6. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of The Philosophers, 6.7, 6.11, 6.26-6.28, 6.83, 6.85-6.86, 6.101, 6.104-6.105 (3rd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
| 6.7. Being asked what learning is the most necessary, he replied, How to get rid of having anything to unlearn. And he advised that when men are slandered, they should endure it more courageously than if they were pelted with stones.And he used to taunt Plato with being conceited. At all events when in a procession he spied a spirited charger he said, turning to Plato, It seems to me that you would have made just such a proud, showy steed. This because Plato was constantly praising horseflesh. And one day he visited Plato, who was ill, and seeing the basin into which Plato had vomited, remarked, The bile I see, but not the pride. 6.11. And he held virtue to be sufficient in itself to ensure happiness, since it needed nothing else except the strength of a Socrates. And he maintained that virtue is an affair of deeds and does not need a store of words or learning; that the wise man is self-sufficing, for all the goods of others are his; that ill repute is a good thing and much the same as pain; that the wise man will be guided in his public acts not by the established laws but by the law of virtue; that he will also marry in order to have children from union with the handsomest women; furthermore that he will not disdain to love, for only the wise man knows who are worthy to be loved. 6.26. And one day when Plato had invited to his house friends coming from Dionysius, Diogenes trampled upon his carpets and said, I trample upon Plato's vainglory. Plato's reply was, How much pride you expose to view, Diogenes, by seeming not to be proud. Others tell us that what Diogenes said was, I trample upon the pride of Plato, who retorted, Yes, Diogenes, with pride of another sort. Sotion, however, in his fourth book makes the Cynic address this remark to Plato himself. Diogenes once asked him for wine, and after that also for some dried figs; and Plato sent him a whole jar full. Then the other said, If some one asks you how many two and two are, will you answer, Twenty? So, it seems, you neither give as you are asked nor answer as you are questioned. Thus he scoffed at him as one who talked without end. 6.27. Being asked where in Greece he saw good men, he replied, Good men nowhere, but good boys at Lacedaemon. When one day he was gravely discoursing and nobody attended to him, he began whistling, and as people clustered about him, he reproached them with coming in all seriousness to hear nonsense, but slowly and contemptuously when the theme was serious. He would say that men strive in digging and kicking to outdo one another, but no one strives to become a good man and true. 6.28. And he would wonder that the grammarians should investigate the ills of Odysseus, while they were ignorant of their own. Or that the musicians should tune the strings of the lyre, while leaving the dispositions of their own souls discordant; that the mathematicians should gaze at the sun and the moon, but overlook matters close at hand; that the orators should make a fuss about justice in their speeches, but never practise it; or that the avaricious should cry out against money, while inordinately fond of it. He used also to condemn those who praised honest men for being superior to money, while themselves envying the very rich. He was moved to anger that men should sacrifice to the gods to ensure health and in the midst of the sacrifice should feast to the detriment of health. He was astonished that when slaves saw their masters were gluttons, they did not steal some of the viands. 6.83. He came to be a distinguished man; so much so that he is even mentioned by the comic poet Meder. At any rate in one of his plays, The Groom, his words are:One Monimus there was, a wise man, Philo,But not so very famous.a. He, you mean,Who carried the scrip?b. Nay, not one scrip, but three.Yet never a word, so help me Zeus, spake heTo match the saying, Know thyself, nor suchFamed watchwords. Far beyond all these he went,Your dusty mendicant, pronouncing wholly vainAll man's supposings.Monimus indeed showed himself a very grave moralist, so that he ever despised mere opinion and sought only truth.He has left us, besides some trifles blended with covert earnestness, two books, On Impulses and an Exhortation to Philosophy. 6.85. 5. CRATESCrates, son of Ascondas, was a Theban. He too was amongst the Cynic's famous pupils. Hippobotus, however, alleges that he was a pupil not of Diogenes, but of Bryson the Achaean. The following playful lines are attributed to him:There is a city Pera in the midst of wine-dark vapour,Fair, fruitful, passing squalid, owning nought,Into which sails nor fool nor parasiteNor glutton, slave of sensual appetite,But thyme it bears, garlic, and figs and loaves,For which things' sake men fight not each with other,Nor stand to arms for money or for fame. 6.86. There is also his widely circulated day-book, which runs as follows:Set down for the chef ten minas, for the doctorOne drachma, for a flatterer talents five,For counsel smoke, for mercenary beautyA talent, for a philosopher three obols.He was known as the Door-opener – the caller to whom all doors fly open – from his habit of entering every house and admonishing those within. Here is another specimen of his composition:That much I have which I have learnt and thought,The noble lessons taught me by the Muses:But wealth amassed is prey to vanity.And again he says that what he has gained from philosophy isA quart of lupins and to care for no one.This too is quoted as his:Hunger stops love, or, if not hunger, Time,Or, failing both these means of help, – a halter. 6.101. There have been six men named Menippus: the first the man who wrote a History of the Lydians and abridged Xanthus; the second my present subject; the third a sophist of Stratonicea, a Carian by descent; the fourth a sculptor; the fifth and sixth painters, both mentioned by Apollodorus.However, the writings of Menippus the Cynic are thirteen in number:Necromancy.Wills.Epistles artificially composed as if by the gods.Replies to the physicists and mathematicians and grammarians; andA book about the birth of Epicurus; andThe School's reverence for the twentieth day.Besides other works. 6.104. So they get rid of geometry and music and all such studies. Anyhow, when somebody showed Diogenes a clock, he pronounced it a serviceable instrument to save one from being late for dinner. Again, to a man who gave a musical recital before him he said:By men's minds states are ordered well, and households,Not by the lyre's twanged strings or flute's trilled notes.They hold further that Life according to Virtue is the End to be sought, as Antisthenes says in his Heracles: exactly like the Stoics. For indeed there is a certain close relationship between the two schools. Hence it has been said that Cynicism is a short cut to virtue; and after the same pattern did Zeno of Citium live his life. 6.105. They also hold that we should live frugally, eating food for nourishment only and wearing a single garment. Wealth and fame and high birth they despise. Some at all events are vegetarians and drink cold water only and are content with any kind of shelter or tubs, like Diogenes, who used to say that it was the privilege of the gods to need nothing and of god-like men to want but little.They hold, further, that virtue can be taught, as Antisthenes maintains in his Heracles, and when once acquired cannot be lost; and that the wise man is worthy to be loved, impeccable, and a friend to his like; and that we should entrust nothing to fortune. Whatever is intermediate between Virtue and Vice they, in agreement with Ariston of Chios, account indifferent.So much, then, for the Cynics. We must now pass on to the Stoics, whose founder was Zeno, a disciple of Crates. |
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