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Title: The Cynics and Stoics Author: Diogenes Laërtius Date: 1925 Language: en Topics: cynicism, stoicism, philosophy, Ancient Greece, proto-anarchism Source: Retrieved on 8th July 2021 from https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lives_of_the_Eminent_Philosophers Notes: Excerpted from Book VI and VII of Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. Translated by Robert Drew Hicks.
1. Antisthenes,[1] 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.”[2]
For his mother was supposed to have been a Thracian. Hence it was that,
when he had distinguished himself in the battle of Tanagra,[3] 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.
2. To begin with, he became a pupil of Gorgias the rhetorician, and
hence the rhetorical style that he introduces in his dialogues, and
especially in his Truth and in his Exhortations. According to Hermippus
he intended at the public gathering for the Isthmian games to discourse
on the faults and merits of Athenians, Thebans and Lacedaemonians, but
begged to be excused when he saw throngs arriving from those cities.
Later on, however, he came into touch with Socrates, and derived so much
benefit from him that he used to advise his own disciples to become
fellow-pupils with him of Socrates. He lived in the Peiraeus, and every
day would tramp the five miles to Athens in order to hear Socrates. From
Socrates he learned his hardihood, emulating his disregard of feeling,
and thus he inaugurated the Cynic way of life. He demonstrated that pain
is a good thing by instancing the great Heracles and Cyrus, drawing the
one example from the Greek world and the other from the barbarians.
3. He was the first to define statement (or assertion) by saying that a
statement is that which sets forth what a thing was or is. He used
repeatedly to say, “I’d rather be mad than feel pleasure,” and “We ought
to make love to such women as will feel a proper gratitude.” When a lad
from Pontus was about to attend his lectures, and asked him what he
required, the answer was, “Come with a new book, a new pen, and new
tablets, if you have a mind to” (implying the need of brains as
well).[4] When someone inquired what sort of wife he ought to marry, he
said, “If she’s beautiful, you’ll not have her to yourself; if she’s
ugly, you’ll pay for it dearly.” Being told that Plato was abusing him,
he remarked, “It is a royal privilege to do good and be ill spoken
of.”[5]
4. When he was being initiated into the Orphic mysteries, the priest
said that those admitted into these rites would be partakers of many
good things in Hades. “Why then,” said he, “don’t you die?” Being
reproached because his parents were not both free-born, “Nor were they
both wrestlers,” quoth he, “but yet I am a wrestler.” To the question
why he had but few disciples he replied, “Because I use a silver rod to
eject them.” When he was asked why he was so bitter in reproving his
pupils he replied, “Physicians are just the same with their patients.”
One day upon seeing an adulterer running for his life he exclaimed,
“Poor wretch, what peril you might have escaped at the price of an
obol.” He used to say, as we learn from Hecato in his Anecdotes, that it
is better to fall in with crows than with flatterers; for in the one
case you are devoured when dead, in the other case while alive.
5. Being asked what was the height of human bliss, he replied, “To die
happy.” When a friend complained to him that he had lost his notes, “You
should have inscribed them,” said he, “on your mind instead of on
paper.” As iron is eaten away by rust, so, said he, the envious are
consumed by their own passion. Those who would fain be immortal must, he
declared, live piously and justly. States, said he, are doomed when they
are unable to distinguish good men from bad. Once, when he was applauded
by rascals, he remarked, “I am horribly afraid I have done something
wrong.”
When brothers agree, no fortress is so strong as their common life, he
said. The right outfit for a voyage, he said, is such as, even if you
are shipwrecked, will go through the water with you. 6. One day when he
was censured for keeping company with evil men, the reply he made was,
“Well, physicians are in attendance on their patients without getting
the fever themselves.” “It is strange,” said he, “that we weed out the
darnel from the corn and the unfit in war, but do not excuse evil men
from the service of the state.” When he was asked what advantage had
accrued to him from philosophy, his answer was, “The ability to hold
converse with myself.” Some one having called upon him over the wine for
a song, he replied, “Then you must accompany me on the pipe.” When
Diogenes begged a coat of him, he bade him fold his cloak around him
double. 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.” 8. He used to
recommend the Athenians to vote that asses are horses.[6] When they
deemed this absurd, his reply was, “But yet generals are found among you
who had had no training, but were merely elected.” “Many men praise
you,” said one. “Why, what wrong have I done?” was his rejoinder. When
he turned the torn part of his cloak so that it came into view, Socrates
no sooner saw this than he said, “I spy your love of fame peeping
through your cloak.”[7] Phanias in his work on the Socratics tells us
how some one asked him what he must do to be good and noble, and he
replied, “You must learn from those who know that the faults you have
are to be avoided.” When some one extolled luxury his reply was, “May
the sons of your enemies live in luxury.”
9. To the youth who was posing fantastically as an artist’s model he put
this question, “Tell me, if the bronze could speak, on what, think you,
would it pride itself most?” “On its beauty,” was the reply. “Then,”
said he, “are you not ashamed of delighting in the very same quality as
an inanimate object?” When a young man from Pontus promised to treat him
with great consideration as soon as his boat with its freight of salt
fish should arrive, he took him and an empty wallet to a flour-dealer’s,
got it filled, and was going away. When the woman asked for the money,
“The young man will pay,” said he, “when his boatload of salt fish
arrives.”
Antisthenes is held responsible for the exile of Anytus and the
execution of Meletus. 10. For he fell in with some youths from Pontus
whom the fame of Socrates had brought to Athens, and he led them off to
Anytus, whom he ironically declared to be wiser than Socrates; whereupon
(it is said) those about him with much indignation drove Anytus out of
the city. If he saw a woman anywhere decked out with ornaments, he would
hasten to her house and bid her husband bring out his horse and arms,
and then, if the man possessed them, let his extravagance alone, for (he
said) the man could with these defend himself; but, if he had none, he
would bid him strip off the finery.
Favourite themes[8] with him were the following. He would prove that
virtue can be taught; that nobility belongs to none other than the
virtuous. 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.
12. Diocles records the following sayings of his: To the wise man
nothing is foreign or impracticable. A good man deserves to be loved.
Men of worth are friends. Make allies of men who are at once brave and
just. Virtue is a weapon that cannot be taken away. It is better to be
with a handful of good men fighting against all the bad, than with hosts
of bad men against a handful of good men. Pay attention to your enemies,
for they are the first to discover your mistakes. Esteem an honest man
above a kinsman. Virtue is the same for women as for men. Good actions
are fair and evil actions foul. Count all wickedness foreign and alien.
13. Wisdom is a most sure stronghold which never crumbles away nor is
betrayed. Walls of defence must be constructed in our own impregnable
reasonings. He used to converse in the gymnasium of Cynosarges (White
hound) at no great distance from the gates, and some think that the
Cynic school derived its name from Cynosarges. Antisthenes himself too
was nicknamed a hound pure and simple. And he was the first, Diocles
tells us, to double his cloak and be content with that one garment and
to take up a staff and a wallet. Neanthes too asserts that he was the
first to double his mantle. Sosicrates, however, in the third book of
his Successions of Philosophers says this was first done by Diodorus of
Aspendus, who also let his beard grow and used a staff and a wallet.
14. Of all the Socratics Antisthenes alone is praised by Theopompus, who
says he had consummate skill and could by means of agreeable discourse
win over whomsoever he pleased. And this is clear from his writings and
from Xenophon’s Banquet. It would seem that the most manly section of
the Stoic School owed its origin to him. Hence Athenaeus the
epigrammatist writes thus of them:[9]
Ye experts in Stoic story, ye who commit to sacred pages most excellent
doctrines — that virtue alone is the good of the soul: for virtue alone
saves man’s life and cities. But that Muse[10] that is one of the
daughters of Memory approves the pampering of the flesh, which other men
have chosen for their aim.
15. Antisthenes[11] gave the impulse to the indifference of Diogenes,
the continence of Crates, and the hardihood of Zeno, himself laying the
foundations of their state. Xenophon calls him the most agreeable of men
in conversation and the most temperate in everything else.
His writings are preserved in ten volumes. The first includes:
Vol. 2 includes:
In the third volume are treatises:
In the fourth volume are included:
The fifth contains:
The sixth:
The seventh volume contains the following:
In the eighth volume are:
The ninth volume contains:
The contents of the tenth volume are:
This is the list of his writings.
Timon finds fault with him for writing so much and calls him a prolific
trifler. He died of disease just as Diogenes, who had come in, inquired
of him, “Have you need of a friend?” Once too Diogenes, when he came to
him, brought a dagger. And when Antisthenes cried out, “Who will release
me from these pains?” replied, “This,” showing him the dagger. “I said,”
quoth the other, “from my pains, not from life.” 19. It was thought that
he showed some weakness in bearing his malady through love of life. And
here are my verses upon him:[12]
Such was your nature, Antisthenes, that in your lifetime you were a very
bulldog to rend the heart with words, if not with teeth. Yet you died of
consumption. Maybe some one will say, What of that? We must anyhow have
some guide to the world below.
There have been three other men named Antisthenes: one a follower of
Heraclitus, another a native of Ephesus, and the third of Rhodes, a
historian.
And whereas we have enumerated the pupils of Aristippus and of Phaedo,
we will now append an account of the Cynics and Stoics who derive from
Antisthenes. And let it be in the following order.
20. Diogenes was a native of Sinope, son of Hicesius, a banker. Diocles
relates that he went into exile because his father was entrusted with
the money of the state and adulterated the coinage. But Eubulides in his
book on Diogenes says that Diogenes himself did this and was forced to
leave home along with his father. Moreover Diogenes himself actually
confesses in his Pordalus that he adulterated the coinage. Some say that
having been appointed to superintend the workmen he was persuaded by
them, and that he went to Delphi or to the Delian oracle in his own city
and inquired of Apollo whether he should do what he was urged to do.
When the god gave him permission to alter the political currency, not
understanding what this meant, he adulterated the state coinage, and
when he was detected, according to some he was banished, while according
to others he voluntarily quitted the city for fear of consequences. 21.
One version is that his father entrusted him with the money and that he
debased it, in consequence of which the father was imprisoned and died,
while the son fled, came to Delphi, and inquired, not whether he should
falsify the coinage, but what he should do to gain the greatest
reputation; and that then it was that he received the oracle.
On reaching Athens he fell in with Antisthenes. Being repulsed by him,
because he never welcomed pupils, by sheer persistence Diogenes wore him
out. Once when he stretched out his staff against him, the pupil offered
his head with the words, “Strike, for you will find no wood hard enough
to keep me away from you, so long as I think you’ve something to say.”
From that time forward he was his pupil, and, exile as he was, set out
upon a simple life.
22. Through watching a mouse running about, says Theophrastus in the
Megarian dialogue, not looking for a place to lie down in, not afraid of
the dark, not seeking any of the things which are considered to be
dainties, he discovered the means of adapting himself to circumstances.
He was the first, say some, to fold his cloak because he was obliged to
sleep in it as well, and he carried a wallet to hold his victuals, and
he used any place for any purpose, for breakfasting, sleeping, or
conversing. And then he would say, pointing to the portico of Zeus and
the Hall of Processions, that the Athenians had provided him with places
to live in. 23. He did not lean upon a staff until he grew infirm; but
afterwards he would carry it everywhere, not indeed in the city, but
when walking along the road with it and with his wallet; so say
Olympiodorus,[13] once a magistrate at Athens, Polyeuctus the orator,
and Lysanias the son of Aeschrio. He had written to some one to try and
procure a cottage for him. When this man was a long time about it, he
took for his abode the tub in the Metron, as he himself explains in his
letters. And in summer he used to roll in it over hot sand, while in
winter he used to embrace statues covered with snow, using every means
of inuring himself to hardship.
24. He was great at pouring scorn on his contemporaries. The school of
Euclides he called bilious, and Plato’s lectures waste of time, the
performances at the Dionysia great peep-shows for fools, and the
demagogues the mob’s lacqueys. He used also to say that when he saw
physicians, philosophers and pilots at their work, he deemed man the
most intelligent of all animals; but when again he saw interpreters of
dreams and diviners and those who attended to them, or those who were
puffed up with conceit of wealth, he thought no animal more silly. He
would continually say[14] that for the conduct of life we need right
reason or a halter.
25. Observing Plato one day at a costly banquet taking olives, “How is
it,” he said,[15] “that you the philosopher who sailed to Sicily for the
sake of these dishes, now when they are before you do not enjoy them?”
“Nay, by the gods, Diogenes,” replied Plato, “there also for the most
part I lived upon olives and such like.” “Why then,” said Diogenes, “did
you need to go to Syracuse? Was it that Attica at that time did not grow
olives?” But Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History attributes this to
Aristippus. Again, another time he was eating dried figs when he
encountered Plato and offered him a share of them. When Plato took them
and ate them, he said, “I said you might share them, not that you might
eat them all up.”
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,[16] 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.
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[17] and
kicking to outdo one another, but no one strives to become a good man
and true. 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. 29. He
would praise those who were about to marry and refrained, those who
intending to go a voyage never set sail, those who thinking to engage in
politics do no such thing, those also who purposing to rear a family do
not do so, and those who make ready to live with potentates, yet never
come near them after all. He used to say, moreover, that we ought to
stretch out our hands to our friends with the fingers open and not
closed.[18] Menippus[19] in his Sale of Diogenes tells how, when he was
captured and put up for sale, he was asked what he could do. He replied,
“Govern men.” And he told the crier to give notice in case anybody
wanted to purchase a master for himself. Having been forbidden to sit
down, “It makes no difference,” said he, “for in whatever position
fishes lie, they still find purchasers.” 30. And he said he marvelled
that before we buy a jar or dish we try whether it rings true, but if it
is a man are content merely to look at him. To Xeniades who purchased
him he said, “You must obey me, although I am a slave; for, if a
physician or a steersman were in slavery, he would be obeyed.” Eubulus
in his book entitled The Sale of Diogenes tells us that this was how he
trained the sons of Xeniades. After their other studies he taught them
to ride, to shoot with the bow, to sling stones and to hurl javelins.
Later, when they reached the wrestling-school, he would not permit the
master to give them full athletic training, but only so much as to
heighten their colour and keep them in good condition.
31. The boys used to get by heart many passages from poets, historians,
and the writings of Diogenes himself; and he would practise them in
every short cut to a good memory. In the house too he taught them to
wait upon themselves, and to be content with plain fare and water to
drink. He used to make them crop their hair close and to wear it
unadorned, and to go lightly clad, barefoot, silent, and not looking
about them in the streets. He would also take them out hunting. They on
their part had a great regard for Diogenes and made requests of their
parents for him. The same Eubulus relates that he grew old in the house
of Xeniades, and when he died was buried by his sons. 32. There Xeniades
once asked him how he wished to be buried. To which he replied, “On my
face.” “Why?” inquired the other. “Because,” said he, “after a little
time down will be converted into up.” This because the Macedonians had
now got the supremacy, that is, had risen high from a humble position.
Some one took him into a magnificent house and warned him not to
expectorate, whereupon having cleared his throat he discharged the
phlegm into the man’s face, being unable, he said, to find a meaner
receptacle. Others father this upon Aristippus. One day he shouted out
for men, and when people collected, hit out at them with his stick,
saying, “It was men I called for, not scoundrels.” This is told by
Hecato in the first book of his Anecdotes. Alexander is reported to have
said, “Had I not been Alexander, I should have liked to be Diogenes.”
33. The word “disabled” (ἀναπήρους), Diogenes held, ought to be applied
not to the deaf or blind, but to those who have no wallet (πήρα). One
day he made his way with head half shaven into a party of young
revellers, as Metrocles relates in his Anecdotes, and was roughly
handled by them. Afterwards he entered on a tablet the names of those
who had struck him and went about with the tablet hung round his neck,
till he had covered them with ridicule and brought universal blame and
discredit upon them. He described himself as a hound of the sort which
all men praise, but no one, he added, of his admirers dared go out
hunting along with him. When some one boasted that at the Pythian games
he had vanquished men, Diogenes replied, “Nay, I defeat men, you defeat
slaves.”
34. To those who said to him, “You are an old man; take a rest,” “What?”
he replied, “if I were running in the stadium, ought I to slacken my
pace when approaching the goal? ought I not rather to put on speed?”
Having been invited to a dinner, he declared that he wouldn’t go; for,
the last time he went, his host had not expressed a proper gratitude. He
would walk upon snow barefoot and do the other things mentioned above.
Not only so; he even attempted to eat meat raw, but could not manage to
digest it. He once found Demosthenes the orator lunching at an inn, and,
when he retired within, Diogenes said, “All the more you will be inside
the tavern.” When some strangers expressed a wish to see Demosthenes, he
stretched out his middle finger and said, “There goes the demagogue of
Athens.” 35. Some one dropped a loaf of bread and was ashamed to pick it
up; whereupon Diogenes, wishing to read him a lesson, tied a rope to the
neck of a wine-jar and proceeded to drag it across the Ceramicus.
He used to say that he followed the example of the trainers of choruses;
for they too set the note a little high, to ensure that the rest should
hit the right note. Most people, he would say, are so nearly mad that a
finger makes all the difference. For, if you go along with your middle
finger stretched out, some one will think you mad, but, if it’s the
little finger, he will not think so. Very valuable things, said he, were
bartered for things of no value, and vice versa. At all events a statue
fetches three thousand drachmas, while a quart of barley-flour is sold
for two copper coins.
36. To Xeniades, who purchased him, he said, “Come, see that you obey
orders.” When he quoted the line,
Backward the streams flow to their founts,[20]
Diogenes asked, “If you had been ill and had purchased a doctor, would
you then, instead of obeying him, have said ‘Backward the streams flow
to their founts’”? Some one wanted to study philosophy under him.
Diogenes gave him a tunny to carry and told him to follow him. And when
for shame the man threw it away and departed, some time after on meeting
him he laughed and said, “The friendship between you and me was broken
by a tunny.” The version given by Diocles, however, is as follows. Some
one having said to him, “Lay your commands upon us, Diogenes,” he took
him away and gave him a cheese to carry, which cost half an obol. The
other declined; whereupon he remarked, “The friendship between you and
me is broken by a little cheese worth half an obol.”
37. One day, observing a child drinking out of his hands, he cast away
the cup from his wallet with the words, “A child has beaten me in
plainness of living.” He also threw away his bowl when in like manner he
saw a child who had broken his plate taking up his lentils with the
hollow part of a morsel of bread. He used also to reason thus: “All
things belong to the gods. The wise are friends of the gods, and friends
hold things in common. Therefore all things belong to the wise.” One day
he saw a woman kneeling before the gods in an ungraceful attitude, and
wishing to free her of superstition, according to Zolus of Perga, he
came forward and said, “Are you not afraid, my good woman, that a god
may be standing behind you? – for all things are full of his presence –
and you may be put to shame?” 38. He dedicated to Asclepius a bruiser
who, whenever people fell on their faces, used to run up to them and
bruise them.
