said, “I trample on Plato’s vanity,” to which Plato replied, “Yes, Diogenes, with another form of vanity.” (Sotion, however, in his fourth book, claims that Plato himself said to the Cynic, “You are acting the dog, Diogenes.”43) On one occasion Diogenes asked Plato for wine, and later for some dried figs. And when Plato sent him an entire jar, Diogenes said, “So if you are asked how much are two and two, do you answer, ‘Twenty’? It seems you neither give what is requested nor answer what is asked.” (This was his way of mocking Plato’s long-windedness.)
27,28 When asked where in Gr
eece he saw good men, he said, “Good men nowhere, but good lads in Sparta.”44 On one occasion, when he was speaking about serious matters and no one drew near, he started to babble; and when a number of people gathered round he reproached them for flocking eagerly to hear nonsense, but dawdling carelessly when the things being discussed were important. He used to say that people exerted themselves to outdo one another when exercising at the gymnasium45 but made no effort when it came to strengthening character. And he marveled that the scholars investigated Odysseus’ failings but remained unaware of their own; that the musicians took the trouble to tune their lyres but left their souls in a discordant state; that the mathematicians gazed at the sun and moon but ignored what lay at their feet; that the orators exerted themselves to speak about justice but not to practice it; and that the avaricious, while railing about money, loved it to excess.
Two portraits of Diogenes, almost two thousand years apart. Left: A hanging scroll painting, with barrel visible behind the philosopher, by Shimomura Kanzan, 1903–1905. Right; Portrait head of Diogenes, Roman, late second century.
He also condemned those who, while praising just men for being unaffected by wealth, envied the rich. He found it vexing that people perform sacrifices for the sake of their health but at those very sacrifices feast in a manner injurious to health. He was amazed that slaves who observed their masters’ gluttony did not filch any of their food.
29,30 He praised those who planned to marry and did not, those who proposed to sail and did not, those who were intending to pursue a political career and did not, those who planned to rear children and did not, and those who were preparing to consort with potentates and did not. He used to say that one ought to extend a hand to one’s friends without clenching one’s fingers. Menippus says in his Sale of Diogenes that when captured and put up for sale Diogenes was asked what he was good at. He replied, “Ruling over men,” and said to the herald, “Spread the word in case anyone wants to buy himself a master.” When forbidden to sit, he said, “It makes no difference; fish are bought no matter how they are arrayed.” He said he marveled that when buying a pot or pan we test its soundness by seeing if it rings, but when a human being is for sale we consider only his or her appearance. He told Xeniades, his purchaser, that he must be obeyed, though he was a slave; for if a doctor or pilot were a slave he would be obeyed. Eubulus, in the work entitled The Sale of Diogenes, describes how he trained the sons of Xeniades. After their other studies, he taught them how to ride, shoot with the bow, sling stones, and hurl the javelin; and later, at the palaestra,46 he prevented the athletics master from training them beyond what sufficed to maintain a rosy complexion and good health.