Lives of the Eminent Philosophers
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Lest someone fix a spear in your back while you sleep.”85
To someone who was purchasing expensive delicacies, he said,
Won’t you be short-lived, my boy, if you buy such things?86
When Plato was discoursing about the forms, and using the words “tablehood” and “cuphood,” Diogenes said, “For my part, Plato, I can see a table and a cup, but not tablehood and cuphood,” to which Plato replied, “And that makes sense; since you have the eyes with which to see a cup and a table, but not the mind with which to comprehend tablehood and cuphood.”
54 When asked when one should marry, Diogenes said, “If a young man, not yet; if elderly, not ever.” Asked what he would take to be thrashed, he said, “A helmet.” Seeing a young fellow adorning himself, he said, “If men are your objects, you’re a failure; if women, a scoundrel.” One day, seeing a boy blushing, he said, “Cheer up! Yours is the complexion of virtue.” After listening to two lawyers wrangling, he condemned them both, saying that whereas the one had undoubtedly stolen, the other had not lost anything. Asked what wine he enjoyed, he said, “Somebody else’s.” To someone who said, “Many people laugh at you,” he replied, “Yet I am not laughed down.”
55 To someone who declared that life is an evil, he said, “Not living itself, but living badly.” To those who were plotting to track down his runaway slave, he said, “It would be absurd if Manes can live without Diogenes, but Diogenes can’t live without Manes.” Breakfasting on olives embedded in a flat cake, he tossed the cake away and said,
Friend, get out of the tyrants’ way!87
And on another occasion he said,
He whipped an olive!88
Asked what breed of dog he was, he said, “When hungry, a Maltese terrier; when fattened, a Molossian mastiff—breeds most people praise but wouldn’t dare take along on a hunt, for fear of fatigue; you are likewise unable to live with me, for fear of what you would suffer.”
56 Asked whether the wise eat flat cakes, he replied, “They eat cakes of all sorts,
57 Visiting Myndus89 and noticing that its gates were enormous, but the city small, he said, “Men of Myndus, you locked your gates to keep the city from running away.” Seeing a stealer of purple dye apprehended, he said,
Caught by purple death and irresistible fate.90
When Craterus91 wanted Diogenes to come for a visit, he declined, saying, “I’d rather lick salt in Athens than enjoy rich fare at Craterus’ table.” Approaching Anaximenes92 the orator, a fat man, he said, “Give us beggars something of your paunch; for your load will be lightened, and you’ll do us a good turn.” Once when Anaximenes was discoursing, Diogenes held up a smoked fish and distracted the audience; and when the orator was vexed, Diogenes said, “A fish worth an obol has disrupted Anaximenes’ lecture.”
58 Reproached one day for eating in the marketplace, he said, “It was in the marketplace that I got hungry.” Some say that he also made the following retort: When Plato noticed him washing lettuces, he approached and quietly said, “If you courted Dionysius,93 you would not be washing lettuces,” to which Diogenes replied just as quietly, “And if you washed lettuces, you wouldn’t have courted Dionysius.” To someone who said, “Most people laugh at you,” he said, “And perhaps donkeys laugh at them; but they pay no heed to donkeys, nor do I pay heed to them.” Noticing a youth studying philosophy, he said, “Well done, Philosophy! You’re turning lovers of the body’s beauty toward beauty of mind.”
59 When some people were admiring the votive offerings at Samothrace, he said, “There would have been many more of them if the men who weren’t saved had made offerings.” (Some attribute this remark to Diagoras of Melos.94) To a handsome youth on his way to a drinking party, he said, “You will return a worse man.” And when the youth returned and said on the following day, “I returned and did not become a worse man,” Diogenes said, “A worse man (cheirōn) no, but a stouter man (eurytion) certainly.”95 When he was begging alms from an ill-tempered man, and the man said, “
60 On his way home from Olympia, he replied to someone who asked if there was a large crowd there, “A large crowd, yes; but few men.” He said that spendthrifts resembled figs growing on a cliff; for their fruit is not enjoyed by men, but by crows and vultures. When Phryne had dedicated a golden Aphrodite at Delphi,96 they say that Diogenes wrote upon it, “From the intemperance of the Greeks.” Once when Alexander came to him and said, “I am Alexander, the Great King,” he replied, “And I am Diogenes, the Dog.” When asked what he had done to get nicknamed the Dog, he said, “I fawn on those who give me something, bark at those who don’t, and bite the wicked.”
61,62 While gathering figs, he was told by a watchman that a man had recently been hanged at that very spot. To this Diogenes said, “Well, in that case I’ll purify the place.”97 On seeing an Olympic victor staring intently at a prostitute, he said, “See how the head of a war-frenzied ram is being twisted about by a common strumpet.” He used to say that good-looking courtesans resembled a lethal honey-drink. As he was breakfasting in the marketplace, a group of bystanders were calling him “dog.” “It’s you who are the dogs,” he replied, “since you stand around me while I’m breakfasting.” When two cowards were hiding from him, he said, “Don’t you worry: a dog doesn’t munch on beets.”98 Asked where a boy who had become a prostitute was from, he said, “From Tegea.”99 Noticing that a dull-witted wrestler was practicing medicine, he said, “What are you up to? Are you now sending to the other world those who once defeated you?” When he saw a courtesan’s son throwing a rock at a crowd, he said, “Take care you don’t hit your father.”