All the curses of tragedy, he used to say, had lighted upon him. At all
events he was
A homeless exile, to his country dead. A wanderer who begs his daily
bread.[21]
But he claimed that to fortune he could oppose courage, to convention
nature, to passion reason. When he was sunning himself in the Craneum,
Alexander came and stood over him and said, “Ask of me any boon you
like.” To which he replied, “Stand out of my light.”[22] Some one had
been reading aloud for a very long time, and when he was near the end of
the roll pointed to a space with no writing on it. “Cheer up, my men,”
cried Diogenes; “there’s land in sight.” 39. To one who by argument had
proved conclusively that he had horns, he said, touching his forehead,
“Well, I for my part don’t see any.” In like manner, when somebody
declared that there is no such thing as motion, he got up and walked
about. When some one was discoursing on celestial phenomena, “How many
days,” asked Diogenes, “were you in coming from the sky?” A eunuch of
bad character had inscribed on his door the words, “Let nothing evil
enter.” “How then,” he asked, “is the master of the house to get in?”
When he had anointed his feet with unguent, he declared that from his
head the unguent passed into the air, but from his feet into his
nostrils. The Athenians urged him to become initiated, and told him that
in the other world those who have been initiated enjoy a special
privilege. “It would be ludicrous,” quoth he, “if Agesilaus and
Epaminondas are to dwell in the mire, while certain folk of no account
will live in the Isles of the Blest because they have been initiated.”
40. When mice crept on to the table he addressed them thus, “See now
even Diogenes keeps parasites.” When Plato styled him a dog, “Quite
true,” he said, “for I come back again and again to those who have sold
me.” As he was leaving the public baths, somebody inquired if many men
were bathing. He said, No. But to another who asked if there was a great
crowd of bathers, he said, Yes. Plato had defined Man as an animal,
biped and featherless, and was applauded. Diogenes plucked a fowl and
brought it into the lecture-room with the words, “Here is Plato’s man.”
In consequence of which there was added to the definition, “having broad
nails.” To one who asked what was the proper time for lunch, he said,
“If a rich man, when you will; if a poor man, when you can.”
41. At Megara he saw the sheep protected by leather jackets, while the
children went bare. “It’s better,” said he, “to be a Megarian’s ram than
his son.”[23] To one who had brandished a beam at him and then cried,
“Look out,” he replied, “What, are you intending to strike me again?” He
used to call the demagogues the lackeys of the people and the crowns
awarded to them the efflorescence of fame. He lit a lamp in broad
daylight and said, as he went about, “I am looking for a man.” One day
he got a thorough drenching where he stood, and, when the bystanders
pitied him, Plato said, if they really pitied him, they should move
away, alluding to his vanity. When some one hit him a blow with his
fist, “Heracles,” said he, “how came I to forget to put on a helmet when
I walked out?” 42. Further, when Meidias assaulted him and went on to
say, “There are 3000 drachmas to your credit,” the next day he took a
pair of boxing-gauntlets, gave him a thrashing and said, “There are 3000
blows to your credit.”
When Lysias the druggist asked him if he believed in the gods, “How can
I help believing in them,” said he, “when I see a god-forsaken wretch
like you?” Others give this retort to Theodorus. Seeing some one perform
religious purification, he said, “Unhappy man, don’t you know that you
can no more get rid of errors of conduct by sprinklings than you can of
mistakes in grammar?” He would rebuke men in general with regard to
their prayers, declaring that they asked for those things which seemed
to them to be good, not for such as are truly good. 43. As for those who
were excited over their dreams he would say that they cared nothing for
what they did in their waking hours, but kept their curiosity for the
visions called up in their sleep. At Olympia, when the herald proclaimed
Dioxippus to be victor over the men, Diogenes protested, “Nay, he is
victorious over slaves, I over men.”
Still he was loved by the Athenians. At all events, when a youngster
broke up his tub, they gave the boy a flogging and presented Diogenes
with another. Dionysius the Stoic says that after Chaeronea he was
seized and dragged off to Philip, and being asked who he was, replied,
“A spy upon your insatiable greed.” For this he was admired and set
free.
44. Alexander having on one occasion sent a letter to Antipater at
Athens by a certain Athlios, Diogenes, who was present, said:
Graceless son of graceless sire to graceless wight by graceless squire.
Perdiccas having threatened to put him to death unless he came to him,
“That’s nothing wonderful,” quoth he, “for a beetle or a tarantula would
do the same.” Instead of that he would have expected the threat to be
that Perdiccas would be quite happy to do without his company. He would
often insist loudly that the gods had given to men the means of living
easily, but this had been put out of sight, because we require honeyed
cakes, unguents and the like. Hence to a man whose shoes were being put
on by his servant, he said, “You have not attained to full felicity,
unless he wipes your nose as well; and that will come, when you have
lost the use of your hands.”
45. Once he saw the officials of a temple leading away some one who had
stolen a bowl belonging to the treasurers, and said, “The great thieves
are leading away the little thief.” Noticing a lad one day throwing
stones at a cross (gibbet), “Well done,” he said, “you will hit your
mark.”[24] When some boys clustered round him and said, “Take care he
doesn’t bite us,” he answered, “Never fear, boys, a dog does not eat
beetroot.” To one who was proud of wearing a lion’s skin his words were,
“Leave off dishonouring the habiliments of courage.” When some one was
extolling the good fortune of Callisthenes and saying what splendour he
shared in the suite of Alexander, “Not so,” said Diogenes, “but rather
ill fortune; for he breakfasts and dines when Alexander thinks fit.”
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.[25] Thereupon he played a dog’s trick and drenched them.
47. Rhetoricians and all who talked for reputation he used to call
“thrice human,” meaning thereby “thrice wretched.” An ignorant rich man
he used to call “the sheep with the golden fleece.” Seeing a notice on
the house of a profligate, “To be sold,” he said, “I knew well that
after such surfeiting you would throw up the owner.” To a young man who
complained of the number of people who annoyed him by their attentions
he said, “Cease to hang out a sign of invitation.” Of a public bath
which was dirty he said, “When people have bathed here, where are they
to go to get clean?” There was a stout musician whom everybody
depreciated and Diogenes alone praised. When asked why, he said,
“Because being so big, he yet sings to his lute and does not turn
brigand.”
48. The musician who was always deserted by his audience he greeted with
a “Hail chanticleer,” and when asked why he so addressed him, replied,
“Because your song makes every one get up.” A young man was delivering a
set speech, when Diogenes, having filled the front fold of his dress
with lupins, began to eat them, standing right opposite to him. Having
thus drawn off the attention of the assemblage, he said he was greatly
surprised that they should desert the orator to look at himself. A very
superstitious person addressed him thus, “With one blow I will break
your head.” “And I,” said Diogenes, “by a sneeze from the left will make
you tremble.” Hegesias having asked him to lend him one of his writings,
he said, “You are a simpleton, Hegesias; you do not choose painted figs,
but real ones; and yet you pass over the true training and would apply
yourself to written rules.”
49. When some one reproached him with his exile, his reply was, “Nay, it
was through that, you miserable fellow, that I came to be a
philosopher.” Again, when some one reminded him that the people of
Sinope had sentenced him to exile, “And I them,” said he, “to
home-staying.” Once he saw an Olympic victor tending sheep and thus
accosted him: “Too quickly, my good friend, have you left Olympia for
Nemea.[26] “Being asked why athletes are so stupid, his answer was,
“Because they are built up of pork and beef.” He once begged alms of a
statue, and, when asked why he did so, replied, “To get practice in
being refused.” In asking alms – as he did at first by reason of his
poverty – he used this form: “If you have already given to anyone else,
give to me also; if not, begin with me.”
50. On being asked by a tyrant what bronze is best for a statue, he
replied, “That of which Harmodius and Aristogiton were moulded.” Asked
how Dionysius treated his friends, “Like purses,” he replied; “so long
as they are full, he hangs them up, and, when they are empty, he throws
them away.” Some one lately wed had set up on his door the notice:
The son of Zeus, victorious Heracles,
Dwells here; let nothing evil enter in.
To which Diogenes added “After war, alliance.” The love of money he
declared to be mother-city of all evils.[27] Seeing a spendthrift eating
olives in a tavern, he said, “If you had breakfasted in this fashion,
you would not so be dining.”
51. Good men he called images of the gods, and love the business of the
idle. To the question what is wretched in life he replied, “An old man
destitute.” Being asked what creature’s bite is the worst, he said, “Of
those that are wild a sycophant’s; of those that are tame a
flatterer’s.” Upon seeing two centaurs very badly painted, he asked,
“Which of these is Chiron?” (worse man). Ingratiating speech he compared
to honey used to choke you. The stomach he called livelihood’s
Charybdis.[28] Hearing a report that Didymon the flute-player had been
caught in adultery, his comment was, “His name alone is sufficient to
hang him.” To the question why gold is pale, his reply was, “Because it
has so many thieves plotting against it.” On seeing a woman carried in a
litter, he remarked that the cage was not in keeping with the quarry.
52. One day seeing a runaway slave sitting on the brink of a well, he
said, “Take care, my lad, you don’t fall in.” Seeing a boy taking
clothes at the baths, he asked, “Is it for a little unguent
(ἀλειμμάτιον) or is it for a new cloak (ἄλλ’ ἱμάτιον)?” Seeing some
women hanged from an olive-tree, he said, “Would that every tree bore
similar fruit.” On seeing a footpad he accosted him thus:
What mak’st thou here, my gallant?
Com’st thou perchance for plunder of the dead?[29]
Being asked whether he had any maid or boy to wait on him, he said “No.”
“If you should die, then, who will carry you out to burial?” “Whoever
wants the house,” he replied.
53. Noticing a good-looking youth lying in an exposed position, he
nudged him and cried, “Up, man, up, lest some foe thrust a dart into thy
back!” To one who was feasting lavishly he said:
Short-liv’d thou’lt be, my son, by what thou – buy’st.[30]
As Plato was conversing about Ideas and using the nouns “tablehood” and
“cuphood,” he said, “Table and cup I see; but your tablehood and
cuphood, Plato, I can nowise see.” “That’s readily accounted for,” said
Plato, “for you have the eyes to see the visible table and cup; but not
the understanding by which ideal tablehood and cuphood are discerned.”
54. On being asked by somebody, “What sort of a man do you consider
Diogenes to be?” “A Socrates gone mad,” said he.[31] Being asked what
was the right time to marry, Diogenes replied, “For a young man not yet:
for an old man never at all.” Being asked what he would take to be
soundly cuffed, he replied, “A helmet.” Seeing a youth dressing with
elaborate care, he said, “If it’s for men, you’re a fool; if for women,
a knave.” One day he detected a youth blushing. “Courage,” quoth he,
“that is the hue of virtue.” One day after listening to a couple of
lawyers disputing, he condemned them both, saying that the one had no
doubt stolen, but the other had not lost anything. To the question what
wine he found pleasant to drink, he replied, “That for which other
people pay.” When he was told that many people laughed at him, he made
answer, “But I am not laughed down.”
55. When some one declared that life is an evil, he corrected him: “Not
life itself, but living ill.” When he was advised to go in pursuit of
his runaway slave, he replied, “It would be absurd, if Manes can live
without Diogenes, but Diogenes cannot get on without Manes.” When
breakfasting on olives amongst which a cake had been inserted, he flung
it away and addressed it thus:
Stranger, betake thee from the princes’ path.[32]
And on another occasion thus:
He lashed an olive.[33]
Being asked what kind of hound he was, he replied, “When hungry, a
Maltese; when full, a Molossian – two breeds which most people praise,
though for fear of fatigue they do not venture out hunting with them. So
neither can you live with me, because you are afraid of the
discomforts.”
56. Being asked if the wise eat cakes, “Yes,” he said, “cakes of all
kinds, just like other men.” Being asked why people give to beggars but
not to philosophers, he said, “Because they think they may one day be
lame or blind, but never expect that they will turn to philosophy.” He
was begging of a miserly man who was slow to respond; so he said, “My
friend, it’s for food that I’m asking, not for funeral expenses.” Being
reproached one day for having falsified the currency, he said, “That was
the time when I was such as you are now; but such as I am now, you will
never be.” To another who reproached him for the same offence he made a
more scurrilous repartee.
57. On coming to Myndus and finding the gates large, though the city
itself was very small, he cried, “Men of Myndus, bar your gates, lest
the city should run away.” Seeing a man who had been caught stealing
purple, he said:
Fast gripped by purple death and forceful fate.[34]
When Craterus wanted him to come and visit him, “No,” he replied, “I
would rather live on a few grains of salt at Athens than enjoy sumptuous
fare at Craterus’s table.” He went up to Anaximenes the rhetorician, who
was fat, and said, “Let us beggars have something of your paunch; it
will be a relief to you, and we shall get advantage.” And when the same
man was discoursing, Diogenes distracted his audience by producing some
salt fish. This annoyed the lecturer, and Diogenes said, “An obol’s
worth of salt fish has broken up Anaximenes’ lecture-class.”
58. Being reproached for eating in the market-place, “Well, it was in
the market-place,” he said, “that I felt hungry.” Some authors affirm
that the following also belongs to him: that Plato saw him washing
lettuces, came up to him and quietly said to him, “Had you paid court to
Dionysius, you wouldn’t now be washing lettuces,” and that he with equal
calmness made answer, “If you had washed lettuces, you wouldn’t have
paid court to Dionysius.” When some one said, “Most people laugh at
you,” his reply was, “And so very likely do the asses at them; but as
they don’t care for the asses, so neither do I care for them.” One day
observing a youth studying philosophy, he said, “Well done, Philosophy,
that thou divertest admirers of bodily charms to the real beauty of the
soul.”
59. When some one expressed astonishment at the votive offerings in
Samothrace, his comment was, “There would have been far more, if those
who were not saved had set up offerings.” But others attribute this
remark to Diagoras of Melos. To a handsome youth, who was going out to
dinner, he said, “You will come back a worse man.” When he came back and
said next day, “I went and am none the worse for it,” Diogenes said,
“Not Worse-man (Chiron), but Lax-man (Eurytion).”[35] He was asking alms
of a bad-tempered man, who said, “Yes, if you can persuade me.” “If I
could have persuaded you,” said Diogenes, “I would have persuaded you to
hang yourself.” He was returning from Lacedaemon to Athens; and on some
one asking, “Whither and whence?” he replied, “From the men’s apartments
to the women’s.”
60. He was returning from Olympia, and when somebody inquired whether
there was a great crowd, “Yes,” he said, “a great crowd, but few who
could be called men.” Libertines he compared to fig-trees growing upon a
cliff: whose fruit is not enjoyed by any man, but is eaten by ravens and
vultures. When Phryne set up a golden statue of Aphrodite in Delphi,
Diogenes is said to have written upon it: “From the licentiousness of
Greece.” Alexander once came and stood opposite him and said, “I am
Alexander the great king.” “And I,” said he, “am Diogenes the
Cynic.”[36] Being asked what he had done to be called a hound, he said,
“I fawn on those who give me anything, I yelp at those who refuse, and I
set my teeth in rascals.”
61. He was gathering figs, and was told by the keeper that not long
before a man had hanged himself on that very fig-tree. “Then,” said he,
“I will now purge it.” Seeing an Olympian victor casting repeated
glances at a courtesan, “See,” he said, “yonder ram frenzied for battle,
how he is held fast by the neck fascinated by a common minx.” Handsome
courtesans he would compare to a deadly honeyed potion. He was
breakfasting in the marketplace, and the bystanders gathered round him
with cries of “dog.” “It is you who are dogs,” cried he, “when you stand
round and watch me at my breakfast.” When two cowards hid away from him,
he called out, “Don’t be afraid, a hound is not fond of beetroot.” 62.
After seeing a stupid wrestler practising as a doctor he inquired of
him, “What does this mean? Is it that you may now have your revenge on
the rivals who formerly beat you?” Seeing the child of a courtesan throw
stones at a crowd, he cried out, “Take care you don’t hit your father.”
A boy having shown him a dagger that he had received from an admirer,
Diogenes remarked, “A pretty blade with an ugly handle.” When some
people commended a person who had given him a gratuity, he broke in with
“You have no praise for me who was worthy to receive it.” When some one
asked that he might have back his cloak, “If it was a gift,” replied
Diogenes, “I possess it; while, if it was a loan, I am using it.” A
supposititious son having told him that he had gold in the pocket of his
dress, “True,” said he, “and therefore you sleep with it under your
pillow.” 63. On being asked what he had gained from philosophy, he
replied, “This at least, if nothing else – to be prepared for every
fortune.” Asked where he came from, he said, “I am a citizen of the
world.”[37] Certain parents were sacrificing to the gods, that a son
might be born to them. “But,” said he, “do you not sacrifice to ensure
what manner of man he shall turn out to be?” When asked for a
subscription towards a club, he said to the president:
Despoil the rest; off Hector keep thy hands.[38]
The mistresses of kings he designated queens; for, said he, they make
the kings do their bidding. When the Athenians gave Alexander the title
of Dionysus, he said, “Me too you might make Sarapis.”[39] Some one
having reproached him for going into dirty places, his reply was that
the sun too visits cesspools without being defiled.
64. When he was dining in a temple, and in the course of the meal loaves
not free from dirt were put on the table, he took them up and threw them
away, declaring that nothing unclean ought to enter a temple. To the man
who said to him, “You don’t know anything, although you are a
philosopher,” he replied, “Even if I am but a pretender to wisdom, that
in itself is philosophy.” When some one brought a child to him and
declared him to be highly gifted and of excellent character, “What need
then,” said he, “has he of me?” Those who say admirable things, but fail
to do them, he compared to a harp; for the harp, like them, he said, has
neither hearing nor perception. He was going into a theatre, meeting
face to face those who were coming out, and being asked why, “This,” he
said, “is what I practise doing all my life.”
65. Seeing a young man behaving effeminately, “Are you not ashamed,” he
said, “that your own intention about yourself should be worse than
nature’s: for nature made you a man, but you are forcing yourself to
play the woman.” Observing a fool tuning a psaltery, “Are you not
ashamed,” said he, “to give this wood concordant sounds, while you fail
to harmonize your soul with life?” To one who protested that he was ill
adapted for the study of philosophy, he said, “Why then do you live, if
you do not care to live well?” To one who despised his father, “Are you
not ashamed,” he said, “to despise him to whom you owe it that you can
so pride yourself?” Noticing a handsome youth chattering in unseemly
fashion, “Are you not ashamed,” he said, “to draw a dagger of lead from
an ivory scabbard?”
66. Being reproached with drinking in a tavern, “Well,” said he, “I also
get my hair cut in a barber’s shop.” Being reproached with accepting a
cloak from Antipater, he replied:
The gods’ choice gifts are nowise to be spurned.[40]
When some one first shook a beam at him and then shouted “Look out,”
Diogenes struck the man with his staff and added “Look out.” To a man
who was urgently pressing his suit to a courtesan he said, “Why, hapless
man, are you at such pains to gain your suit, when it would be better
for you to lose it?” To one with perfumed hair he said, “Beware lest the
sweet scent on your head cause an ill odour in your life.” He said that
bad men obey their lusts as servants obey their masters.
