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

the Cynics; and we shall also subjoin some of the doctrines which they all held in common, if indeed it is not an abuse of language to call that a sect of philosophy at all, instead of, as some contend it should be termed, a mere system of life.

They wished to abolish the whole system of logic and natural philosophy, like Aristo of Chios, and thought that men should study nothing but ethics; and what some people assert of Socrates was described by Diocles as a characteristic of Diogenes, for he said that his doctrine was that a man ought to investigate⁠—

Only the good and ill that taketh place
Within our houses.

They also discard all liberal studies. Accordingly, Antisthenes said that wise men only applied themselves to literature and learning for the sake of perverting others; they also wish to abolish geometry and music, and everything of that kind. Accordingly, Diogenes said once to a person who was showing him a clock: “It is a very useful thing to save a man from being too late for supper.” And once when a man made an exhibition of musical skill before him, he said:

“Cities are governed, so are houses too,
By wisdom, not by harp-playing and whistling.”80

Their doctrine is that the chief good of mankind is to live according to virtue, as Antisthenes says in his Hercules, in which they resemble the Stoics. For those two sects have a good deal in common with one another, on which account they themselves say that cynicism is a short road to virtue; and Zeno of Citium lived in the same manner.

They also teach that men ought to live simply, using only plain food in moderate quantities, wearing nothing but a cloak, and despising riches and glory and nobleness of birth; accordingly some of them feed upon nothing beyond herbs and cold water, living in any shelter that they can find, or in tubs as Diogenes did; for he used to say that it was the peculiar property of the Gods to want nothing, and that, therefore, when a man wished for nothing he was like the Gods.

Another of their doctrines is that virtue is a thing which may be taught, as Antisthenes affirms in his Heraclides; and that when it has once been attained it can never be lost. They also say that the wise man deserves to be loved, and cannot commit error, and is a friend to everyone who resembles him, and that he leaves nothing to fortune. And everything which is unconnected with either virtue or vice they call indifferent, agreeing in this with Aristo the Chian.

These then were the Cynics; and now we must pass on to the Stoics, of which sect the founder was Zeno, who had been a disciple of Crates.

Book VII Zeno

Zeno was the son of Mnaseas, or Demeas, and a native of Citium, in Cyprus, which is a Grecian city, partly occupied by a Phoenician colony.

He had his head naturally bent on one side, as Timotheus the Athenian tells us, in his work on Lives. And Apollonius the Tyrian says that he was thin, very tall, of a dark complexion; in reference to which someone once called him an Egyptian Clematis, as Chrysippus relates in the first volume of his Proverbs: he had fat, flabby, weak legs, on which account Persaeus, in his Convivial Reminiscences, says that he used to refuse many invitations to supper; and he was very fond, as it is said, of figs both fresh and dried in the sun.

He was a pupil, as has been already stated, of Crates. After that, they say that he became a pupil of Stilpon and of Xenocrates, for ten years, as Timocrates relates in his Life of Dion. He is also said to have been a pupil of Polemo. But Hecaton, and Apollonius, of Tyre, in the first book of his essay on Zeno, say that when he consulted the oracle as to what he ought to do to live in the most excellent manner, the God answered him that he ought to become of the same complexion as the dead, on which he inferred that he ought to apply himself to the reading of the books of the ancients. Accordingly, he attached himself to Crates in the following manner. Having purchased a quantity of purple from Phoenicia, he was shipwrecked close to the Piraeus; and when he had made his way from the coast as far as Athens, he sat down by a bookseller’s stall, being now about thirty years of age. And as he took up the second book of Xenophon’s Memorabilia and began to read it, he was delighted with it, and asked where such men as were described in that book lived; and as Crates happened very seasonably to pass at the moment, the bookseller pointed him out and said: “Follow that man.” From that time forth he became a pupil of Crates; but though he was in other respects very energetic in his application to philosophy, still he was too modest for the shamelessness of the Cynics. On which account, Crates, wishing to cure him of this false shame, gave him a jar of lentil porridge to carry through the Ceramicus; and when he saw that he was ashamed, and that he endeavored to hide it, he struck the jar with his staff and broke it; and as Zeno fled away, and the lentil porridge ran all down his legs, Crates called after him: “Why do you run away, my little Phoenician, you have done no harm?” For some time then he continued a pupil of Crates, and when he wrote his treatise entitled the Republic, some said, jokingly, that he had written it upon the tail of the dog.

And besides his Republic, he was the author also of the following works: a treatise on a Life according to Nature; one