2. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of The Philosophers, 2.120, 4.4, 4.61, 5.78, 6.46, 6.73, 6.76, 6.99, 7.176, 7.183-7.184, 8.39, 9.43, 10.15 (3rd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
| 2.120. Nine dialogues of his are extant written in frigid style, Moschus, Aristippus or Callias, Ptolemy, Chaerecrates, Metrocles, Anaximenes, Epigenes, To his Daughter, Aristotle. Heraclides relates that Zeno, the founder of the Stoic school, was one of Stilpo's pupils; Hermippus that Stilpo died at a great age after taking wine to hasten his end.I have written an epitaph on him also:Surely you know Stilpo the Megarian; old age and then disease laid him low, a formidable pair. But he found in wine a charioteer too strong for that evil team; he quaffed it eagerly and was borne along.He was also ridiculed by Sophilus the Comic poet in his drama The Wedding:What Charinus says is just Stilpo's stoppers. 4.4. Plutarch in the Lives of Lysander and Sulla makes his malady to have been morbus pedicularis. That his body wasted away is affirmed by Timotheus in his book On Lives. Speusippus, he says, meeting a rich man who was in love with one who was no beauty, said to him, Why, pray, are you in such sore need of him? For ten talents I will find you a more handsome bride.He has left behind a vast store of memoirs and numerous dialogues, among them:Aristippus the Cyrenaic.On Wealth, one book.On Pleasure, one book.On Justice,On Philosophy,On Friendship,On the Gods,The Philosopher,A Reply to Cephalus,Cephalus,Clinomachus or Lysias,The Citizen,of the Soul,A Reply to Gryllus 4.61. He assumed the headship of the school in the fourth year of the 134th Olympiad, and at his death he had been head for twenty-six years. His end was a palsy brought on by drinking too freely. And here is a quip of my own upon the fact:of thee too, O Lacydes, I have heard a tale, that Bacchus seized thee and dragged thee on tip-toe to the underworld. Nay, was it not clear that when the wine-god comes in force into the frame, he loosens our limbs? Perhaps this is why he gets his name of the Loosener. 5.78. And in the official list the year in which he was archon was styled the year of lawlessness, according to this same Favorinus.Hermippus tells us that upon the death of Casander, being in fear of Antigonus, he fled to Ptolemy Soter. There he spent a considerable time and advised Ptolemy, among other things, to invest with sovereign power his children by Eurydice. To this Ptolemy would not agree, but bestowed the diadem on his son by Berenice, who, after Ptolemy's death, thought fit to detain Demetrius as a prisoner in the country until some decision should be taken concerning him. There he lived in great dejection, and somehow, in his sleep, received an asp-bite on the hand which proved fatal. He is buried in the district of Busiris near Diospolis. 6.46. Being short of money, he told his friends that he applied to them not for alms, but for repayment of his due. When behaving indecently in the marketplace, he wished it were as easy to relieve hunger by rubbing an empty stomach. Seeing a youth starting off to dine with satraps, he dragged him off, took him to his friends and bade them keep strict watch over him. When a youth effeminately attired put a question to him, he declined to answer unless he pulled up his robe and showed whether he was man or woman. A youth was playing cottabos in the baths. Diogenes said to him, The better you play, the worse it is for you. At a feast certain people kept throwing all the bones to him as they would have done to a dog. Thereupon he played a dog's trick and drenched them. 6.73. And he saw no impropriety either in taking something from a sanctuary or in eating the flesh of any animal; nor even anything impious in touching human flesh, this, he said, being clear from the custom of some foreign nations. Moreover, according to right reason, as he put it, all elements are contained in all things and pervade everything: since not only is meat a constituent of bread, but bread of vegetables; and all other bodies also, by means of certain invisible passages and particles, find their way in and unite with all substances in the form of vapour. This he makes plain in the Thyestes, if the tragedies are really his and not the work of his friend Philiscus of Aegina or of Pasiphon, the son of Lucian, who according to Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History wrote them after the death of Diogenes. He held that we should neglect music, geometry, astronomy, and the like studies, as useless and unnecessary. 6.76. When, thirdly, the father himself arrived, he was just as much attracted to the pursuit of philosophy as his sons and joined the circle – so magical was the spell which the discourses of Diogenes exerted. Amongst his hearers was Phocion surnamed the Honest, and Stilpo the Megarian, and many other men prominent in political life.Diogenes is said to have been nearly ninety years old when he died. Regarding his death there are several different accounts. One is that he was seized with colic after eating an octopus raw and so met his end. Another is that he died voluntarily by holding his breath. This account was followed by Cercidas of Megalopolis (or of Crete), who in his meliambics writes thus:Not so he who aforetime was a citizen of Sinope,That famous one who carried a staff, doubled his cloak, and lived in the open air. 6.99. 