67. The question being asked why footmen are so called, he replied,
“Because they have the feet of men, but souls such as you, my
questioner, have.” He asked a spendthrift for a mina. The man inquired
why it was that he asked others for an obol but him for a mina.
“Because,” said Diogenes, “I expect to receive from others again, but
whether I shall ever get anything from you again lies on the knees of
the gods.” Being reproached with begging when Plato did not beg, “Oh
yes,” says he, “he does, but when he does so –
He holds his head down close, that none may hear.”[41]
Seeing a bad archer, he sat down beside the target with the words “in
order not to get hit.” Lovers, he declared, derive their pleasures from
their misfortune.
68. Being asked whether death was an evil thing, he replied, “How can it
be evil, when in its presence we are not aware of it?” When Alexander
stood opposite him and asked, “Are you not afraid of me?” “Why, what are
you?” said he, “a good thing or a bad?” Upon Alexander replying “A good
thing,” “Who then,” said Diogenes, “is afraid of the good?” Education,
according to him, is a controlling grace to the young, consolation to
the old, wealth to the poor, and ornament to the rich. When Didymon, who
was a rake, was once treating a girl’s eye, “Beware,” says Diogenes,
“lest the oculist instead of curing the eye should ruin the pupil.” On
somebody declaring that his own friends were plotting against him,
Diogenes exclaimed, “What is to be done then, if you have to treat
friends and enemies alike?”
69. Being asked what was the most beautiful thing in the world, he
replied, “Freedom of speech.” On entering a boys’ school, he found there
many statues of the Muses, but few pupils. “By the help of the gods,”
said he, “schoolmaster, you have plenty of pupils.” It was his habit to
do everything in public, the works of Demeter and of Aphrodite alike. He
used to draw out the following arguments. “If to breakfast be not
absurd, neither is it absurd in the market-place; but to breakfast is
not absurd, therefore it is not absurd to breakfast in the marketplace.”
Behaving indecently in public, he wished “it were as easy to banish
hunger by rubbing the belly.” Many other sayings are attributed to him,
which it would take long to enumerate.[42]
70. He used to affirm that training was of two kinds, mental and bodily:
the latter being that whereby, with constant exercise, perceptions are
formed such as secure freedom of movement for virtuous deeds; and the
one half of this training is incomplete without the other, good health
and strength being just as much included among the essential things,
whether for body or soul. And he would adduce indisputable evidence to
show how easily from gymnastic training we arrive at virtue. For in the
manual crafts and other arts it can be seen that the craftsmen develop
extraordinary manual skill through practice. Again, take the case of
flute-players and of athletes: what surpassing skill they acquire by
their own incessant toil; and, if they had transferred their efforts to
the training of the mind, how certainly their labours would not have
been unprofitable or ineffective.
71. Nothing in life, however, he maintained, has any chance of
succeeding without strenuous practice; and this is capable of overcoming
anything. Accordingly, instead of useless toils men should choose such
as nature recommends, whereby they might have lived happily. Yet such is
their madness that they choose to be miserable. For even the despising
of pleasure is itself most pleasurable, when we are habituated to it;
and just as those accustomed to a life of pleasure feel disgust when
they pass over to the opposite experience, so those whose training has
been of the opposite kind derive more pleasure from despising pleasure
than from the pleasures themselves. This was the gist of his
conversation; and it was plain that he acted accordingly, adulterating
currency in very truth, allowing convention no such authority as he
allowed to natural right, and asserting that the manner of life he lived
was the same as that of Heracles when he preferred liberty to
everything.
72. He maintained that all things are the property of the wise, and
employed such arguments as those cited above. All things belong to the
gods. The gods are friends to the wise, and friends share all property
in common; therefore all things are the property of the wise. Again as
to law: that it is impossible for society to exist without law; for
without a city no benefit can be derived from that which is civilized.
But the city is civilized, and there is no advantage in law without a
city; therefore law is something civilized. He would ridicule good birth
and fame and all such distinctions, calling them showy ornaments of
vice. The only true commonwealth was, he said, that which is as wide as
the universe. He advocated community of wives, recognizing no other
marriage than a union of the man who persuades with the woman who
consents. And for this reason he thought sons too should be held in
common.
73. And he saw no impropriety either in stealing anything from a temple
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,[43] 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. 74. He became very ready also at repartee in verbal
debates, as is evident from what has been said above.
Further, when he was sold as a slave, he endured it most nobly. For on a
voyage to Aegina he was captured by pirates under the command of
Scirpalus,[44] conveyed to Crete and exposed for sale. When the
auctioneer asked in what he was proficient, he replied, “In ruling men.”
Thereupon he pointed to a certain Corinthian with a fine purple border
to his robe, the man named Xeniades above-mentioned, and said, “Sell me
to this man; he needs a master.” Thus Xeniades came to buy him, and took
him to Corinth and set him over his own children and entrusted his whole
household to him. And he administered it in all respects in such a
manner that Xeniades used to go about saying, “A good genius has entered
my house.”
75. Cleomenes in his work entitled Concerning Pedagogues says that the
friends of Diogenes wanted to ransom him, whereupon he called them
simpletons; for, said he, lions are not the slaves of those who feed
them, but rather those who feed them are at the mercy of the lions: for
fear is the mark of the slave, whereas wild beasts make men afraid of
them. The man had in fact a wonderful gift of persuasion, so that he
could easily vanquish anyone he liked in argument. At all events a
certain Onesicritus of Aegina is said to have sent to Athens the one of
his two sons named Androsthenes, and he having become a pupil of
Diogenes stayed there; the father then sent the other also, the
aforesaid Philiscus, who was the elder, in search of him; but Philiscus
also was detained in the same way. 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.
77. But he soared aloft with his lip tightly pressed against his teeth
And holding his breath withal. For in truth he was rightly named
Diogenes, a true-born son of Zeus, a hound of heaven.
Another version is that, while trying to divide an octopus amongst the
dogs, he was so severely bitten on the sinew of the foot that it caused
his death. His friends, however, according to Antisthenes in his
Successions of Philosophers, conjectured that it was due to the
retention of his breath. For he happened to be living in the Craneum,
the gymnasium in front of Corinth. When his friends came according to
custom and found him wrapped up in his cloak, they thought that he must
be asleep, although he was by no means of a drowsy or somnolent habit.
They therefore drew aside his cloak and found that he was dead. This
they supposed to have been his deliberate act in order to escape
thenceforward from life.
78. Hence, it is said, arose a quarrel among his disciples as to who
should bury him: nay, they even came to blows; but, when their fathers
and men of influence arrived, under their direction he was buried beside
the gate leading to the Isthmus. Over his grave they set up a pillar and
a dog in Parian marble upon it. Subsequently his fellow-citizens
honoured him with bronze statues, on which these verses were inscribed:
Time makes even bronze grow old: but thy glory, Diogenes, all eternity
will never destroy.
Since thou alone didst point out to mortals the lesson of
self-sufficingness and the easiest path of life.[45]
79. We too have written on him in the proceleusmatic metre:
a. Diogenes, come tell me what fate took you to the world below?
d. A dog’s savage tooth.[46]
But some say that when dying he left instructions that they should throw
him out unburied, that every wild beast might feed on him, or thrust him
into a ditch and sprinkle a little dust over him. But according to
others his instructions were that they should throw him into the
Ilissus, in order that he might be useful to his brethren.
Demetrius in his work On Men of the Same Name asserts that on the same
day on which Alexander died in Babylon Diogenes died in Corinth. He was
an old man in the 113^(th) Olympiad.[47]
80. The following writings are attributed to him. Dialogues:
Seven Tragedies:
Sosicrates in the first book of his Successions, and Satyrus in the
fourth book of his Lives, allege that Diogenes left nothing in writing,
and Satyrus adds that the sorry tragedies are by his friend Philiscus,
the Aeginetan. Sotion in his seventh book declares that only the
following are genuine works of Diogenes: On Virtue, On Good, On Love, A
Mendicant, Tolmaeus, Pordalus, Casandrus, Cephalion, Philiscus,
Aristarchus, Sisyphus, Ganymedes, Anecdotes, Letters.
81. There have been five men who were named Diogenes. The first, of
Apollonia, a natural philosopher. The beginning of his treatise runs
thus: “At the outset of every discourse, methinks, one should see to it
that the basis laid down is unquestionable.” The second – of Sicyon –
who wrote an “Account of Peloponnesus.” The third, our present subject.
The fourth, a Stoic born at Seleucia, who is also called the Babylonian,
because Seleucia is near Babylon. The fifth, of Tarsus, author of a work
on poetical problems, which he attempts to solve.
Now the philosopher is said by Athenodorus in the eighth book of his
Walks to have always had a sleek appearance owing to his use of
unguents.[48]
82. Monimus of Syracuse was a pupil of Diogenes; and, according to
Sosicrates, he was in the service of a certain Corinthian banker, to
whom Xeniades, the purchaser of Diogenes, made frequent visits, and by
the account which he gave of his goodness in word and deed, excited in
Monimus a passionate admiration of Diogenes. For he forthwith pretended
to be mad and proceeded to fling away the small change and all the money
on the banker’s table, until at length his master dismissed him; and he
then straightway devoted himself to Diogenes. He often followed Crates
the Cynic as well, and embraced the like pursuits; whereupon his master,
seeing him do this, was all the more persuaded that he was mad.
83. He came to be a distinguished man; so much so that he is even
mentioned by the comic poet Menander. 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 he
To match the saying, Know thyself, nor such
Famed watchwords. Far beyond all these he went,
Your dusty mendicant, pronouncing wholly vain
All 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.
84. Onesicritus some report to have been an Aeginetan, but Demetrius of
Magnesia says that he was a native of Astypalaea. He too was one of the
distinguished pupils of Diogenes. His career seems to have resembled
that of Xenophon; for Xenophon joined the expedition of Cyrus,
Onesicritus that of Alexander; and the former wrote the Cyropaedia, or
Education of Cyrus, while the latter has described how Alexander was
educated: the one a laudation of Cyrus, the other of Alexander. And in
their diction they are not unlike: except that Onesicritus, as is to be
expected in an imitator, falls short of his model.
Amongst other pupils of Diogenes were Menander, who was nicknamed Drymus
or “Oakwood,” a great admirer of Homer; Hegesias of Sinope, nicknamed
“Dog-collar”; and Philiscus of Aegina mentioned above.
85. Crates, 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[49] the Achaean. The following playful
lines are attributed to him:[50]
There is a city Pera in the midst of wine-dark vapour,
Fair, fruitful, passing squalid, owning nought,
Into which sails nor fool nor parasite
Nor 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.
86. There is also his widely circulated day-book, which runs as follows:
Set down for the chef ten minas, for the doctor
One drachma, for a flatterer talents five,
For counsel smoke, for mercenary beauty
A 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:[51]
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 is
A quart of lupins and to care for no one.
This too is quoted as his:[52]
Hunger stops love, or, if not hunger, Time,
Or, failing both these means of help, – a halter.
87. He flourished in the 113^(th) Olympiad.[53]
According to Antisthenes in his Successions, the first impulse to the
Cynic philosophy was given to him when he saw Telephus in a certain
tragedy carrying a little basket and altogether in a wretched plight. So
he turned his property into money, – for he belonged to a distinguished
family, – and having thus collected about 200 talents, distributed that
sum among his fellow-citizens. And (it is added) so sturdy a philosopher
did he become that he is mentioned by the comic poet Philemon. At all
events the latter says:
In summer-time a thick cloak he would wear
To be like Crates, and in winter rags.
Diocles relates how Diogenes persuaded Crates to give up his fields to
sheep pasture, and throw into the sea any money he had.
88. In the home of Crates Alexander is said to have lodged, as Philip
once lived in Hipparchia’s. Often, too, certain of his kinsmen would
come to visit him and try to divert him from his purpose. These he would
drive from him with his stick, and his resolution was unshaken.
Demetrius of Magnesia tells a story that he entrusted a banker with a
sum of money on condition that, if his sons proved ordinary men he was
to pay it to them, but, if they became philosophers, then to distribute
it among the people: for his sons would need nothing, if they took to
philosophy. Eratosthenes tells us that by Hipparchia, of whom we shall
presently speak, he had a son born to him named Pasicles, and after he
had ceased to be a cadet on service, Crates took him to a brothel and
told him that was how his father had married. 89. The marriage of
intrigue and adultery, he said, belonged to tragedy, having exile or
assassination as its rewards; while the weddings of those who take up
with courtesans are material for comedy, for as a result of extravagance
and drunkenness they bring about madness.
This man had a brother named Pasicles, who was a disciple of Euclides.
Favorinus, in the second book of his Memorabilia, tells a pleasant story
of Crates. For he relates how, when making some request of the master of
the gymnasium, he laid hold on his hips; and when he demurred, said,
“What, are not these hip-joints yours as much as your knees?” It was, he
used to say, impossible to find anybody wholly free from flaws; but,
just as in a pomegranate, one of the seeds is always going bad. Having
exasperated the musician Nicodromus, he was struck by him on the face.
So he stuck a plaster on his forehead with these words on it,
“Nicodromus’s handiwork.” 90. He carried on a regular campaign of
invective against the courtesans, habituating himself to meet their
abuse.
When Demetrius of Phalerum sent him loaves of bread and some wine, he
reproached him, saying, “Oh that the springs yielded bread as well as
water!” It is clear, then, that he was a water-drinker. When the
police-inspectors found fault with him for wearing muslin, his answer
was, “I’ll show you that Theophrastus also wears muslin.” This they
would not believe: so he led them to a barber’s shop and showed them
Theophrastus being shaved. At Thebes he was flogged by the master of the
gymnasium – another version being that it was by Euthycrates and at
Corinth; and being dragged by the heels, he called out, as if it did not
affect him:[54]
Seized by the foot and dragged o’er heaven’s high threshold:
91. Diocles, however, says that it was by Menedemus of Eretria that he
was thus dragged. For he being handsome and being thought to be intimate
with Asclepiades the Phliasian, Crates slapped him on the side with a
brutal taunt; whereupon Menedemus, full of indignation, dragged him
along, and he declaimed as above.
Zeno of Citium in his Anecdotes relates that in a fit of heedlessness he
sewed a sheepskin to his cloak. He was ugly to look at, and when
performing his gymnastic exercises used to be laughed at. He was
accustomed to say, raising his hands, “Take heart, Crates, for it is for
the good of your eyes and of the rest of your body. 92. You will see
these men, who are laughing at you, tortured before long by disease,
counting you happy, and reproaching themselves for their sluggishness.”
He used to say that we should study philosophy to the point of seeing in
generals nothing but donkey-drivers. Those who live with flatterers he
declared to be as defenceless as calves in the midst of wolves; for
neither these nor those have any to protect them, but only such as plot
against them. Perceiving that he was dying, he would chant over himself
this charm, “You are going, dear hunchback, you are off to the house of
Hades, – bent crooked by old age.” For his years had bowed him down.
93. When Alexander inquired whether he would like his native city to be
rebuilt, his answer was, “Why should it be? Perhaps another Alexander
will destroy it again.” Ignominy and Poverty he declared to be his
country, which Fortune could never take captive. He was, he said, a
fellow-citizen of Diogenes, who defied all the plots of envy. Menander
alludes to him in the Twin Sisters in the following lines:
Wearing a cloak you’ll go about with me,
As once with Cynic Crates went his wife:
His daughter too, as he himself declared,
He gave in marriage for a month on trial.
We come now to his pupils.
94. Metrocles of Maroneia was the brother of Hipparchia. He had been
formerly a pupil of Theophrastus the Peripatetic, and had been so far
corrupted by weakness that, when he made a breach of good manners in the
course of rehearsing a speech, it drove him to despair, and he shut
himself up at home, intending to starve himself to death. On learning
this Crates came to visit him as he had been asked to do, and after
advisedly making a meal of lupins, he tried to persuade him by argument
as well that he had committed no crime, for a prodigy would have
happened if he had not taken the natural means of relieving himself. At
last by reproducing the action he succeeded in lifting him from his
dejection, using for his consolation the likeness of the occurrences.
From that time forward Metrocles was his pupil, and became proficient in
philosophy.
95. Hecato in the first book of his Anecdotes tells us he burned his
compositions with the words:[55]
Phantoms are these of dreams o’ the world below.
Others say that when he set fire to his notes of Theophrastus’s
lectures, he added the line:
Come hither, Hephaestus, Thetis now needeth thee.
He divided things into such as are procurable for money, like a house,
and such as can be procured by time and trouble, like education. Wealth,
he said, is harmful, unless we put it to a worthy use.
He died of old age, having choked himself.
His disciples were Theombrotus and Cleomenes: Theombrotus had for his
pupil Demetrius of Alexandria, while Cleomenes instructed Timarchus of
Alexandria and Echecles of Ephesus. Not but what Echecles also heard
Theombrotus, whose lectures were attended by Menedemus, of whom we shall
speak presently. Menippus of Sinope also became renowned amongst them.
96. Hipparchia too, sister of Metrocles, was captured by their
doctrines. Both of them were born at Maroneia.
She fell in love with the discourses and the life of Crates, and would
not pay attention to any of her suitors, their wealth, their high birth
or their beauty. But to her Crates was everything. She used even to
threaten her parents she would make away with herself, unless she were
given in marriage to him. Crates therefore was implored by her parents
to dissuade the girl, and did all he could, and at last, failing to
persuade her, got up, took off his clothes before her face and said,
“This is the bridegroom, here are his possessions; make your choice
accordingly; for you will be no helpmeet of mine, unless you share my
pursuits.”
97. The girl chose and, adopting the same dress, went about with her
husband and lived with him in public and went out to dinners with him.
Accordingly she appeared at the banquet given by Lysimachus, and there
put down Theodorus, known as the atheist, by means of the following
sophism. Any action which would not be called wrong if done by
Theodorus, would not be called wrong if done by Hipparchia. Now
Theodorus does no wrong when he strikes himself: therefore neither does
Hipparchia do wrong when she strikes Theodorus. He had no reply
wherewith to meet the argument, but tried to strip her of her cloak. But
Hipparchia showed no sign of alarm or of the perturbation natural in a
woman. 98. And when he said to her:
“Is this she
Who quitting woof and warp and comb and loom?”[56]
she replied, “It is I, Theodorus, – but do you suppose that I have been
ill advised about myself, if instead of wasting further time upon the
loom I spent it in education?” These tales and countless others are told
of the female philosopher.
There is current a work of Crates entitled Epistles, containing
excellent philosophy in a style which sometimes resembles that of Plato.
He has also written tragedies, stamped with a very lofty kind of
philosophy; as, for example, the following passage:[57]
Not one tower hath my country nor one roof,
But wide as the whole earth its citadel
And home prepared for us to dwell therein.