63 When a boy had shown Diogenes a dagger he’d received from a lover, Diogenes said, “A lovely sword, but the hilt is ugly.”100 When some people were praising a man who had given him alms, Diogenes said, “Yet you don’t praise me, who deserved to receive them.” When someone asked Diogenes to return his cloak, he said, “If it was a gift, I’m keeping it; if a loan, I’m using it.” When a suppositious son said that he carried gold in his cloak, Diogenes said, “No doubt! And for the same reason, you sleep with it under you.”101 Asked what he got out of philosophy, he said, “If nothing else, I’m prepared for whatever happens.” Asked where he came from, he replied, “I’m a citizen of the world.”102 When some parents were sacrificing in the hope that a son might be born to them, he said, “But aren’t you sacrificing with an eye to how he’ll turn out?” When asked for a contribution by the host of a potluck supper, he said,
Despoil the others, but lay no hands on Hector.103
He referred to the courtesans of kings as queens, since they made the kings do as they commanded. When the Athenians voted Alexander the title of Dionysus, Diogenes said, “Then let me be called Sarapis.”104 To someone who reproached him for going to unclean places, he said, “The sun, too, visits dung heaps without being defiled.”
64 When he was dining in a temple, some filthy loaves were brought in; flinging them out, he said that nothing unclean should enter a temple. To someone who said, “Though you know nothing, you philosophize,” he said, “Even if I do pretend to wisdom, that in itself is philoso
phy.” To someone who introduced his son and said the boy was talented and of strong character, he said, “Then what do you need me for?” He said that those who utter fine words but don’t act on them resembled a harp, since a harp can neither hear nor understand. He was entering a theater as everyone else was leaving it; when asked why he did so, he replied, “This has been my practice all my life.”
65 Seeing a lad behaving effeminately, he said, “Aren’t you ashamed to fall short of nature’s intentions for you? For she made you a man, but you’re making yourself play the woman.” Seeing a foolish fellow tuning a harp, he said, “Aren’t you ashamed to tune a wooden instrument, while you fail to bring your soul into harmony with your life?” To someone who claimed to be inept at philosophy, he said, “Then why do you live, if it’s not your concern to live well?” To someone who was disparaging his own father, Diogenes said, “Aren’t you ashamed to disparage him who affords you the chance to think yourself so superior?” Seeing a handsome youth chattering in an unseemly manner, he said, “Aren’t you ashamed to draw from an ivory scabbard a dagger made of lead?”
Diogenes His Lantern Needs No More, an Honest Man Is Found—The Search Is O’er, by Henry Bryan Hall, 1864.
66 Reproached for drinking in a tavern, he said, “I also get my hair cut in a barbershop.” Reproached for accepting a cloak from Antipater, he said,
The glorious gifts of the gods are not to be cast aside.105
Hellenistic high relief of Alexander the Great and Diogenes.
When someone hit him with a beam and then said, “Look out!” Diogenes struck the man with his staff and said, “Look out yourself!” To someone soliciting a courtesan, he said, “Why, poor wretch, do you want to get what you’d be better off not getting?” To someone anointing himself he said, “Take care that the sweet smell from your head does not give a foul smell to your life.” He said that servants were the slaves of their masters, and unworthy men the slaves of their passions.
67 Asked why servants were called footmen, he said, “Because they have the feet of men, and the souls of questioners such as yourself.” When he begged a mina from a spendthrift, and the man asked why he begged others for an obol,106 but asked him for a mina, he said, “Because I expect to get something from them next time; but whether I’ll ever again get something from you lies in the lap of the gods.” Reproached because he begged, when Plato did not, he said, “He begs too, but
Holding his head close, that the others might not hear.”107
After watching a bad archer, he sat down next to the target, saying “so I won’t be hit.” He said that lovers were unlucky when it came to pleasure.108
68 Asked if death is an evil, he said, “How could it be an evil, since in its presence we are unaware of it?” When Alexander came to him and said, “Don’t you fear me?” he replied, “What do you mean? Are you good or evil?” When Alexander answered, “Good,” Diogenes said, “Well, who fears what is good?” He said that education was for the young an instiller of temperance, for the elderly a consolation, for the poor a richness, and for the rich an ornament. Once when the adulterer Didymon was curing a girl’s eye, he said, “Take care that while treating the eye you don’t ruin the pupil.”109 When someone said that his own friends were plotting against him, Diogenes said, “What is one to do, if friends and enemies must be treated alike?”
69 Asked what was the most beautiful thing in the world, he said, “Freedom of speech.” Entering a school and seeing many images of the Muses but few students, he said, “With the help of the gods, schoolmaster, you have plenty of students.” He regularly performed in public the acts associated with Demeter and Aphrodite.110 He used to make the following sort of argument: “If to take breakfast is not absurd, then in the marketplace it’s not absurd; and it is not absurd to take breakfast; so to do so in the marketplace is not absurd.” Frequently masturbating in public, he said, “If only one could relieve hunger by rubbing one’s belly.” Many other sayings are attributed to him, which it would take too long to recount.
