The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes Laërtius [the gingerbread man read aloud TXT] 📗

dignity of demeanour, and, by Jove, in happiness. For he lived ninety-eight years, and then died, without any disease, and continuing in good health to the last. But Persaeus, in his Ethical School, states that he died at the age of seventy-two, and that he came to Athens when he was twenty-two years old. But Apollonius says that he presided over his school for forty-eight years.

And he died in the following manner: When he was going out of his school, he tripped, and broke one of his toes; and striking the ground with his hand, he repeated the line out of the Niobe:

I come: why call me so?

And immediately he strangled himself, and so he died. But the Athenians buried him in the Ceramicus, and honored him with the decrees which I have mentioned before, bearing witness to his virtue. And Antipater the Sidonian wrote an inscription for him, which runs thus:

Here Citium’s pride, wise Zeno, lies, who climb’d
The summits of Olympus; but unmoved
By wicked thoughts ne’er strove to raise on Ossa
The pine-clad Pelion; nor did he emulate
Th’ immortal toils of Hercules; but found
A new way for himself to th’ highest heaven,
By virtue, temperance, and modesty.

And Zenodotus the Stoic, a disciple of Diogenes, wrote another:

You made contentment the chief rule of life,
Despising haughty wealth, O Godlike Zeno.
With solemn look, and hoary brow serene,
You taught a manly doctrine; and didst found
By your deep wisdom, a great novel school,
Chaste parent of unfearing liberty.
And if your country was Phoenicia,
Why need we grieve, from that land Cadmus came,
Who gave to Greece her written books of wisdom.

And Athenaeus, the Epigrammatic poet, speaks thus of all the Stoics in common:

O, ye who’ve learnt the doctrines of the Porch,
And have committed to your books divine
The best of human learning; teaching men
That the mind’s virtue is the only good.
And she it is who keeps the lives of men,
And cities, safer than high gates or walls.
But those who place their happiness in pleasure,
Are led by the least worthy of the Muses.

And we also have ourselves spoken of the manner of Zeno’s death, in our collection of poems in all meters, in the following terms:

Some say that Zeno, pride of Citium,
Died of old age, when weak and quite worn out;
Some say that famine’s cruel tooth did slay him;
Some that he fell, and striking hard the ground,
Said, “See, I come, why call me thus impatiently?”

For some say that this was the way in which he died. And this is enough to say concerning his death.

But Demetrius the Magnesian says, in his essay on People of the Same Name, that his father Mnaseas often came to Athens, as he was a merchant, and that he used to bring back many of the books of the Socratic philosophers to Zeno, while he was still only a boy; and that, from this circumstance, Zeno had already become talked of in his own country; and that in consequence of this he went to Athens, where he attached himself to Crates. And it seems, he adds, that it was he who first recommended a clear enunciation of principles as the best remedy for error. He is said, too, to have been in the habit of swearing “By Capers,” as Socrates swore “By the Dog.”

Some indeed, among whom is Cassius the Skeptic, attack Zeno on many accounts, saying first of all that he denounced the general system of education in vogue at the time as useless, which he did in the beginning of his Republic. And in the second place, that he used to call all who were not virtuous, adversaries, and enemies, and slaves, and unfriendly to one another: parents to their children, brethren to brethren, and kinsmen to kinsmen; and again, that in his Republic, he speaks of the virtuous as the only citizens, and friends, and relations, and free men, so that in the doctrine of the Stoic, even parents and their children are enemies; for they are not wise. Also, that he lays down the principle of the community of women both in his Republic and in a poem of two hundred verses, and teaches that neither temples nor courts of law, nor gymnasia, ought to be erected in a city; moreover, that he writes thus about money: “That he does not think that men ought to coin money either for purposes of traffic, or of travelling.” Besides all this, he enjoins men and women to wear the same dress, and to leave no part of their person uncovered.

And that this treatise on the Republic is his work we are assured by Chrysippus, in his Republic. He also discussed amatory subjects in the beginning of that book of his which is entitled the Art of Love. And in his Conversations he writes in a similar manner.

Such are the charges made against him by Cassius, and also by Isidorus of Pergamus, the orator, who says that all the unbecoming doctrines and assertions of the Stoics were cut out of their books by Athenodorus the Stoic, who was the curator of the library at Pergamus. And that subsequently they were replaced, as Athenodorus was detected, and placed in a situation of great danger; and this is sufficient to say about those doctrines of his which were impugned.

There were eight different persons of the name of Zeno: The first was the Eleatic, whom we shall mention hereafter; the second was this man of whom we are now speaking; the third was a Rhodian, who wrote a history of his country in one book; the fourth was a historian who wrote an account of the expedition of Pyrrhus into Italy and Sicily, and also an epitome of the transactions between the Romans and Carthaginians; the fifth was a disciple of Chrysippus who wrote very few books but who left a great number of disciples; the sixth was a physician of Herophila, a very shrewd man in intellect but a very indifferent writer;