He died in old age, and was buried in Boeotia.
99. Menippus,[58] 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[59] in him; but his books overflow with
laughter, much the same as those of his contemporary Meleager.[60]
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. 100. At last, however, he fell a victim to
a plot, was robbed of all, and in despair ended his days by hanging
himself. I have composed a trifle upon him:[61]
May be, you know Menippus,
Phoenician by birth, but a Cretan hound:
A money-lender by the day – so he was called –
At Thebes when once on a time his house was broken into
And he lost his all, not understanding what it is to be a Cynic,
He hanged himself.
Some authorities question the genuineness of the books attributed to
him, alleging them to be by Dionysius and Zopyrus of Colophon, who,
writing them for a joke, made them over to Menippus as a person able to
dispose of them advantageously.
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;[62]
the fourth a sculptor; the fifth and sixth painters, both mentioned by
Apollodorus.
However, the writings of Menippus the Cynic are thirteen in number:
Besides other works.
102. Menedemus was a pupil of Colotes of Lampsacus. According to
Hippobotus he had attained such a degree of audacity in wonder-working
that he went about in the guise of a Fury, saying that he had come from
Hades to take cognisance of sins committed, and was going to return and
report them to the powers down below. This was his attire: a grey tunic
reaching to the feet, about it a crimson girdle; an Arcadian hat on his
head with the twelve signs of the zodiac inwrought in it; buskins of
tragedy; and he wore a very long beard and carried an ashen staff in his
hand.
103. Such are the lives of the several Cynics. But we will go on to
append the doctrines which they held in common – if, that is, we decide
that Cynicism is really a philosophy, and not, as some maintain, just a
way of life. They are content then, like Ariston of Chios, to do away
with the subjects of Logic and Physics and to devote their whole
attention to Ethics. And what some assert of Socrates, Diocles records
of Diogenes, representing him as saying: “We must inquire into
Whate’er of good or ill within our halls is wrought.”[63]
They also dispense with the ordinary subjects of instruction. At least
Antisthenes used to say that those who had attained discretion had
better not study literature, lest they should be perverted by alien
influences. 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:[64]
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.
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.
“Rage uncontrolled through all the hostile crew,
But touch not Hector, Hector is my due.”
</quote>In Clarke’s edition of 1740 it is expelled from the text and
relegated to a footnote. J. H. Voss, however, making a German
translation of the Iliad, probably between 1781 and 1793, still regarded
it as Homeric, but found a fresh place for it, after xvi. 90.
1. Zeno, 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.
2. He was a pupil of Crates, as stated above. Next they say he attended
the lectures of Stilpo and Xenocrates for ten years – so Timocrates says
in his Dion – and Polemo as well. It is stated by Hecato and by
Apollonius of Tyre in his first book on Zeno that he consulted the
oracle to know what he should do to attain the best life, and that the
god’s response was that he should take on the complexion of the dead.
Whereupon, perceiving what this meant, he studied ancient authors. Now
the way he came across Crates was this. He was shipwrecked on a voyage
from Phoenicia to Peiraeus with a cargo of purple. He went up into
Athens and sat down in a bookseller’s shop, being then a man of thirty.
3. As he went on reading the second book of Xenophon’s Memorabilia, he
was so pleased that he inquired where men like Socrates were to be
found. Crates passed by in the nick of time, so the bookseller pointed
to him and said, “Follow yonder man.” From that day he became Crates’s
pupil, showing in other respects a strong bent for philosophy, though
with too much native modesty to assimilate Cynic shamelessness. Hence
Crates, desirous of curing this defect in him, gave him a potful of
lentil-soup to carry through the Ceramicus; and when he saw that he was
ashamed and tried to keep it out of sight, with a blow of his staff he
broke the pot. As Zeno took to flight with the lentil-soup flowing down
his legs, “Why run away, my little Phoenician?” quoth Crates, “nothing
terrible has befallen you.”
4. For a certain space, then, he was instructed by Crates, and when at
this time he had written his Republic, some said in jest that he had
written it on Cynosura, i.e. on the dog’s tail.[65] Besides the Republic
he wrote the following works:
There are also by him:
This is a list of his writings. But at last he left Crates, and the men
above mentioned were his masters for twenty years. Hence he is reported
to have said, “I made a prosperous voyage when I suffered shipwreck.”
But others attribute this saying of his to the time when he was under
Crates. 5. A different version of the story is that he was staying at
Athens when he heard his ship was wrecked and said, “It is well done of
thee, Fortune, thus to drive me to philosophy.” But some say that he
disposed of his cargo in Athens, before he turned his attention to
philosophy.
He used then to discourse, pacing up and down in the painted colonnade,
which is also called the colonnade or Portico[66] of Pisianax, but which
received its name from the painting of Polygnotus; his object being to
keep the spot clear of a concourse of idlers. It was the spot where in
the time of the Thirty 1400 Athenian citizens had been put to death.[67]
Hither, then, people came henceforth to hear Zeno, and this is why they
were known as men of the Stoa, or Stoics; and the same name was given to
his followers, who had formerly been known as Zenonians. So it is stated
by Epicurus in his letters. According to Eratosthenes in his eighth book
On the Old Comedy, the name of Stoic had formerly been applied to the
poets who passed their time there, and they had made the name of Stoic
still more famous.
6. The people of Athens held Zeno in high honour, as is proved by their
depositing with him the keys of the city walls, and their honouring him
with a golden crown and a bronze statue. This last mark of respect was
also shown to him by citizens of his native town, who deemed his statue
an ornament to their city,[68] and the men of Citium living in Sidon
were also proud to claim him for their own. Antigonus (Gonatas) also
favoured him, and whenever he came to Athens would hear him lecture and
often invited him to come to his court. This offer he declined but
dispatched thither one of his friends, Persaeus, the son of Demetrius
and a native of Citium, who flourished in the 130^(th) Olympiad,[69] at
which time Zeno was already an old man. According to Apollonius of Tyre
in his work upon Zeno, the letter of Antigonus was couched in the
following terms:
7. “King Antigonus to Zeno the philosopher, greeting.
“While in fortune and fame I deem myself your superior, in reason and
education I own myself inferior, as well as in the perfect happiness
which you have attained. Wherefore I have decided to ask you to pay me a
visit, being persuaded that you will not refuse the request. By all
means, then, do your best to hold conference with me, understanding
clearly that you will not be the instructor of myself alone but of all
the Macedonians taken together. For it is obvious that whoever instructs
the ruler of Macedonia and guides him in the paths of virtue will also
be training his subjects to be good men. As is the ruler, such for the
most part it may be expected that his subjects will become.”
And Zeno’s reply is as follows:
8. “Zeno to King Antigonus, greeting.
“I welcome your love of learning in so far as you cleave to that true
education which tends to advantage and not to that popular counterfeit
of it which serves only to corrupt morals. But if anyone has yearned for
philosophy, turning away from much-vaunted pleasure which renders
effeminate the souls of some of the young, it is evident that not by
nature only, but also by the bent of his will he is inclined to nobility
of character. But if a noble nature be aided by moderate exercise and
further receive ungrudging instruction, it easily comes to acquire
virtue in perfection. 9. But I am constrained by bodily weakness, due to
old age, for I am eighty years old; and for that reason I am unable to
join you. But I send you certain companions of my studies whose mental
powers are not inferior to mine, while their bodily strength is far
greater, and if you associate with these you will in no way fall short
of the conditions necessary to perfect happiness.”
So he sent Persaeus and Philonides the Theban; and Epicurus in his
letter to his brother Aristobulus mentions them both as living with
Antigonus. I have thought it well to append the decree also which the
Athenians passed concerning him. It reads as follows:[70]
10. “In the archonship of Arrhenides, in the fifth prytany of the tribe
Acamantis on the twenty-first day of Maemacterion, at the twenty-third
plenary assembly of the prytany, one of the presidents, Hippo, the son
of Cratistoteles, of the deme Xypetaeon, and his co-presidents put the
question to the vote; Thraso, the son of Thraso of the deme Anacaea,
moved:
“Whereas Zeno of Citium, son of Mnaseas, has for many years been devoted
to philosophy in the city and has continued to be a man of worth in all
other respects, exhorting to virtue and temperance those of the youth
who come to him to be taught, directing them to what is best, affording
to all in his own conduct a pattern for imitation in perfect consistency
with his teaching, it has seemed good to the people – 11. and may it
turn out well – to bestow praise upon Zeno of Citium, the son of
Mnaseas, and to crown him with a golden crown according to the law, for
his goodness and temperance, and to build him a tomb in the Ceramicus at
the public cost. And that for the making of the crown and the building
of the tomb, the people shall now elect five commissioners from all
Athenians, and the Secretary of State shall inscribe this decree on two
stone pillars and it shall be lawful for him to set up one in the
Academy and the other in the Lyceum. And that the magistrate presiding
over the administration shall apportion the expense incurred upon the
pillars, that all may know that the Athenian people honour the good both
in their life and after their death. 12. Thraso of the deme Anacaea,
Philocles of Peiraeus, Phaedrus of Anaphlystus, Medon of Acharnae,
Micythus of Sypalettus, and Dion of Paeania have been elected
commissioners for the making of the crown and the building.”
These are the terms of the decree.
Antigonus of Carystus tells us that he never denied that he was a
citizen of Citium. For when he was one of those who contributed to the
restoration of the baths and his name was inscribed upon the pillar as
“Zeno the philosopher,” he requested that the words “of Citium” should
be added. He made a hollow lid for a flask and used to carry about money
in it, in order that there might be provision at hand for the
necessities of his master Crates. 13. It is said that he had more than a
thousand talents when he came to Greece, and that he lent this money on
bottomry.[71] He used to eat little loaves and honey and to drink a
little wine of good bouquet. He rarely employed men-servants; once or
twice indeed he might have a young girl to wait on him in order not to
seem a misogynist. He shared the same house with Persaeus, and when the
latter brought in a little flute-player he lost no time in leading her
straight to Persaeus. They tell us he readily adapted himself to
circumstances, so much so that King Antigonus often broke in on him with
a noisy party, and once took him along with other revellers to
Aristocles the musician; Zeno, however, in a little while gave them the
slip. 14. He disliked, they say, to be brought too near to people, so
that he would take the end seat of a couch, thus saving himself at any
rate from one half of such inconvenience. Nor indeed would he walk about
with more than two or three. He would occasionally ask the bystanders
for coppers, in order that, for fear of being asked to give, people
might desist from mobbing him, as Cleanthes says in his work On Bronze.
When several persons stood about him in the Colonnade he pointed to the
wooden railing at the top round the altar and said, “This was once open
to all, but because it was found to be a hindrance it was railed off. If
you then will take yourselves off out of the way you will be the less
annoyance to us.”
When Demochares, the son of Laches, greeted him and told him he had only
to speak or write for anything he wanted to Antigonus, who would be sure
to grant all his requests, Zeno after hearing this would have nothing
more to do with him.[72] 15. After Zeno’s death Antigonus is reported to
have said, “What an audience I have lost.”[73] Hence too he employed
Thraso as his agent to request the Athenians to bury Zeno in the
Ceramicus. And when asked why he admired him, “Because,” said he, “the
many ample gifts I offered him never made him conceited nor yet appear
poor-spirited.”
His bent was towards inquiry, and he was an exact reasoner on all
subjects. Hence the words of Timon in his Silli:[74]
A Phoenician too I saw, a pampered old woman ensconced in gloomy pride,
longing for all things; but the meshes of her subtle web have perished,
and she had no more intelligence than a banjo.[75]
16. He used to dispute very carefully with Philo the logician and study
along with him. Hence Zeno, who was the junior, had as great an
admiration for Philo as his master Diodorus. And he had about him
certain ragged dirty fellows, as Timon says[76] in these lines:
The while he got together a crowd of ignorant serfs, who surpassed all
men in beggary and were the emptiest of townsfolk.[77]
Zeno himself was sour and of a frowning countenance. He was very
niggardly too, clinging to meanness unworthy of a Greek, on the plea of
economy, If he pitched into anyone he would do it concisely, and not
effusively, keeping him rather at arm’s length. I mean, for example, his
remark upon the fop showing himself off. 17. When he was slowly picking
his way across a watercourse, “With good reason,” quoth Zeno, “he looks
askance at the mud, for he can’t see his face in it.” When a certain
Cynic declared he had no oil in his flask and begged some of him, Zeno
refused to give him any. However, as the man went away, Zeno bade him
consider which of the two was the more impudent. Being enamoured of
Chremonides, as he and Cleanthes were sitting beside the youth, he got
up, and upon Cleanthes expressing surprise, “Good physicians tell us,”
said he, “that the best cure for inflammation is repose.” When of two
reclining next to each other over the wine, the one who was neighbour to
Zeno kicked the guest below him, Zeno himself nudged the man with his
knee, and upon the man turning round, inquired, “How do you think your
neighbour liked what you did to him?” 18. To a lover of boys he
remarked, “Just as schoolmasters lose their common-sense by spending all
their time with boys, so it is with people like you.” He used to say
that the very exact expressions used by those who avoided solecisms were
like the coins struck by Alexander: they were beautiful in appearance
and well-rounded like the coins, but none the better on that account.
Words of the opposite kind he would compare to the Attic tetradrachms,
which, though struck carelessly and inartistically, nevertheless
outweighed the ornate phrases. When his pupil Ariston discoursed at
length in an uninspired manner, sometimes in a headstrong and
over-confident way. “Your father,” said he, “must have been drunk when
he begat you.” Hence he would call him a chatterbox, being himself
concise in speech.
19. There was a gourmand so greedy that he left nothing for his table
companions. A large fish having been served, Zeno took it up as if he
were about to eat the whole. When the other looked at him, “What do you
suppose,” said he, “those who live with you feel every day, if you
cannot put up with my gourmandise in this single instance?” A youth was
putting a question with more curiosity than became his years, whereupon
Zeno led him to a mirror, and bade him look in it; after which he
inquired if he thought it became anyone who looked like that to ask such
questions. Some one said that he did not in general agree with
Antisthenes, whereupon Zeno produced that author’s essay on Sophocles,
and asked him if he thought it had any excellence; to which the reply
was that he did not know. “Then are you not ashamed,” quoth he, “to pick
out and mention anything wrong said by Antisthenes, while you suppress
his good things without giving them a thought?”
20. Some one having said that he thought the chain-arguments of the
philosophers seemed brief and curt, Zeno replied, “You are quite right;
indeed, the very syllables ought, if possible, to be clipped.” Some one
remarked to him about Polemo, that his discourse was different from the
subject he announced. He replied with a frown, “Well, what value would
you have set upon what was given out?” He said that when conversing we
ought to be earnest and, like actors, we should have a loud voice and
great strength; but we ought not to open the mouth too wide, which is
what your senseless chatterbox does. “Telling periods,” he said, “unlike
the works of good craftsmen, should need no pause for the contemplation
of their excellences; on the contrary, the hearer should be so absorbed
in the discourse itself as to have no leisure even to take notes.”
21. Once when a young man was talking a good deal, he said, “Your ears
have slid down and merged in your tongue.” To the fair youth, who gave
it as his opinion that the wise man would not fall in love, his reply
was: “Then who can be more hapless than you fair youths?” He used to say
that even of philosophers the greater number were in most things unwise,
while about small and casual things they were quite ignorant. And he
used to cite the saying of Caphisius, who, when one of his pupils was
endeavouring to blow the flute lustily, gave him a slap and told him
that to play well does not depend on loudness, though playing loudly may
follow upon playing well.[78] And to a youth who was talking somewhat
saucily his rejoinder was, “I would rather not tell you what I am
thinking, my lad.”
22. A Rhodian, who was handsome and rich, but nothing more, insisted on
joining his class; but so unwelcome was this pupil, that first of all
Zeno made him sit on the benches that were dusty, that he might soil his
cloak, and then he consigned him to the place where the beggars sat,
that he might rub shoulders with their rags; so at last the young man
went away. Nothing, he declared, was more unbecoming than arrogance,
especially in the young. He used also to say that it was not the words
and expressions that we ought to remember, but we should exercise our
mind in disposing to advantage of what we hear, instead of, as it were,
tasting a well-cooked dish or well-dressed meal. The young, he thought,
should behave with perfect propriety in walk, gait and dress, and he
used continually to quote the lines of Euripides about Capaneus:
Large means had he, yet not the haughtiness
That springs from wealth, nor cherished prouder thoughts
Of vain ambition than the poorest man.[79]
23. Again he would say that if we want to master the sciences there is
nothing so fatal as conceit, and again there is nothing we stand so much
in need of as time. To the question “Who is a friend?” his answer was,
“A second self (alter ego).” We are told that he was once chastising a
slave for stealing, and when the latter pleaded that it was his fate to
steal, “Yes, and to be beaten too,” said Zeno. Beauty he called the
flower of chastity, while according to others it was chastity which he
called the flower of beauty.[80] Once when he saw the slave of one of
his acquaintance marked with weals, “I see,” said he, “the imprints of
your anger.” To one who had been drenched with unguent, “Who is this,”
quoth he, “who smells of woman?” When Dionysius the Renegade asked, “Why
am I the only pupil you do not correct?” the reply was, “Because I
mistrust you.” To a stripling who was talking nonsense his words were,
“The reason why we have two ears and only one mouth is that we may
listen the more and talk the less.” 24. One day at a banquet he was
reclining in silence and was asked the reason: whereupon he bade his
critic carry word to the king that there was one present who knew how to
hold his tongue. Now those who inquired of him were ambassadors from
King Ptolemy, and they wanted to know what message they should take back
from him to the king. On being asked how he felt about abuse, he
replied, “As an envoy feels who is dismissed without an answer.”
Apollonius of Tyre tells us how, when Crates laid hold on him by the
cloak to drag him from Stilpo, Zeno said, “The right way to seize a
philosopher, Crates, is by the ears: persuade me then and drag me off by
them; but, if you use violence, my body will be with you, but my mind
with Stilpo.”
25. According to Hippobotus he forgathered with Diodorus, with whom he
worked hard at dialectic. And when he was already making progress, he
would enter Polemo’s school: so far from all self-conceit was he. In
consequence Polemo is said to have addressed him thus: “You slip in,
Zeno, by the garden door – I’m quite aware of it – you filch my
doctrines and give them a Phoenician make-up.” A dialectician once
showed him seven logical forms concerned with the sophism known as “The
Reaper,” and Zeno asked him how much he wanted for them. Being told a
hundred drachmas, he promptly paid two hundred: to such lengths would he
go in his love of learning. They say too that he first introduced the
word Duty and wrote a treatise on the subject. It is said, moreover,
that he corrected Hesiod’s lines thus:
He is best of all men who follows good advice: good too is he who finds
out all things for himself.[81]
26. The reason he gave for this was that the man capable of giving a
proper hearing to what is said and profiting by it was superior to him
who discovers everything himself. For the one had merely a right
apprehension, the other in obeying good counsel superadded conduct.