8. MENIPPUSMenippus, also a Cynic, was by descent a Phoenician – a slave, as Achacus in his treatise on Ethics says. Diocles further informs us that his master was a citizen of Pontus and was named Baton. But as avarice made him very resolute in begging, he succeeded in becoming a Theban.There is no seriousness in him; but his books overflow with laughter, much the same as those of his contemporary Meleager.Hermippus says that he lent out money by the day and got a nickname from doing so. For he used to make loans on bottomry and take security, thus accumulating a large fortune. 7.176. His end was as follows. He had severe inflammation of the gums, and by the advice of his doctors he abstained from food for two whole days. As it happened, this treatment succeeded, so that the doctors were for allowing him to resume his usual diet. To this, however, he would not consent, but declaring that he had already got too far on the road, he went on fasting the rest of his days until his death at the same age as Zeno according to some authorities, having spent nineteen years as Zeno's pupil.My lighter verse on him runs thus:I praise Cleanthes, but praise Hades more,Who could not bear to see him grown so old,So gave him rest at last among the dead,Who'd drawn such load of water while alive. 7.183. At wine-parties he used to behave quietly, though he was unsteady on his legs; which caused the woman-slave to say, As for Chrysippus, only his legs get tipsy. His opinion of himself was so high that when some one inquired, To whom shall I entrust my son? he replied, To me: for, if I had dreamt of there being anyone better than myself, I should myself be studying with him. Hence, it is said, the application to him of the line:He alone has understanding; the others flit shadow-like around;andBut for Chrysippus, there had been no Stoa. 7.184. At last, however, – so we are told by Sotion in his eighth book, – he joined Arcesilaus and Lacydes and studied philosophy under them in the Academy. And this explains his arguing at one time against, and at another in support of, ordinary experience, and his use of the method of the Academy when treating of magnitudes and numbers.On one occasion, as Hermippus relates, when he had his school in the Odeum, he was invited by his pupils to a sacrificial feast. There after he had taken a draught of sweet wine unmixed with water, he was seized with di7iness and departed this life five days afterwards, having reached the age of seventy-three years, in the 143rd Olympiad. This is the date given by Apollodorus in his Chronology. I have toyed with the subject in the following verses:Chrysippus turned giddy after gulping down a draught of Bacchus; he spared not the Stoa nor his country nor his own life, but fared straight to the house of Hades. 8.39. Pythagoras met his death in this wise. As he sat one day among his acquaintances at the house of Milo, it chanced that the house was set ablaze out of jealousy by one of the people who were not accounted worthy of admittance to his presence, though some say it was the work of the inhabitants of Croton anxious to safeguard themselves against the setting-up of a tyranny. Pythagoras was caught as he tried to escape; he got as far as a certain field of beans, where he stopped, saying he would be captured rather than cross it, and be killed rather than prate about his doctrines; and so his pursuers cut his throat. So also were murdered more than half of his disciples, to the number of forty or thereabouts; but a very few escaped, including Archippus of Tarentum and Lysis, already mentioned. 9.43. of the death of Democritus the account given by Hermippus is as follows. When he was now very old and near his end, his sister was vexed that he seemed likely to die during the festival of Thesmophoria and she would be prevented from paying the fitting worship to the goddess. He bade her be of good cheer and ordered hot loaves to be brought to him every day. By applying these to his nostrils he contrived to outlive the festival; and as soon as the three festival days were passed he let his life go from him without pain, having then, according to Hipparchus, attained his one hundred and ninth year.In my Pammetros I have a piece on him as follows:Pray who was so wise, who wrought so vast a work as the omniscient Democritus achieved? When Death was near, for three days he kept him in his house and regaled him with the steam of hot loaves.Such was the life of our philosopher. 10.15. When he was thirty-two he founded a school of philosophy, first in Mitylene and Lampsacus, and then five years later removed to Athens, where he died in the second year of the 127th Olympiad, in the archonship of Pytharatus, at the age of seventy-two; and Hermarchus the son of Agemortus, a Mitylenaean, took over the School. Epicurus died of renal calculus after an illness which lasted a fortnight: so Hermarchus tells us in his letters. Hermippus relates that he entered a bronze bath of lukewarm water and asked for unmixed wine, which he swallowed |
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