70 He used to maintain that training111 was twofold, encompassing both mind and body; that in the case of physical training, ideals are engendered that foster the suppleness needed to perform virtuous deeds; and that neither facet was complete without the other, since health and strength are equally essential for training both the mind and the body. He would offer proofs that exertions in the gymnasium readily give rise to virtue, and declared that one could see in the mechanical and other arts that their practitioners acquire extraordinary dexterity from practice, citing the degree to which flute players and athletes acquire surpassing skill through constant application, and asserting that if these men had shifted their attention to the training of the mind, their efforts would not have been useless and incomplete.
71 He used to say that no success can be achieved in life without training, which he said could overcome anything. Therefore if men would live happily, they should choose, in place of useless toils, those that are in keeping with nature. But instead, through their own folly, they live wretched lives. And in fact the contempt for pleasure, if it has become habitual, is exceedingly pleasurable. Just as those who have been accustomed to living pleasurably find the opposite unpleasant, so do those who have engaged in the opposite practice find that despising pleasures gives them more pleasure than would the pleasures themselves. Such were his views and he clearly acted in accordance with them, thereby truly “restamping the currency,” since he assigned to convention none of the value he assigned to nature, and said that the life he lived was characteristic of Heracles,112 who preferred freedom to everything.
72 He declared that all things belong to the wise, and advanced the sort of argument we outlined earlier: all things belong to the gods; the gods are friends of the wise; the possessions of friends are held in common; and therefore all things belong to the wise. As for law, he held that without it one cannot live the life of a citizen. For he declares that without the city there is no means of obtaining the advantages of civilized life. The city is a civilized thing; its advantages cannot be enjoyed without law; and therefore law is a civilized thing. He would make fun of good breeding, reputation, and all such things, calling them the vulgar trappings of vice, and held that the only true commonwealth was that which was commensurate with the universe. He also maintained that women should be held in common, regarding no union as a marriage but that of a man and a woman who have persuaded each other. And for this reason he maintained that sons, too, should be held in common.113
73 He declared that there was nothing wrong with taking something from a temple or tasting the flesh of any animal; nor was it even offensive to the gods to consume human flesh, as was clear from other peoples’ customs. He held that according to right reason, all things contain and are permeated by all things. For meat is found in bread, and bread in vegetables; and all forms of matter, through unseen passages and particles, penetrate and unite with all other matter in vaporous form, as he makes clear in his Thyestes,114 if the tragedies are his and not the work of his friend Philiscus of Aegina or of Pasiphon, {son of Lucian,}115 who, according to Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History, wrote them after Diogenes’ death. Diogenes neglected music, geometry, astrology, and other such studies, judging them useless and unnecessary.
Diogenes Searching for an Honest Man, by Jacob Jordaens, 1642.
74 He proved quite witty in debate, as is clear from what we have related.
And he endured being sold into slavery with great dignity. On a voyage to Aegina he was captured by pirates under Scirpalus’116 command, transported to Crete, and put up for sale. And when the herald asked him what he was good at, he replied, “Ruling over men.” Pointing to an affluent Corinthian, the above-mentioned Xeniades, he said, “Sell me to him; he needs a master.” Thus Xeniades purchased him, took him home to Corinth, put him in charge of his own sons, and entrusted him with his entire household. And Diogenes performed all his duties in such a manner that Xeniades went about saying, “A
kindly deity has entered my house.”
75,76,77 Cleomenes, in On Pedagogy, says that Diogenes’ friends wanted to ransom him, for which he called them imbeciles. For he maintained that lions are not the slaves of those who feed them; it is the feeders, rather, who are the lions’ slaves. For fear is the mark of a slave, and wild beasts make men fearful. Diogenes possessed astonishing powers of persuasion, and hence could easily sway anyone he liked with his arguments. It is said, at any rate, that an Aeginetan, one Onesicritus, sent one of his two sons, Androsthenes, to Athens, and that the boy, on becoming a student of Diogenes, remained there; the father then sent along his older son, Philiscus, whom I mentioned earlier, and Philiscus was equally captivated; and Onesicritus himself, the third to arrive, shared equally in his sons’ love and pursuit of philosophy. Such was the spell cast by Diogenes’ words. Phocion, surnamed the Good, was also a student of his,117 as was Stilpo of Megara118 and many other public men.
Sketch of Diogenes, by Eduardo Rosales, nineteenth century.
It is said that he had reached the age of ninety when he died. There are conflicting accounts about his death. Some say that after eating an octopus raw he was stricken by cholera and died of it; others maintain that he died by holding his breath. One of the latter is Cercidas of Megalópolis (or of Crete), who in his lyric iambics says,
No more the erstwhile denizen of Sinope,
The famous staff bearer,
Double-cloaked, feeding on air;
He has ascended to heaven,
Fixing his lips against his teeth
And holding his breath;