When he was asked why he, though so austere, relaxed at a
drinking-party, he said, “Lupins too are bitter, but when they are
soaked become sweet.” Hecato too in the second book of his Anecdotes
says that he indulged freely at such gatherings. And he would say,
“Better to trip with the feet than with the tongue.” “Well-being is
attained by little and little, and nevertheless it is no little thing
itself.” [Others attribute this[82] to Socrates.]
27. He showed the utmost endurance, and the greatest frugality; the food
he used required no fire to dress, and the cloak he wore was thin. Hence
it was said of him:
The cold of winter and the ceaseless rain
Come powerless against him: weak the dart
Of the fierce summer sun or racking pain
To bend that iron frame. He stands apart
Unspoiled by public feast and jollity:
Patient, unwearied night and day doth he
Cling to his studies of philosophy.
Nay more: the comic poets by their very jests at his expense praised him
without intending it. Thus Philemon says in a play, Philosophers:
This man adopts a new philosophy.
He teaches to go hungry: yet he gets
Disciples. One sole loaf of bread his food;
His best dessert dried figs; water his drink.
Others attribute these lines to Poseidippus.
By this time he had almost become a proverb. At all events, “More
temperate than Zeno the philosopher” was a current saying about him.
Poseidippus also writes in his Men Transported:
So that for ten whole days
More temperate than Zeno’s self he seemed.
28. And in very truth in this species of virtue and in dignity he
surpassed all mankind, ay, and in happiness; for he was ninety-eight
when he died and had enjoyed good health without an ailment to the last.
Persaeus, however, in his ethical lectures makes him die at the age of
seventy-two, having come to Athens at the age of twenty-two. But
Apollonius says that he presided over the school for fifty-eight years.
The manner of his death was as follows. As he was leaving the school he
tripped and fell, breaking a toe. Striking the ground with his fist, he
quoted the line from the Niobe:[83]
I come, I come, why dost thou call for me?
and died on the spot through holding his breath.
29. The Athenians buried him in the Ceramicus and honoured him in the
decrees already cited above, adding their testimony of his goodness.
Here is the epitaph composed for him by Antipater of Sidon:[84]
Here lies great Zeno, dear to Citium, who scaled high Olympus, though he
piled not Pelion on Ossa, nor toiled at the labours of Heracles, but
this was the path he found out to the stars – the way of temperance
alone.
30. Here too is another by Zenodotus the Stoic, a pupil of Diogenes:[85]
Thou madest self-sufficiency thy rule,
Eschewing haughty wealth, O godlike Zeno,
With aspect grave and hoary brow serene.
A manly doctrine thine: and by thy prudence
With much toil thou didst found a great new school,
Chaste parent of unfearing liberty.
And if thy native country was Phoenicia,
What need to slight thee? came not Cadmus thence,
Who gave to Greece her books and art of writing?
And Athenaeus the epigrammatist speaks of all the Stoics in common as
follows:[86]
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!
She only it is who keeps the lives of men
And cities, – safer than high gates and walls.
But those who place their happiness in pleasure
Are led by the least worthy of the Muses.
31. We have ourselves mentioned the manner of Zeno’s death in the
Pammetros (a collection of poems in various metres):
The story goes that Zeno of Citium after enduring many hardships by
reason of old age was set free, some say by ceasing to take food; others
say that once when he had tripped he beat with his hand upon the earth
and cried, “I come of my own accord; why then call me?”[87]
For there are some who hold this to have been the manner of his death.
So much then concerning his death.
Demetrius the Magnesian, in his work on Men of the Same Name, says of
him: his father, Mnaseas, being a merchant often went to Athens and
brought away many books about Socrates for Zeno while still a boy. 32.
Hence he had been well trained even before he left his native place. And
thus it came about that on his arrival at Athens he attached himself to
Crates. And it seems, he adds, that, when the rest were at a loss how to
express their views, Zeno framed a definition of the end. They say that
he was in the habit of swearing by “capers” just as Socrates used to
swear by “the dog.” Some there are, and among them Cassius the Sceptic
and his disciples, who accuse Zeno at length. Their first count is that
in the beginning of his Republic he pronounced the ordinary education
useless: the next is that he applies to all men who are not virtuous the
opprobrious epithets of foemen, enemies, slaves, and aliens to one
another, parents to children, brothers to brothers, friends to friends.
33. Again, in the Republic, making an invidious contrast, he declares
the good alone to be true citizens or friends or kindred or free men;
and accordingly in the view of the Stoics parents and children are
enemies, not being wise. Again, it is objected, in the Republic he lays
down community of wives, and at line 200 prohibits the building of
temples, law-courts and gymnasia in cities; while as regards a currency
he writes that we should not think it need be introduced either for
purposes of exchange or for travelling abroad. Further, he bids men and
women wear the same dress and keep no part of the body entirely covered.
34. That the Republic is the work of Zeno is attested by Chrysippus in
his De Republica. And he discussed amatory subjects in the beginning of
that book of his which is entitled “The Art of Love.” Moreover, he
writes much the same in his Interludes. So much for the criticisms to be
found not only in Cassius but in Isidorus of Pergamum, the rhetorician.
Isidorus likewise affirms that the passages disapproved by the school
were expunged from his works by Athenodorus the Stoic, who was in charge
of the Pergamene library; and that afterwards, when Athenodorus was
detected and compromised, they were replaced. So much concerning the
passages in his writings which are regarded as spurious.
35. There have been eight persons of the name of Zeno. First the
Eleatic, of whom more hereafter; the second our present subject; the
third a Rhodian who wrote a local history in one volume; the fourth a
historian who wrote about the expedition of Pyrrhus into Italy and
Sicily, and besides that an epitome of the political history of Rome and
Carthage; the fifth a pupil of Chrysippus, who left few writings but
many disciples; the sixth a physician of the school of Herophilus, a
competent practitioner, though a poor writer; the seventh a grammarian,
who besides other writings has left behind him epigrams; the eighth a
Sidonian by birth and an Epicurean philosopher, lucid both in thinking
and in style.
36. Of the many disciples of Zeno the following are the most famous:
Persaeus, son of Demetrius, of Citium, whom some call a pupil and others
one of the household, one of those sent him by Antigonus to act as
secretary; he had been tutor to Antigonus’s son Halcyoneus. And
Antigonus once, wishing to make trial of him, caused some false news to
be brought to him that his estate had been ravaged by the enemy, and as
his countenance fell, “Do you see,” said he, “that wealth is not a
matter of indifference?”
The following works are by Persaeus:
37. Ariston, the son of Miltiades and a native of Chios, who introduced
the doctrine of things morally indifferent; Herillus of Carthage, who
affirmed knowledge to be the end; Dionysius, who became a renegade to
the doctrine of pleasure, for owing to the severity of his ophthalmia he
had no longer the nerve to call pain a thing indifferent: his native
place was Heraclea; Sphaerus of Bosporus; Cleanthes, son of Phanias, of
Assos, his successor in the school: him Zeno used to compare to hard
waxen tablets which are difficult to write upon, but retain the
characters written upon them. Sphaerus also became the pupil of
Cleanthes after Zeno’s death, and we shall have occasion to mention him
in the Life of Cleanthes. 38. And furthermore the following according to
Hippobotus were pupils of Zeno: Philonides of Thebes; Callippus of
Corinth; Posidonius of Alexandria; Athenodorus of Soli; and Zeno of
Sidon.[88]
I have decided to give a general account of all the Stoic doctrines in
the life of Zeno because he was the founder of the School. I have
already given a list of his numerous writings, in which he has spoken as
has no other of the Stoics. And his tenets in general are as follows. In
accordance with my usual practice a summary statement must suffice.[89]
39. Philosophic doctrine, say the Stoics, falls into three parts: one
physical, another ethical, and the third logical. Zeno of Citium was the
first to make this division in his Exposition of Doctrine, and
Chrysippus too did so in the first book of his Exposition of Doctrine
and the first book of his Physics; and so too Apollodorus and Syllus in
the first part of their Introductions to Stoic Doctrine, as also
Eudromus in his Elementary Treatise on Ethics, Diogenes the Babylonian,
and Posidonius.
These parts are called by Apollodorus “Heads of Commonplace”; by
Chrysippus and Eudromus specific divisions; by others generic divisions.
40. Philosophy, they say, is like an animal, Logic corresponding to the
bones and sinews, Ethics to the fleshy parts, Physics to the soul.
Another simile they use is that of an egg: the shell is Logic, next
comes the white, Ethics, and the yolk in the centre is Physics. Or,
again, they liken Philosophy to a fertile field: Logic being the
encircling fence, Ethics the crop, Physics the soil or the trees. Or,
again, to a city strongly walled and governed by reason.
No single part, some Stoics declare, is independent of any other part,
but all blend together. Nor was it usual to teach them separately.
Others, however, start their course with Logic, go on to Physics, and
finish with Ethics; and among those who so do are Zeno in his treatise
On Exposition, Chrysippus, Archedemus and Eudromus.
41. Diogenes of Ptolemas, it is true, begins with Ethics; but
Apollodorus puts Ethics second, while Panaetius and Posidonius begin
with Physics, as stated by Phanias, the pupil of Posidonius, in the
first book of his Lectures of Posidonius. Cleanthes makes not three, but
six parts, Dialectic, Rhetoric, Ethics, Politics, Physics, Theology. But
others say that these are divisions not of philosophic exposition, but
of philosophy itself: so, for instance, Zeno of Tarsus. Some divide the
logical part of the system into the two sciences of rhetoric and
dialectic; while some would add that which deals with definitions and
another part concerning canons or criteria: some, however, dispense with
the part about definitions.
42. Now the part which deals with canons or criteria they admit as a
means for the discovery of truth, since in the course of it they explain
the different kinds of perceptions that we have. And similarly the part
about definitions is accepted as a means of recognizing truth, inasmuch
as things are apprehended by means of general notions. Further, by
rhetoric they understand the science of speaking well on matters set
forth by plain narrative, and by dialectic that of correctly discussing
subjects by question and answer; hence their alternative definition of
it as the science of statements true, false, and neither true nor false.
Rhetoric itself, they say, has three divisions: deliberative, forensic,
and panegyric.
43. Rhetoric according to them may be divided into invention of
arguments, their expression in words, their arrangement, and delivery;
and a rhetorical speech into introduction, narrative, replies to
opponents, and peroration.
Dialectic (they hold) falls under two heads: subjects of discourse and
language. And the subjects fall under the following headings:
presentations[90] and the various products to which they give rise,
propositions enunciated and their constituent subjects and predicates,
and similar terms whether direct or reversed, genera and species,
arguments too, moods, syllogisms and fallacies whether due to the
subject matter or to the language; 44. these including both false and
true and negative arguments, sorites and the like, whether defective,
insoluble, or conclusive, and the fallacies known as the Veiled, or
Horned, No man, and The Mowers.
The second main head mentioned above as belonging to Dialectic is that
of language, wherein are included written language and the parts of
speech, with a discussion of errors in syntax and in single words,
poetical diction, verbal ambiguities, euphony and music, and according
to some writers chapters on terms, divisions, and style.
45. The study of syllogisms they declare to be of the greatest service,
as showing us what is capable of yielding demonstration; and this
contributes much to the formation of correct judgements, and their
arrangement and retention in memory give a scientific character to our
conception of things.
An argument is in itself a whole containing premisses and conclusion,
and an inference (or syllogism) is an inferential argument composed of
these. Demonstration is an argument inferring by means of what is better
apprehended something less clearly apprehended.
A presentation (or mental impression) is an imprint on the soul: the
name having been appropriately borrowed from the imprint made by the
seal upon the wax. 46. There are two species of presentation, the one
apprehending a real object, the other not. The former, which they take
to be the test of reality, is defined as that which proceeds from a real
object, agrees with that object itself, and has been imprinted
seal-fashion and stamped upon the mind: the latter, or non-apprehending,
that which does not proceed from any real object, or, if it does, fails
to agree with the reality itself, not being clear or distinct.
Dialectic, they said, is indispensable and is itself a virtue, embracing
other particular virtues under it.[91] Freedom from precipitancy is a
knowledge when to give or withhold the mind’s assent to impressions. 47.
By wariness they mean a strong presumption against what at the moment
seems probable, so as not to be taken in by it. Irrefutability is
strength in argument so as not to be brought over by it to the opposite
side. Earnestness (or absence of frivolity) is a habit of referring
presentations to right reason. Knowledge itself they define either as
unerring apprehension or as a habit or state which in reception of
presentations cannot be shaken by argument. Without the study of
dialectic, they say, the wise man cannot guard himself in argument so as
never to fall; for it enables him to distinguish between truth and
falsehood, and to discriminate what is merely plausible and what is
ambiguously expressed, and without it he cannot methodically put
questions and give answers.
48. Overhastiness in assertion affects the actual course of events, so
that, unless we have our perceptions well trained, we are liable to fall
into unseemly conduct and heedlessness; and in no other way will the
wise man approve himself acute, nimblewitted, and generally skilful in
argument; for it belongs to the same person to converse well and to
argue well, to put questions to the purpose and to respond to the
questions put; and all these qualifications are qualifications belonging
to the skilled dialectician.
Such is, summarily stated, the substance of their logical teaching. And
in order to give it also in detail,[92] let me now cite as much of it as
comes within the scope of their introductory handbook. I will quote
verbatim what Diocles the Magnesian says in his Synopsis of
Philosophers. These are his words:
49. “The Stoics agree to put in the forefront the doctrine of
presentation and sensation, inasmuch as the standard by which the truth
of things is tested is generically a presentation, and again the theory
of assent and that of apprehension and thought, which precedes all the
rest, cannot be stated apart from presentation. For presentation comes
first; then thought, which is capable of expressing itself, puts into
the form of a proposition that which the subject receives from a
presentation.”
50. There is a difference between the process and the outcome of
presentation. The latter is a semblance in the mind such as may occur in
sleep, while the former is the act of imprinting something on the soul,
that is a process of change, as is set forth by Chrysippus in the second
book of his treatise Of the Soul (De anima). For, says he, we must not
take “impression” in the literal sense of the stamp of a seal, because
it is impossible to suppose that a number of such impressions should be
in one and the same spot at one and the same time. The presentation
meant is that which comes from a real object, agrees with that object,
and has been stamped, imprinted and pressed seal-fashion on the soul, as
would not be the case if it came from an unreal object.
51. According to them some presentations are data of sense and others
are not: the former are the impressions conveyed through one or more
sense-organs; while the latter, which are not data of sense, are those
received through the mind itself, as is the case with incorporeal things
and all the other presentations which are received by reason. Of
sensuous impressions some are from real objects and are accompanied by
yielding and assent on our part. But there are also presentations that
are appearances and no more, purporting, as it were, to come from real
objects.
Another division of presentations is into rational and irrational, the
former being those of rational creatures, the latter those of the
irrational. Those which are rational are processes of thought, while
those which are irrational have no name. Again, some of our impressions
are scientific, others unscientific: at all events a statue is viewed in
a totally different way by the trained eye of a sculptor and by an
ordinary man.
52. The Stoics apply the term sense or sensation (αἴσθησις) to three
things: (1) the current passing from the principal part of the soul to
the senses, (2) apprehension by means of the senses, (3) the apparatus
of the sense-organs, in which some persons are deficient. Moreover, the
activity of the sense-organs is itself also called sensation. According
to them it is by sense that we apprehend black and white, rough and
smooth, whereas it is by reason that we apprehend the conclusions of
demonstration, for instance the existence of gods and their providence.
General notions, indeed, are gained in the following ways: some by
direct contact, some by resemblance, some by analogy, some by
transposition, some by composition, and some by contrariety.
53. By incidence or direct contact have come our notions of sensible
things; by resemblance notions whose origin is something before us, as
the notion of Socrates which we get from his bust; while under notions
derived from analogy come those which we get (1) by way of enlargement,
like that of Tityos or the Cyclops, or (2) by way of diminution, like
that of the Pygmy. And thus, too, the centre of the earth was originally
conceived on the analogy of smaller spheres. Of notions obtained by
transposition creatures with eyes on the chest would be an instance,
while the centaur exemplifies those reached by composition, and death
those due to contrariety. Furthermore, there are notions which imply a
sort of transition to the realm of the imperceptible: such are those of
space and of the meaning of terms. The notions of justice and goodness
come by nature. Again, privation originates notions; for instance, that
of the man without hands. Such are their tenets concerning presentation,
sensation, and thought.
54. The standard of truth they declare to be the apprehending
presentation, i.e. that which comes from a real object – according to
Chrysippus in the twelfth book of his Physics and to Antipater and
Apollodorus. Boethus, on the other hand, admits a plurality of
standards, namely intelligence, sense-perception, appetency, and
knowledge; while Chrysippus in the first book of his Exposition of
Doctrine contradicts himself and declares that sensation and
preconception are the only standards, preconception being a general
notion which comes by the gift of nature (an innate conception of
universals or general concepts). Again, certain others of the older
Stoics make Right Reason the standard; so also does Posidonius in his
treatise On the Standard.
55. In their theory of dialectic most of them see fit to take as their
starting-point the topic of voice. Now voice is a percussion of the air
or the proper object of the sense of hearing, as Diogenes the Babylonian
says in his handbook On Voice. While the voice or cry of an animal is
just a percussion of air brought about by natural impulse, man’s voice
is articulate and, as Diogenes puts it, an utterance of reason, having
the quality of coming to maturity at the age of fourteen. Furthermore,
voice according to the Stoics is something corporeal: I may cite for
this Archedemus in his treatise On Voice, Diogenes, Antipater and
Chrysippus in the second book of his Physics. 56. For whatever produces
an effect is body; and voice, as it proceeds from those who utter it to
those who hear it, does produce an effect. Reduced to writing, what was
voice becomes a verbal expression, as “day”; so says Diogenes. A
statement or proposition is speech that issues from the mind and
signifies something, e.g. “It is day.” Dialect (διάλεκτος) means a
variety of speech which is stamped on one part of the Greek world as
distinct from another, or on the Greeks as distinct from other races;
or, again, it means a form peculiar to some particular region, that is
to say, it has a certain linguistic quality; e.g. in Attic the word for
“sea” is not θάλασσα but θάλαττα, and in Ionic “day” is not ἡμέρα but
ἡμέρη.
Elements of language are the four-and-twenty letters. “Letter,” however,
has three meanings: (1) the particular sound or element of speech; (2)
its written symbol or character; (3) its name, as Alpha is the name of
the sound A. 57. Seven of the letters are vowels, a, e, ē i, o, u, ō,
and six are mutes, b, g, d, k, p, t. There is a difference between voice
and speech; because, while voice may include mere noise, speech is
always articulate. Speech again differs from a sentence or statement,
because the latter always signifies something, whereas a spoken word, as
for example βλίτυρι, may be unintelligible – which a sentence never is.
