2. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of The Philosophers, 6.1, 7.1, 10.8 (3rd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE) Tagged with subjects: •greek identity, of diogenes Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 668 | 6.1. BOOK 6, 1. ANTISTHENESAntisthenes, the son of Antisthenes, was an Athenian. It was said, however, that he was not of pure Attic blood. Hence his reply to one who taunted him with this: The Mother of the Gods too is a Phrygian. For his mother was supposed to have been a Thracian. Hence it was that, when he had distinguished himself in the battle of Tanagra, he gave Socrates occasion to remark that, if both his parents had been Athenians, he would not have turned out so brave. He himself showed his contempt for the airs which the Athenians gave themselves on the strength of being sprung from the soil by the remark that this did not make them any better born than snails or wingless locusts. 7.1. BOOK 7: 1. ZENOZeno, the son of Mnaseas (or Demeas), was a native of Citium in Cyprus, a Greek city which had received Phoenician settlers. He had a wry neck, says Timotheus of Athens in his book On Lives. Moreover, Apollonius of Tyre says he was lean, fairly tall, and swarthy – hence some one called him an Egyptian vine-branch, according to Chrysippus in the first book of his Proverbs. He had thick legs; he was flabby and delicate. Hence Persaeus in his Convivial Reminiscences relates that he declined most invitations to dinner. They say he was fond of eating green figs and of basking in the sun. 10.8. besides, he himself in his letters says of Nausiphanes: This so maddened him that he abused me and called me pedagogue. Epicurus used to call this Nausiphanes jelly-fish, an illiterate, a fraud, and a trollop; Plato's school he called the toadies of Dionysius, their master himself the golden Plato, and Aristotle a profligate, who after devouring his patrimony took to soldiering and selling drugs; Protagoras a pack-carrier and the scribe of Democritus and village schoolmaster; Heraclitus a muddler; Democritus Lerocritus (the nonsense-monger); and Antidorus Sannidorus (fawning gift-bearer); the Cynics foes of Greece; the Dialecticians despoilers; and Pyrrho an ignorant boor. |
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