And to frame a sentence is more than mere utterance, for while vocal
sounds are uttered, things are meant, that is, are matters of discourse.
58. There are, as stated by Diogenes[93] in his treatise on Language and
by Chrysippus, five parts of speech: proper name, common noun, verb,
conjunction, article. To these Antipater in his work On Words and their
Meaning adds another part, the “mean.”[94]
A common noun or appellative is defined by Diogenes as part of a
sentence signifying a common quality, e.g. man, horse; whereas a name is
a part of speech expressing a quality peculiar to an individual, e.g.
Diogenes, Socrates. A verb is, according to Diogenes, a part of speech
signifying an isolated predicate, or, as others[95] define it, an
un-declined part of a sentence, signifying something that can be
attached to one or more subjects, e.g. “I write,” “I speak.” A
conjunction is an indeclinable part of speech, binding the various parts
of a statement together; and an article is a declinable part of speech,
distinguishing the genders and numbers of nouns, e.g. ὁ, ἡ, τό, οἱ, αἱ,
τά.[96]
59. There are five excellences of speech – pure Greek, lucidity,
conciseness, appropriateness, distinction. By good Greek is meant
language faultless in point of grammar and free from careless vulgarity.
Lucidity is a style which presents the thought in a way easily
understood; conciseness a style that employs no more words than are
necessary for setting forth the subject in hand; appropriateness lies in
a style akin to the subject; distinction in the avoidance of
colloquialism. Among vices of style barbarism is violation of the usage
of Greeks of good standing; while there is solecism when the sentence
has an incongruous construction.
60. Posidonius in his treatise On Style defines a poetical phrase as one
that is metrical or rhythmical, thus mechanically avoiding the character
of prose; an example of such rhythmical phrase is:
O mightiest earth, O sky, God’s canopy.[97]
And if such poetical phraseology is significant and includes a portrayal
or representation of things human and divine, it is poetry.
A term is, as stated by Antipater in his first book On Terms, a word
which, when a sentence is analysed, is uttered with complete meaning;
or, according to Chrysippus in his book On Definitions, is a rendering
back one’s own.[98] Delineation is a statement which brings one to a
knowledge of the subject in outline, or it may be called a definition
which embodies the force of the definition proper in a simpler form.
Genus (in logic) is the comprehension in one of a number of inseparable
objects of thought: e.g. Animal; for this includes all particular
animals.
61. A notion or object of thought is a presentation to the intellect,
which though not really substance nor attribute is quasi-substance or
quasi-attribute.[99] Thus an image of a horse may rise before the mind,
although there is no horse present.
Species is that which is comprehended under genus: thus Man is included
under Animal. The highest or most universal genus is that which, being
itself a genus, has no genus above: namely, reality or the real; and the
lowest and most particular species is that which, being itself a
species, has no species below it, e.g. Socrates.
Division of a genus means dissection of it into its proximate species,
thus: Animals are either rational or irrational (dichotomy). Contrary
division dissects the genus into species by contrary qualities: for
example, by means of negation, as when all things that are are divided
into good and not good. Subdivision is division applied to a previous
division: for instance, after saying, “Of things that are some are good,
some are not good,” we proceed, “and of the not good some are bad, some
are neither good nor bad (morally indifferent).”
62. Partition in logic is (according to Crinis) classification or
distribution of a genus under heads: for instance, Of goods some are
mental, others bodily.
Verbal ambiguity arises when a word properly, rightfully, and in
accordance with fixed usage denotes two or more different things, so
that at one and the same time we may take it in several distinct senses:
e.g. in Greek, where by the same verbal expression may be meant in the
one case that “A house has three times” fallen, in the other that “a
dancing-girl” has fallen.
Posidonius defines Dialectic as the science dealing with truth,
falsehood, and that which is neither true nor false; whereas Chrysippus
takes its subject to be signs and things signified. Such then is the
gist of what the Stoics say in their theory of language.
63. To the department dealing with things as such and things signified
is assigned the doctrine of expressions, including those which are
complete in themselves, as well as judgements and syllogisms and that of
defective expressions comprising predicates both direct and
reversed.[100]
By verbal expression they mean that of which the content corresponds to
some rational presentation. Of such expressions the Stoics say that some
are complete in themselves and others defective. Those are defective the
enunciation of which is unfinished, as e.g. “writes,” for we inquire
“Who?” Whereas in those that are complete in themselves the enunciation
is finished, as “Socrates writes.” And so under the head of defective
expressions are ranged all predicates, while under those complete in
themselves fall judgements, syllogisms, questions, and inquiries.
64. A predicate is, according to the followers of Apollodorus, what is
said of something; in other words, a thing associated with one or more
subjects; or, again, it may be defined as a defective expression which
has to be joined on to a nominative case in order to yield a judgement.
Of predicates some are adjectival [101], as e.g. “to sail through
rocks.”[102] Again, some predicates are direct, some reversed, some
neither. Now direct predicates are those that are constructed with one
of the oblique cases, as “hears,” “sees,” “converses”; while reversed
are those constructed with the passive voice, as “I am heard,” “I am
seen.” Neutral are such as correspond to neither of these, as “thinks,”
“walks.” Reflexive predicates are those among the passive, which,
although in form passive, are yet active operations,[103] as “he gets
his hair cut”:[104] 65. for here the agent includes himself in the
sphere of his action. The oblique cases are genitive, dative, and
accusative.
A judgement is that which is either true or false, or a thing complete
in itself, capable of being denied in and by itself, as Chrysippus says
in his Dialectical Definitions: “A judgement is that which in and by
itself can be denied or affirmed, e.g. ‘It is day,’ ‘Dion is walking.’”
The Greek word for judgement (ἀξίωμα) is derived from the verb ἀξιοῦν,
as signifying acceptance or rejection; for when you say “It is day,” you
seem to accept the fact that it is day. Now, if it really is day, the
judgement before us is true, but if not, it is false. 66. There is a
difference between judgement, interrogation, and inquiry, as also
between imperative, adjurative, optative, hypothetical, vocative,
whether that to which these terms are applied be a thing or a judgement.
For a judgement is that which, when we set it forth in speech, becomes
an assertion, and is either false or true: an interrogation is a thing
complete in itself like a judgement but demanding an answer, e.g. “Is it
day?” and this is so far neither true nor false. Thus “It is day” is a
judgement; “Is it day?” an interrogation. An inquiry is something to
which we cannot reply by signs, as you can nod Yes to an interrogation;
but you must express the answer in words, “He lives in this or that
place.”
67. An imperative is something which conveys a command: e.g.
Go thou to the waters of Inachus.[105]
An adjurative utterance is something ... A vocative utterance is
something the use of which implies that you are addressing some one; for
instance:
Most glorious son of Atreus, Agamemnon, lord of men.[106]
A quasi-proposition is that which, having the enunciation of a
judgement, yet in consequence of the intensified tone or emotion of one
of its parts falls outside the class of judgements proper, e.g.
Yea, fair indeed the Parthenon!
How like to Priam’s sons the cowherd is![107]
68. There is also, differing from a proposition or judgement, what may
be called a timid suggestion, the expression of which leaves one at a
loss, e.g.
Can it be that pain and life are in some sort akin?
Interrogations, inquiries and the like are neither true nor false,
whereas judgements (or propositions) are always either true or false.
The followers of Chrysippus, Archedemus, Athenodorus, Antipater and
Crinis divide propositions into simple and not simple. Simple are those
that consist of one or more propositions which are not ambiguous, as “It
is day.” Not simple are those that consist of one or more ambiguous
propositions. 69. They may, that is, consist either of a single
ambiguous proposition, e.g. “If it is day, it is day,” or of more than
one proposition, e.g. “If it is day, it is light.”
With simple propositions are classed those of negation, denial,
privation, affirmation, the definitive and the indefinitive; with those
that are not simple the hypothetical, the inferential, the coupled or
complex, the disjunctive, the causal, and that which indicates more or
less. An example of a negative proposition is “It is not day.” Of the
negative proposition one species is the double negative. By double
negative is meant the negation of a negation, e.g. “It is not not-day.”
Now this presupposes that it is day.
70. A denial contains a negative part or particle and a predication:
such as this, “No one is walking.” A privative proposition is one that
contains a privative particle reversing the effect of a judgement, as,
for example, “This man is unkind.” An affirmative or assertory
proposition is one that consists of a noun in the nominative case and a
predicate, as “Dion is walking.” A definitive proposition is one that
consists of a demonstrative in the nominative case and a predicate, as
“This man is walking.” An indefinitive proposition is one that consists
of an indefinite word or words and a predicate, e.g. “Some one is
walking,” or “There’s some one walking”; “He is in motion.”
71. Of propositions that are not simple the hypothetical, according to
Chrysippus in his Dialectics and Diogenes in his Art of Dialectic, is
one that is formed by means of the conditional conjunction “If.” Now
this conjunction promises that the second of two things follows
consequentially upon the first, as, for instance, “If it is day, it is
light.” An inferential proposition according to Crinis in his Art of
Dialectic is one which is introduced by the conjunction “Since” and
consists of an initial proposition and a conclusion; for example, “Since
it is day-time, it is light.” This conjunction guarantees both that the
second thing follows from the first and that the first is really a fact.
72. A coupled proposition is one which is put together by certain
coupling conjunctions, e.g. “It is day-time and it is light.” A
disjunctive proposition is one which is constituted such by the
disjunctive conjunction “Either,” as e.g. “Either it is day or it is
night.” This conjunction guarantees that one or other of the
alternatives is false. A causal proposition is constructed by means of
the conjunction “Because,” e.g. “Because it is day, it is light.” For
the first clause is, as it were, the cause of the second. A proposition
which indicates more or less is one that is formed by the word
signifying “rather” and the word “than” in between the clauses, as, for
example, “It is rather day-time than night.” 73. Opposite in character
to the foregoing is a proposition which declares what is less the fact,
as e.g. “It is less or not so much night as day.” Further, among
propositions there are some which in respect of truth and falsehood
stand opposed to one another, of which the one is the negative of the
other, as e.g. the propositions “It is day” and “It is not day.” A
hypothetical proposition is therefore true, if the contradictory of its
conclusion is incompatible with its premiss, e.g. “If it is day, it is
light.” This is true. For the statement “It is not light,” contradicting
the conclusion, is incompatible with the premiss “It is day.” On the
other hand, a hypothetical proposition is false, if the contradictory of
its conclusion does not conflict with the premiss, e.g. “If it is day,
Dion is walking.” For the statement “Dion is not walking” does not
conflict with the premiss “It is day.”
74. An inferential proposition is true if starting from a true premiss
it also has a consequent conclusion, as e.g. “Since it is day, the sun
is above the horizon.” But it is false if it starts from a false premiss
or has an inconsequent conclusion, as e.g. “Since it is night, Dion is
walking,” if this be said in day-time. A causal proposition is true if
its conclusion really follows from a premiss itself true, though the
premiss does not follow conversely from the conclusion, as e.g. “Because
it is day, it is light,” where from the “it is day” the “it is light”
duly follows, though from the statement “it is light” it would not
follow that “it is day.” But a causal proposition is false if it either
starts from a false premiss or has an inconsequent conclusion or has a
premiss that does not correspond with the conclusion, as e.g. “Because
it is night, Dion is walking.” 75. A probable judgement is one which
induces to assent, e.g. “Whoever gave birth to anything, is that thing’s
mother.” This, however, is not necessarily true; for the hen is not
mother of an egg.
Again, some things are possible, others impossible; and some things are
necessary, others are not necessary. A proposition is possible which
admits of being true, there being nothing in external circumstances to
prevent it being true, e.g. “Diocles is alive.” Impossible is one which
does not admit of being true, as e.g. “The earth flies.” That is
necessary which besides being true does not admit of being false or,
while it may admit of being false, is prevented from being false by
circumstances external to itself, as “Virtue is beneficial.” Not
necessary is that which, while true, yet is capable of being false if
there are no external conditions to prevent, e.g. “Dion is walking.” 76.
A reasonable proposition is one which has to start with more chances of
being true than not, e.g. “I shall be alive to-morrow.”
And there are other shades of difference in propositions and grades of
transition from true to false – and conversions of their terms – which
we now go on to describe broadly.
An argument, according to the followers of Crinis, consists of a major
premiss, a minor premiss, and a conclusion, such as for example this:
“If it is day, it is light; but it is day, therefore it is light.” Here
the sentence “If it is day, it is light” is the major premiss, the
clause “it is day” is the minor premiss, and “therefore it is light” is
the conclusion. A mood is a sort of outline of an argument, like the
following: “If the first, then the second; but the first is, therefore
the second is.”
77. Symbolical argument is a combination of full argument and mood; e.g.
“If Plato is alive, he breathes; but the first is true, therefore the
second is true.” This mode of argument was introduced in order that when
dealing with long complex arguments we should not have to repeat the
minor premiss, if it be long, and then state the conclusion, but may
arrive at the conclusion as concisely as possible: if A, then B.
Of arguments some are conclusive, others inconclusive. Inconclusive are
such that the contradictory of the conclusion is not incompatible with
combination of the premisses, as in the following: “If it is day, it is
light; but it is day, therefore Dion walks.”[108]
78. Of conclusive some are denoted by the common name of the whole
class, “conclusive proper,” others are called syllogistic. The
syllogistic are such as either do not admit of, or are reducible to such
as do not admit of, immediate proof in respect of one or more of the
premisses; e.g. “If Dion walks, then Dion is in motion; but Dion is
walking, therefore Dion is in motion.” Conclusive specifically are those
which draw conclusions, but not by syllogism; e.g. the statement “It is
both day and night” is false: “now it is day; therefore it is not
night.” Arguments not syllogistic are those which plausibly resemble
syllogistic arguments, but are not cogent proof; e.g. “If Dion is a
horse, he is an animal; but Dion is not a horse, therefore he is not an
animal.”
79. Further, arguments may be divided into true and false. The former
draw their conclusions by means of true premisses; e.g. “If virtue does
good, vice does harm; but virtue does good, therefore vice does
harm.”[109] Those are false which have error in the premisses or are
inconclusive; e.g. “If it is day, it is light; but it is day, therefore
Dion is alive.” Arguments may also be divided into possible and
impossible, necessary and not necessary. Further, there are statements
which are indemonstrable because they do not need demonstration; they
are employed in the construction of every argument. As to the number of
these, authorities differ; Chrysippus makes them five. These are assumed
alike in reasoning specifically conclusive and in syllogisms both
categorical and hypothetical. 80. The first kind of indemonstrable
statement is that in which the whole argument is constructed of a
hypothetical proposition and the clause with which the hypothetical
proposition begins, while the final clause is the conclusion; as e.g.
“If the first, then the second; but the first is, therefore the second
is.”[110] The second is that which employs a hypothetical proposition
and the contradictory of the consequent, while the conclusion is the
contradictory of the antecedent; e.g. “If it is day, it is light; but it
is night, therefore it is not day.” Here the minor premiss is the
contradictory of the consequent; the conclusion the contradictory of the
antecedent. The third kind of indemonstrable employs a conjunction of
negative propositions for major premiss and one of the conjoined
propositions for minor premiss, concluding thence the contradictory of
the remaining proposition; e.g. “It is not the case that Plato is both
dead and alive; but he is dead, therefore Plato is not alive.” 81. The
fourth kind employs a disjunctive proposition and one of the two
alternatives in the disjunction as premisses, and its conclusion is the
contradictory of the other alternative; e.g. “Either A or B; but A is,
therefore B is not.” The fifth kind is that in which the argument as a
whole is constructed of a disjunctive proposition and the contradictory
of one of the alternatives in the disjunction, its conclusion being the
other alternative; e.g. “Either it is day or it is night; but it is not
night, therefore it is day.”
From a truth a truth follows, according to the Stoics, as e.g. “It is
light” from “It is day”; and from a falsehood a falsehood, as “It is
dark” from “It is night,” if this latter be untrue. Also a truth may
follow from a falsehood; e.g. from “The earth flies” will follow “The
earth exists”; whereas from a truth no falsehood will follow, for from
the existence of the earth it does not follow that the earth flies
aloft.
82. There are also certain insoluble arguments:[111] the Veiled Men, the
Concealed, Sorites, Horned Folk, the Nobodies. The Veiled is as
follows:[112] ... “It cannot be that if two is few, three is not so
likewise, nor that if two or three are few, four is not so; and so on up
to ten. But two is few, therefore so also is ten.” ... The Nobody
argument is an argument whose major premiss consists of an indefinite
and a definite clause, followed by a minor premiss and conclusion; for
example, “If anyone is here, he is not in Rhodes; but there is some one
here, therefore there is not anyone in Rhodes.” ...
83. Such, then, is the logic of the Stoics, by which they seek to
establish their point that the wise man is the true dialectician. For
all things, they say, are discerned by means of logical study, including
whatever falls within the province of Physics, and again whatever
belongs to that of Ethics. For else, say they, as regards statement and
reasoning Physics and Ethics could not tell how to express themselves,
or again concerning the proper use of terms, how the laws have defined
various actions.[113] Moreover, of the two kinds of common-sense inquiry
included under Virtue one considers the nature of each particular thing,
the other asks what it is called. Thus much for their logic.
84. The ethical branch of philosophy they divide as follows: (1) the
topic of impulse; (2) the topic of things good and evil; (3) that of the
passions; (4) that of virtue; (5) that of the end; (6) that of primary
value and of actions; (7) that of duties or the befitting; and (8) of
inducements to act or refrain from acting. The foregoing is the
subdivision adopted by Chrysippus, Archedemus, Zeno of Tarsus,
Apollodorus, Diogenes, Antipater, and Posidonius, and their disciples.
Zeno of Citium and Cleanthes treated the subject somewhat less
elaborately, as might be expected in an older generation. They, however,
did subdivide Logic and Physics as well as Ethics.
85. An animal’s first impulse, say the Stoics, is to self-preservation,
because nature from the outset endears it to itself, as Chrysippus
affirms in the first book of his work On Ends: his words are, “The
dearest thing to every animal is its own constitution and its
consciousness thereof”; for it was not likely that nature should
estrange the living thing from itself or that she should leave the
creature she has made without either estrangement from or affection for
its own constitution. We are forced then to conclude that nature in
constituting the animal made it near and dear to itself; for so it comes
to repel all that is injurious and give free access to all that is
serviceable or akin to it.
86. As for the assertion made by some people that pleasure is the object
to which the first impulse of animals is directed, it is shown by the
Stoics to be false. For pleasure, if it is really felt, they declare to
be a by-product, which never comes until nature by itself has sought and
found the means suitable to the animal’s existence or constitution; it
is an aftermath comparable to the condition of animals thriving and
plants in full bloom. And nature, they say, made no difference
originally between plants and animals, for she regulates the life of
plants too, in their case without impulse and sensation, just as also
certain processes go on of a vegetative kind in us. But when in the case
of animals impulse has been superadded, whereby they are enabled to go
in quest of their proper aliment, for them, say the Stoics, Nature’s
rule is to follow the direction of impulse. But when reason by way of a
more perfect leadership has been bestowed on the beings we call
rational, for them life according to reason rightly becomes the natural
life. For reason supervenes to shape impulse scientifically.
87. This is why Zeno was the first (in his treatise On the Nature of
Man) to designate as the end “life in agreement with nature” (or living
agreeably to nature), which is the same as a virtuous life, virtue being
the goal towards which nature guides us. So too Cleanthes in his
treatise On Pleasure, as also Posidonius, and Hecato in his work On
Ends. Again, living virtuously is equivalent to living in accordance
with experience of the actual course of nature, as Chrysippus says in
the first book of his De finibus; for our individual natures are parts
of the nature of the whole universe. 88. And this is why the end may be
defined as life in accordance with nature, or, in other words, in
accordance with our own human nature as well as that of the universe, a
life in which we refrain from every action forbidden by the law common
to all things, that is to say, the right reason which pervades all
things, and is identical with this Zeus, lord and ruler of all that is.
And this very thing constitutes the virtue of the happy man and the
smooth current of life, when all actions promote the harmony of the
spirit dwelling in the individual man with the will of him who orders
the universe. Diogenes then expressly declares the end to be to act with
good reason in the selection of what is natural. Archedemus says the end
is to live in the performance of all befitting actions.
89. By the nature with which our life ought to be in accord, Chrysippus
understands both universal nature and more particularly the nature of
man, whereas Cleanthes takes the nature of the universe alone as that
which should be followed, without adding the nature of the individual.
And virtue, he holds, is a harmonious disposition, choice-worthy for its
own sake and not from hope or fear or any external motive. Moreover, it
is in virtue that happiness consists; for virtue is the state of mind
which tends to make the whole of life harmonious. When a rational being
is perverted, this is due to the deceptiveness of external pursuits or
sometimes to the influence of associates. For the starting-points of
nature are never perverse.
90. Virtue, in the first place, is in one sense the perfection of
anything in general, say of a statue; again, it may be non-intellectual,
like health, or intellectual, like prudence. For Hecato says in his
first book On the Virtues that some are scientific and based upon
theory, namely, those which have a structure of theoretical principles,
such as prudence and justice; others are non-intellectual, those that
are regarded as co-extensive and parallel with the former, like health
and strength. For health is found to attend upon and be co-extensive
with the intellectual virtue of temperance, just as strength is a result
of the building of an arch. 91. These are called non-intellectual,
because they do not require the mind’s assent; they supervene and they
occur even in bad men: for instance, health, courage. The proof, says
Posidonius in the first book of his treatise on Ethics, that virtue
really exists is the fact that Socrates, Diogenes, and Antisthenes and
their followers made moral progress. And for the existence of vice as a
fundamental fact the proof is that it is the opposite of virtue. That
it, virtue, can be taught is laid down by Chrysippus in the first book
of his work On the End, by Cleanthes, by Posidonius in his Protreptica,
and by Hecato; that it can be taught is clear from the case of bad men
becoming good.
92. Panaetius, however, divides virtue into two kinds, theoretical and
practical; others make a threefold division of it into logical,
physical, and ethical; while by the school of Posidonius four types are
recognized, and more than four by Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Antipater, and
their followers. Apollophanes[114] for his part counts but one, namely,
practical wisdom.
Amongst the virtues some are primary, some are subordinate to these. The
following are the primary: wisdom, courage, justice, temperance.
Particular virtues are magnanimity, continence, endurance, presence of
mind, good counsel. And wisdom they define as the knowledge of things
good and evil and of what is neither good nor evil; courage[115] as
knowledge of what we ought to choose, what we ought to beware of, and
what is indifferent; justice ...; 93. magnanimity as the knowledge or
habit of mind which makes one superior to anything that happens, whether
good or evil equally; continence as a disposition never overcome in that
which concerns right reason, or a habit which no pleasures can get the
better of; endurance as a knowledge or habit which suggests what we are
to hold fast to, what not, and what is indifferent; presence of mind as
a habit prompt to find out what is meet to be done at any moment; good
counsel as knowledge by which we see what to do and how to do it if we
would consult our own interests.
Similarly, of vices some are primary, others subordinate: e.g. folly,
cowardice, injustice, profligacy are accounted primary; but
incontinence, stupidity, ill-advisedness subordinate. Further, they hold
that the vices are forms of ignorance of those things whereof the
corresponding virtues are the knowledge.
94. Good in general is that from which some advantage comes, and more
particularly what is either identical with or not distinct from benefit.
Whence it follows that virtue itself and whatever partakes of virtue is
called good in these three senses – viz. as being (1) the source from
which benefit results; or (2) that in respect of which benefit results,
e.g. the virtuous act; or (3) that by the agency of which benefit
results, e.g. the good man who partakes in virtue.
Another particular definition of good which they give is “the natural
perfection of a rational being qua rational.” To this answers virtue
and, as being partakers in virtue, virtuous acts and good men; as also
its supervening accessories, joy and gladness and the like. 95. So with
evils: either they are vices, folly, cowardice, injustice, and the like;
or things which partake of vice, including vicious acts and wicked
persons as well as their accompaniments, despair, moroseness, and the
like.
Again, some goods are goods of the mind and others external, while some
are neither mental nor external. The former include the virtues and
virtuous acts; external goods are such as having a good country or a
good friend, and the prosperity of such. Whereas to be good and happy
oneself is of the class of goods neither mental nor external. 96.
Similarly of things evil some are mental evils, namely, vices and
vicious actions; others are outward evils, as to have a foolish country
or a foolish friend and the unhappiness of such; other evils again are
neither mental nor outward, e.g. to be yourself bad and unhappy.
Again, goods are either of the nature of ends or they are the means to
these ends, or they are at the same time end and means. A friend and the
advantages derived from him are means to good, whereas confidence,
high-spirit, liberty, delight, gladness, freedom from pain, and every
virtuous act are of the nature of ends.
97. The virtues (they say) are goods of the nature at once of ends and
of means. On the one hand, in so far as they cause happiness they are
means, and on the other hand, in so far as they make it complete, and so
are themselves part of it, they are ends. Similarly of evils some are of
the nature of ends and some of means, while others are at once both
means and ends. Your enemy and the harm he does you are means;
consternation, abasement, slavery, gloom, despair, excess of grief, and
every vicious action are of the nature of ends. Vices are evils both as
ends and as means, since in so far as they cause misery they are means,
but in so far as they make it complete, so that they become part of it,
they are ends.
98. Of mental goods some are habits, others are dispositions, while
others again are neither the one nor the other. The virtues are
dispositions, while accomplishments or avocations are matters of habit,
and activities as such or exercise of faculty neither the one nor the
other. And in general there are some mixed goods: e.g. to be happy in
one’s children or in one’s old age. But knowledge is a pure good. Again,
some goods are permanent like the virtues, others transitory like joy
and walking-exercise.
99. All good (they say) is expedient, binding, profitable, useful,
serviceable, beautiful, beneficial, desirable, and just or right. It is
expedient, because it brings about things of such a kind that by their
occurrence we are benefited. It is binding, because it causes unity
where unity is needed; profitable, because it defrays what is expended
on it, so that the return yields a balance of benefit on the
transaction. It is useful, because it secures the use of benefit; it is
serviceable, because the utility it affords is worthy of all praise. It
is beautiful, because the good is proportionate to the use made of it;
beneficial, because by its inherent nature it benefits; choiceworthy,
because it is such that to choose it is reasonable. It is also just or
right, inasmuch as it is in harmony with law and tends to draw men
together.
100. The reason why they characterize the perfect good as beautiful is
that it has in full all the “factors” required by nature or has perfect
proportion. Of the beautiful there are (say they) four species, namely,
what is just, courageous, orderly and wise; for it is under these forms
that fair deeds are accomplished. Similarly there are four species of
the base or ugly, namely, what is unjust, cowardly, disorderly, and
unwise. By the beautiful is meant properly and in an unique sense that
good which renders its possessors praiseworthy, or briefly, good which
is worthy of praise; though in another sense it signifies a good
aptitude for one’s proper function; while in yet another sense the
beautiful is that which lends new grace to anything, as when we say of
the wise man that he alone is good and beautiful.
101. And they say that only the morally beautiful is good. So Hecato in
his treatise On Goods, book iii., and Chrysippus in his work On the
Morally Beautiful. They hold, that is, that virtue and whatever partakes
of virtue consists in this: which is equivalent to saying that all that
is good is beautiful, or that the term “good” has equal force with the
term “beautiful,” which comes to the same thing. “Since a thing is good,
it is beautiful; now it is beautiful, therefore it is good.” They hold
that all goods are equal and that all good is desirable in the highest
degree and admits of no lowering or heightening of intensity. Of things
that are, some, they say, are good, some are evil, and some neither good
nor evil (that is, morally indifferent).
102. Goods comprise the virtues of prudence, justice, courage,
temperance, and the rest; while the opposites of these are evils,
namely, folly, injustice, and the rest. Neutral (neither good nor evil,
that is) are all those things which neither benefit nor harm a man: such
as life, health, pleasure, beauty, strength, wealth, fair fame and noble
birth, and their opposites, death, disease, pain, ugliness, weakness,
poverty, ignominy, low birth, and the like. This Hecato affirms in his
De fine, book vii., and also Apollodorus in his Ethics, and Chrysippus.
For, say they, such things (as life, health, and pleasure) are not in
themselves goods, but are morally indifferent, though falling under the
species or subdivision “things preferred.” 103. For as the property of
hot is to warm, not to cool, so the property of good is to benefit, not
to injure; but wealth and health do no more benefit than injury,
therefore neither wealth nor health is good. Further, they say that that
is not good of which both good and bad use can be made; but of wealth
and health both good and bad use can be made; therefore wealth and
health are not goods. On the other hand, Posidonius maintains that these
things too are among goods. Hecato in the ninth book of his treatise On
Goods, and Chrysippus in his work On Pleasure, deny that pleasure is a
good either; for some pleasures are disgraceful, and nothing disgraceful
is good. 104. To benefit is to set in motion or sustain in accordance
with virtue; whereas to harm is to set in motion or sustain in
accordance with vice.
The term “indifferent” has two meanings: in the first it denotes the
things which do not contribute either to happiness or to misery, as
wealth, fame, health, strength, and the like; for it is possible to be
happy without having these, although, if they are used in a certain way,
such use of them tends to happiness or misery. In quite another sense
those things are said to be indifferent which are without the power of
stirring inclination or aversion; e.g. the fact that the number of hairs
on one’s head is odd or even or whether you hold out your finger
straight or bent. But it was not in this sense that the things mentioned
above were termed indifferent, 105. they being quite capable of exciting
inclination or aversion. Hence of these latter some are taken by
preference, others are rejected, whereas indifference in the other sense
affords no ground for either choosing or avoiding.
Of things indifferent, as they express it, some are “preferred,” others
“rejected.” Such as have value, they say, are “preferred,” while such as
have negative, instead of positive, value are “rejected.” Value they
define as, first, any contribution to harmonious living, such as
attaches to every good; secondly, some faculty or use which
indirectly[116] contributes to the life according to nature: which is as
much as to say “any assistance brought by wealth or health towards
living a natural life”; thirdly, value is the full equivalent of an
appraiser, as fixed by an expert acquainted with the facts – as when it
is said that wheat exchanges for so much barley with a mule thrown
in.[117]
106. Thus things of the preferred class are those which have positive
value, e.g. amongst mental qualities, natural ability, skill, moral
improvement, and the like; among bodily qualities, life, health,
strength, good condition, soundness of organs, beauty, and so forth; and
in the sphere of external things, wealth, fame, noble birth, and the
like. To the class of things “rejected” belong, of mental qualities,
lack of ability, want of skill, and the like; among bodily qualities,
death, disease, weakness, being out of condition, mutilation, ugliness,
and the like; in the sphere of external things, poverty, ignominy, low
birth, and so forth. But again there are things belonging to neither
class; such are not preferred, neither are they rejected.
107. Again, of things preferred some are preferred for their own sake,
some for the sake of something else, and others again both for their own
sake and for the sake of something else. To the first of these classes
belong natural ability, moral improvement, and the like; to the second
wealth, noble birth, and the like; to the last strength, perfect
faculties, soundness of bodily organs. Things are preferred for their
own sake because they accord with nature; not for their own sake, but
for the sake of something else, because they secure not a few utilities.
And similarly with the class of things rejected under the contrary
heads.
Furthermore, the term Duty is applied to that for which, when done,[118]
a reasonable defence can be adduced, e.g. harmony in the tenor of life’s
process, which indeed pervades the growth of plants and animals. For
even in plants and animals, they hold, you may discern fitness of
behaviour.
108. Zeno was the first to use this term καθῆκον of conduct.
Etymologically it is derived from κατά τινας ἥκειν, i.e. reaching as far
as, being up to, or incumbent on so and so.[119] And it is an action in
itself adapted to nature’s arrangements. For of the acts done at the
prompting of impulse some, they observe, are fit and meet, others the
reverse, while there is a third class which is neither the one nor the
other.
Befitting acts are all those which reason prevails with us to do; and
this is the case with honouring one’s parents, brothers and country, and
intercourse with friends. Unbefitting, or contrary to duty, are all acts
that reason deprecates, e.g. to neglect one’s parents, to be indifferent
to one’s brothers, not to agree with friends, to disregard the interests
of one’s country, and so forth. 109. Acts which fall under neither of
the foregoing classes are those which reason neither urges us to do nor
forbids, such as picking up a twig, holding a style or a scraper, and
the like.
Again, some duties are incumbent unconditionally, others in certain
circumstances. Unconditional duties are the following: to take proper
care of health and one’s organs of sense, and things of that sort.
Duties imposed by circumstances are such as maiming oneself and
sacrifice of property. And so likewise with acts which are violations of
duty. Another division is into duties which are always incumbent and
those which are not. To live in accordance with virtue is always a duty,
whereas dialectic by question and answer or walking-exercise and the
like are not at all times incumbent. The same may be said of the
violations of duty. 110. And in things intermediate also there are
duties; as that boys should obey the attendants who have charge of them.
According to the Stoics there is an eight-fold division of the soul: the
five senses, the faculty of speech, the intellectual faculty, which is
the mind itself, and the generative faculty, being all parts of the
soul. Now from falsehood there results perversion, which extends to the
mind; and from this perversion arise many passions or emotions, which
are causes of instability. Passion, or emotion, is defined by Zeno as an
irrational and unnatural movement in the soul, or again as impulse in
excess.
The main, or most universal, emotions, according to Hecato in his
treatise On the Passions, book ii., and Zeno in his treatise with the
same title, constitute four great classes, grief, fear, desire or
craving, pleasure. 111. They hold the emotions to be judgements, as is
stated by Chrysippus in his treatise On the Passions: avarice being a
supposition that money is a good, while the case is similar with
drunkenness and profligacy and all the other emotions.
And grief or pain they hold to be an irrational mental contraction. Its
species are pity, envy, jealousy, rivalry, heaviness, annoyance,
distress, anguish, distraction. Pity is grief felt at undeserved
suffering; envy, grief at others’ prosperity; jealousy, grief at the
possession by another of that which one desires for oneself; rivalry,
pain at the possession by another of what one has oneself. 112.
Heaviness or vexation is grief which weighs us down, annoyance that
which coops us up and straitens us for want of room, distress a pain
brought on by anxious thought that lasts and increases, anguish painful
grief, distraction irrational grief, rasping and hindering us from
viewing the situation as a whole.
Fear is an expectation of evil. Under fear are ranged the following
emotions: terror, nervous shrinking, shame, consternation, panic, mental
agony. Terror is a fear which produces fright; shame is fear of
disgrace; nervous shrinking is a fear that one will have to act;
consternation is fear due to a presentation of some unusual occurrence;
113. panic is fear with pressure exercised by sound; mental agony is
fear felt when some issue is still in suspense.
Desire or craving is irrational appetency, and under it are ranged the
following states: want, hatred, contentiousness, anger, love, wrath,
resentment. Want, then, is a craving when it is baulked and, as it were,
cut off from its object, but kept at full stretch and attracted towards
it in vain. Hatred is a growing and lasting desire or craving that it
should go ill with somebody. Contentiousness is a craving or desire
connected with partisanship; anger a craving or desire to punish one who
is thought to have done you an undeserved injury. The passion of love is
a craving from which good men are free; for it is an effort to win
affection due to the visible presence of beauty. 114. Wrath is anger
which has long rankled and has become malicious, waiting for its
opportunity, as is illustrated by the lines:[120]
Even though for the one day he swallow his anger, yet doth he still keep
his displeasure thereafter in his heart, till he accomplish it.
Resentment is anger in an early stage.
Pleasure is an irrational elation at the accruing of what seems to be
choiceworthy; and under it are ranged ravishment, malevolent joy,
delight, transport. Ravishment is pleasure which charms the ear.
Malevolent joy is pleasure at another’s ills. Delight is the mind’s
propulsion to weakness, its name in Greek (τέρψις) being akin to τρέψις
or turning. To be in transports of delight is the melting away of
virtue.
115. And as there are said to be certain infirmities in the body, as for
instance gout and arthritic disorders, so too there is in the soul love
of fame, love of pleasure, and the like. By infirmity is meant disease
accompanied by weakness; and by disease is meant a fond imagining of
something that seems desirable. And as in the body there are tendencies
to certain maladies such as colds and diarrhoea, so it is with the soul,
there are tendencies like enviousness, pitifulness, quarrelsomeness, and
the like.
116. Also they say that there are three emotional states which are good,
namely, joy, caution, and wishing. Joy, the counterpart of pleasure, is
rational elation; caution, the counterpart of fear, rational avoidance;
for though the wise man will never feel fear, he will yet use caution.
And they make wishing the counterpart of desire (or craving), inasmuch
as it is rational appetency. And accordingly, as under the primary
passions are classed certain others subordinate to them, so too is it
with the primary eupathies or good emotional states. Thus under wishing
they bring well-wishing or benevolence, friendliness, respect,
affection; under caution, reverence and modesty; under joy, delight,
mirth, cheerfulness.
117. Now they say that the wise man is passionless, because he is not
prone to fall into such infirmity. But they add that in another sense
the term apathy is applied to the bad man, when, that is, it means that
he is callous and relentless. Further, the wise man is said to be free
from vanity; for he is indifferent to good or evil report. However, he
is not alone in this, there being another who is also free from vanity,
he who is ranged among the rash, and that is the bad man. Again, they
tell us that all good men are austere or harsh, because they neither
have dealings with pleasure themselves nor tolerate those who have. The
term harsh is applied, however, to others as well, and in much the same
sense as a wine is said to be harsh when it is employed medicinally and
not for drinking at all.
118. Again, the good are genuinely in earnest and vigilant for their own
improvement, using a manner of life which banishes evil out of sight and
makes what good there is in things appear. At the same time they are
free from pretence; for they have stripped off all pretence or “make-up”
whether in voice or in look. Free too are they from all business cares,
declining to do anything which conflicts with duty. They will take wine,
but not get drunk. Nay more, they will not be liable to madness either;
not but what there will at times occur to the good man strange
impressions due to melancholy or delirium, ideas not determined by the
principle of what is choiceworthy but contrary to nature. Nor indeed
will the wise man ever feel grief; seeing that grief is irrational
contraction of the soul, as Apollodorus says in his Ethics.
119. They are also, it is declared, godlike; for they have a something
divine within them; whereas the bad man is godless. And yet of this word
– godless or ungodly – there are two senses, one in which it is the
opposite of the term “godly,” the other denoting the man who ignores the
divine altogether: in this latter sense, as they note, the term does not
apply to every bad man. The good, it is added, are also worshippers of
God; for they have acquaintance with the rites of the gods, and piety is
the knowledge of how to serve the gods. Further, they will sacrifice to
the gods and they keep themselves pure; for they avoid all acts that are
offences against the gods, and the gods think highly of them: for they
are holy and just in what concerns the gods. The wise too are the only
priests; for they have made sacrifices their study, as also the building
of temples, purifications, and all the other matters appertaining to the
gods.
120. The Stoics approve also of honouring parents and brothers in the
second place next after the gods. They further maintain that parental
affection for children is natural to the good, but not to the bad. It is
one of their tenets that sins are all equal: so Chrysippus in the fourth
book of his Ethical Questions, as well as Persaeus and Zeno. For if one
truth is not more true than another, neither is one falsehood more false
than another, and in the same way one deceit is not more so than
another, nor sin than sin. For he who is a hundred furlongs from Canopus
and he who is only one furlong away are equally not in Canopus, and so
too he who commits the greater sin and he who commits the less are
equally not in the path of right conduct. 121. But Heraclides of Tarsus,
who was the disciple of Antipater of Tarsus, and Athenodorus both assert
that sins are not equal.
Again, the Stoics say that the wise man will take part in politics, if
nothing hinders him – so, for instance, Chrysippus in the first book of
his work On Various Types of Life – since thus he will restrain vice and
promote virtue. Also (they maintain) he will marry, as Zeno says in his
Republic, and beget children. Moreover, they say that the wise man will
never form mere opinions, that is to say, he will never give assent to
anything that is false; that he will also play the Cynic, Cynicism being
a short cut to virtue, as Apollodorus calls it in his Ethics; that he
will even turn cannibal under stress of circumstances. They declare that
he alone is free and bad men are slaves, freedom being power of
independent action, whereas slavery is privation of the same; 122.
though indeed there is also a second form of slavery consisting in
subordination, and a third which implies possession of the slave as well
as his subordination; the correlative of such servitude being lordship;
and this too is evil. Moreover, according to them not only are the wise
free, they are also kings; kingship being irresponsible rule, which none
but the wise can maintain: so Chrysippus in his treatise vindicating
Zeno’s use of terminology. For he holds that knowledge of good and evil
is a necessary attribute of the ruler, and that no bad man is acquainted
with this science. Similarly the wise and good alone are fit to be
magistrates, judges, or orators, whereas among the bad there is not one
so qualified. 123. Furthermore, the wise are infallible, not being
liable to error. They are also without offence; for they do no hurt to
others or to themselves. At the same time they are not pitiful and make
no allowance for anyone; they never relax the penalties fixed by the
laws, since indulgence and pity and even equitable consideration are
marks of a weak mind, which affects kindness in place of chastizing. Nor
do they deem punishments too severe. Again, they say that the wise man
never wonders at any of the things which appear extraordinary, such as
Charon’s mephitic caverns,[121] ebbings of the tide, hot springs or
fiery eruptions. Nor yet, they go on to say, will the wise man live in
solitude; for he is naturally made for society and action. 124. He will,
however, submit to training to augment his powers of bodily endurance.
And the wise man, they say, will offer prayers, and ask for good things
from the gods: so Posidonius in the first book of his treatise On
Duties, and Hecato in his third book On Paradoxes. Friendship, they
declare, exists only between the wise and good, by reason of their
likeness to one another. And by friendship they mean a common use of all
that has to do with life, wherein we treat our friends as we should
ourselves. They argue that a friend is worth having for his own sake and
that it is a good thing to have many friends. But among the bad there
is, they hold, no such thing as friendship, and thus no bad man has a
friend. Another of their tenets is that the unwise are all mad, inasmuch
as they are not wise but do what they do from that madness which is the
equivalent of their folly.
125. Furthermore, the wise man does all things well, just as we say that
Ismenias plays all airs on the flute well. Also everything belongs to
the wise. For the law, they say, has conferred upon them a perfect right
to all things. It is true that certain things are said to belong to the
bad, just as what has been dishonestly acquired may be said, in one
sense, to belong to the state, in another sense to those who are
enjoying it.
They hold that the virtues involve one another, and that the possessor
of one is the possessor of all, inasmuch as they have common principles,
as Chrysippus says in the first book of his work On Virtues, Apollodorus
in his Physics according to the Early School, and Hecato in the third
book of his treatise On Virtues. 126. For if a man be possessed of
virtue, he is at once able to discover and to put into practice what he
ought to do. Now such rules of conduct comprise rules for choosing,
enduring, staying, and distributing; so that if a man does some things
by intelligent choice, some things with fortitude, some things by way of
just distribution, and some steadily, he is at once wise, courageous,
just, and temperate. And each of the virtues has a particular subject
with which it deals, as, for instance, courage is concerned with things
that must be endured, practical wisdom with acts to be done, acts from
which one must abstain, and those which fall under neither head.
Similarly each of the other virtues is concerned with its own proper
sphere. To wisdom are subordinate good counsel and understanding; to
temperance, good discipline and orderliness; to justice, equality and
fair-mindedness; to courage, constancy and vigour.
127. It is a tenet of theirs that between virtue and vice there is
nothing intermediate, whereas according to the Peripatetics there is,
namely, the state of moral improvement. For, say the Stoics, just as a
stick must be either straight or crooked, so a man must be either just
or unjust. Nor again are there degrees of justice and injustice; and the
same rule applies to the other virtues. Further, while Chrysippus holds
that virtue can be lost, Cleanthes maintains that it cannot. According
to the former it may be lost in consequence of drunkenness or
melancholy; the latter takes it to be inalienable owing to the certainty
of our mental apprehension. And virtue in itself they hold to be worthy
of choice for its own sake. At all events we are ashamed of bad conduct
as if we knew that nothing is really good but the morally beautiful.
Moreover, they hold that it is in itself sufficient to ensure
well-being: thus Zeno, and Chrysippus in the first book of his treatise
On Virtues, and Hecato in the second book of his treatise On Goods: 128.
“For if magnanimity by itself alone can raise us far above everything,
and if magnanimity is but a part of virtue, then too virtue as a whole
will be sufficient in itself for well-being – despising all things that
seem troublesome.” Panaetius, however, and Posidonius deny that virtue
is self-sufficing: on the contrary, health is necessary, and some means
of living and strength.
Another tenet of theirs is the perpetual exercise of virtue, as held by
Cleanthes and his followers. For virtue can never be lost, and the good
man is always exercising his mind, which is perfect. Again, they say
that justice, as well as law and right reason, exists by nature and not
by convention: so Chrysippus in his work On the Morally Beautiful. 129.
Neither do they think that the divergence of opinion between
philosophers is any reason for abandoning the study of philosophy, since
at that rate we should have to give up life altogether: so Posidonius in
his Exhortations. Chrysippus allows that the ordinary Greek education is
serviceable.
It is their doctrine that there can be no question of right as between
man and the lower animals, because of their unlikeness. Thus Chrysippus
in the first book of his treatise On Justice, and Posidonius in the
first book of his De officio. Further, they say that the wise man will
feel affection for the youths who by their countenance show a natural
endowment for virtue. So Zeno in his Republic, Chrysippus in book i. of
his work On Modes of Life, and Apollodorus in his Ethics.
130. Their definition of love is an effort toward friendliness due to
visible beauty appearing, its sole end being friendship, not bodily
enjoyment. At all events, they allege that Thrasonides, although he had
his mistress in his power, abstained from her because she hated him. By
which it is shown, they think, that love depends upon regard, as
Chrysippus says in his treatise Of Love, and is not sent by the gods.
And beauty they describe as the bloom or flower of virtue.
Of the three kinds of life, the contemplative, the practical, and the
rational, they declare that we ought to choose the last, for that a
rational being is expressly produced by nature for contemplation and for
action. They tell us that the wise man will for reasonable cause make
his own exit from life, on his country’s behalf or for the sake of his
friends, or if he suffer intolerable pain, mutilation, or incurable
disease.
131. It is also their doctrine that amongst the wise there should be a
community of wives with free choice of partners, as Zeno says in his
Republic and Chrysippus in his treatise On Government [and not only
they, but also Diogenes the Cynic and Plato].[122] Under such
circumstances we shall feel paternal affection for all the children
alike, and there will be an end of the jealousies arising from adultery.
The best form of government they hold to be a mixture of democracy,
kingship, and aristocracy (or the rule of the best).
Such, then, are the statements they make in their ethical doctrines,
with much more besides, together with their proper proofs: let this,
however, suffice for a statement of them in a summary and elementary
form.
132. Their physical doctrine they divide into sections (1) about bodies;
(2) about principles; (3) about elements; (4) about the gods; (5) about
bounding surfaces and space whether filled or empty. This is a division
into species; but the generic division is into three parts, dealing with
(i.) the universe; (ii.) the elements; (iii.) the subject of causation.
The part dealing with the universe admits, they say, of division into
two: for with one aspect of it the mathematicians also are concerned, in
so far as they treat questions relating to the fixed stars and the
planets, e.g. whether the sun is or is not just so large as it appears
to be, and the same about the moon, the question of their revolutions,
and other inquiries of the same sort. 133. But there is another aspect
or field of cosmological[123] inquiry, which belongs to the physicists
alone: this includes such questions as what the substance of the
universe is, whether the sun and the stars are made up of form and
matter, whether the world has had a beginning in time or not, whether it
is animate or inanimate, whether it is destructible or indestructible,
whether it is governed by providence, and all the rest. The part
concerned with causation, again, is itself subdivided into two. And in
one of its aspects medical inquiries have a share in it, in so far as it
involves investigation of the ruling principle of the soul and the
phenomena of soul, seeds, and the like. Whereas the other part is
claimed by the mathematicians also, e.g. how vision is to be explained,
what causes the image on the mirror, what is the origin of clouds,
thunder, rainbows, halos, comets, and the like.
134. They hold that there are two principles in the universe, the active
principle and the passive. The passive principle, then, is a substance
without quality, i.e. matter, whereas the active is the reason inherent
in this substance, that is God. For he is everlasting and is the
artificer of each several thing throughout the whole extent of matter.
This doctrine is laid down by Zeno of Citium in his treatise On
Existence, Cleanthes in his work On Atoms, Chrysippus in the first book
of his Physics towards the end, Archedemus in his treatise On Elements,
and Posidonius in the second book of his Physical Exposition. There is a
difference, according to them, between principles and elements; the
former being without generation or destruction, whereas the elements are
destroyed when all things are resolved into fire. Moreover, the
principles are incorporeal and destitute of form, while the elements
have been endowed with form.
135. Body is defined by Apollodorus in his Physics as that which is
extended in three dimensions, length, breadth, and depth. This is also
called solid body. But surface is the extremity of a solid body, or that
which has length and breadth only without depth. That surface exists not
only in our thought but also in reality is maintained by Posidonius in
the third book of his Celestial Phenomena. A line is the extremity of a
surface or length without breadth, or that which has length alone. A
point is the extremity of a line, the smallest possible mark or dot.
God is one and the same with Reason, Fate, and Zeus; he is also called
by many other names. 136. In the beginning he was by himself; he
transformed the whole of substance through air into water, and just as
in animal generation the seed has a moist vehicle, so in cosmic moisture
God, who is the seminal reason of the universe, remains behind in the
moisture as such an agent, adapting matter to himself with a view to the
next stage of creation. Thereupon he created first of all the four
elements, fire, water, air, earth. They are discussed by Zeno in his
treatise On the Whole, by Chrysippus in the first book of his Physics,
and by Archedemus in a work On Elements. An element is defined as that
from which particular things first come to be at their birth and into
which they are finally resolved. 137. The four elements together
constitute unqualified substance or matter. Fire is the hot element,
water the moist, air the cold, earth the dry. Not but what the quality
of dryness is also found in the air.[124] Fire has the uppermost place;
it is also called aether, and in it the sphere of the fixed stars is
first created; then comes the sphere of the planets, next to that the
air, then the water, and lowest of all the earth, which is at the centre
of all things.
The term universe or cosmos is used by them in three senses: (1) of God
himself, the individual being whose quality is derived from the whole of
substance; he is indestructible and ingenerable, being the artificer of
this orderly arrangement, who at stated periods of time absorbs into
himself the whole of substance and again creates it from himself. (2)
138. Again, they give the name of cosmos to the orderly arrangement of
the heavenly bodies in itself as such; and (3) in the third place to
that whole of which these two are parts. Again, the cosmos is defined as
the individual being qualifying the whole of substance, or, in the words
of Posidonius in his elementary treatise on Celestial Phenomena, a
system made up of heaven and earth and the natures in them, or, again,
as a system constituted by gods and men and all things created for their
sake. By heaven is meant the extreme circumference or ring in which the
deity has his seat.
The world,[125] in their view, is ordered by reason and providence: so
says Chrysippus in the fifth book of his treatise On Providence and
Posidonius in his work On the Gods, book iii. – inasmuch as reason
pervades every part of it, just as does the soul in us. Only there is a
difference of degree; in some parts there is more of it, in others less.
139. For through some parts it passes as a “hold” or containing force,
as is the case with our bones and sinews; while through others it passes
as intelligence, as in the ruling part of the soul. Thus, then, the
whole world is a living being, endowed with soul and reason, and having
aether for its ruling principle: so says Antipater of Tyre in the eighth
book of his treatise On the Cosmos. Chrysippus in the first book of his
work On Providence and Posidonius in his book On the Gods say that the
heaven, but Cleanthes that the sun, is the ruling power of the world.
Chrysippus, however, in the course of the same work gives a somewhat
different account, namely, that it is the purer part of the aether; the
same which they declare to be preeminently God and always to have, as it
were in sensible fashion, pervaded all that is in the air, all animals
and plants, and also the earth itself, as a principle of cohesion.
140. The world, they say, is one and finite, having a spherical shape,
such a shape being the most suitable for motion, as Posidonius says in
the fifth book of his Physical Discourse and the disciples of Antipater
in their works on the Cosmos. Outside of the world is diffused the
infinite void, which is incorporeal. By incorporeal is meant that which,
though capable of being occupied by body, is not so occupied. The world
has no empty space within it, but forms one united whole. This is a
necessary result of the sympathy and tension which binds together things
in heaven and earth. Chrysippus discusses the void in his work On Void
and in the first book of his Physical Sciences; so too Apollophanes in
his Physics, Apollodorus, and Posidonius in his Physical Discourse, book
ii. But these, it is added [i.e. sympathy and tension], are likewise
bodies.[126]
141. Time too is incorporeal, being the measure of the world’s motion.
And time past and time future are infinite, but time present is finite.
They hold that the world must come to an end, inasmuch as it had a
beginning, on the analogy of those things which are understood by the
senses. And that of which the parts are perishable is perishable as a
whole. Now the parts of the world are perishable, seeing that they are
transformed one into the other. Therefore the world itself is doomed to
perish. Moreover, anything is destructible if it admits of
deterioration; therefore the world is so, for it is first evaporated and
again dissolved into water.
142. The world, they hold, comes into being when its substance has first
been converted from fire through air into moisture and then the coarser
part of the moisture has condensed as earth, while that whose particles
are fine has been turned into air, and this process of rarefaction goes
on increasing till it generates fire. Thereupon out of these elements
animals and plants and all other natural kinds are formed by their
mixture. The generation and the destruction of the world are discussed
by Zeno in his treatise On the Whole, by Chrysippus in the first book of
his Physics, by Posidonius in the first book of his work On the Cosmos,
by Cleanthes, and by Antipater in his tenth book On the Cosmos.
Panaetius, however, maintained that the world is indestructible.
The doctrine that the world is a living being, rational, animate and
intelligent, is laid down by Chrysippus in the first book of his
treatise On Providence, by Apollodorus in his Physics, and by
Posidonius. 143. It is a living thing in the sense of an animate
substance endowed with sensation; for animal is better than non-animal,
and nothing is better than the world, ergo the world is a living being.
And it is endowed with soul, as is clear from our several souls being
each a fragment of it. Boethus, however, denies that the world is a
living thing. The unity of the world is maintained by Zeno in his
treatise On the Whole, by Chrysippus, by Apollodorus in his Physics, and
by Posidonius in the first book of his Physical Discourse. By the
totality of things, the All, is meant, according to Apollodorus, (1) the
world, and in another sense (2) the system composed of the world and the
void outside it. The world then is finite, the void infinite.
144. Of the stars some are fixed, and are carried round with the whole
heaven; others, the wandering stars or planets, have their special
motions. The sun travels in an oblique path through the zodiac.
Similarly the moon travels in a spiral path. The sun is pure fire: so
Posidonius in the seventh book of his Celestial Phenomena. And it is
larger than the earth, as the same author says in the sixth book of his
Physical Discourse. Moreover it is spherical in shape like the world
itself according to this same author and his school. That it is fire is
proved by its producing all the effects of fire; that it is larger than
the earth by the fact that all the earth is illuminated by it; nay more,
the heaven beside. The fact too that the earth casts a conical shadow
proves that the sun is greater than it. And it is because of its great
size that it is seen from every part of the earth.
145. The moon, however, is of a more earthy composition, since it is
nearer to the earth. These fiery bodies and the stars generally derive
their nutriment, the sun from the wide ocean, being a fiery kindling,
though intelligent; the moon from fresh waters, with an admixture of
air, close to the earth as it is: thus Posidonius in the sixth book of
his Physics; the other heavenly bodies being nourished from the earth.
They hold that the stars are spherical in shape and that the earth too
is so and is at rest; and that the moon does not shine by her own light,
but by the borrowed light of the sun when he shines upon her.
An eclipse of the sun takes place when the moon passes in front of it on
the side towards us, as shown by Zeno with a diagram in his treatise On
the Whole. 146. For the moon is seen approaching at conjunctions and
occulting it and then again receding from it. This can best be observed
when they are mirrored in a basin of water. The moon is eclipsed when
she falls into the earth’s shadow: for which reason it is only at the
full moon that an eclipse happens [127], although she is in opposition
to the sun every month; because the moon moves in an oblique orbit,
diverging in latitude relatively to the orbit of the sun, and she
accordingly goes farther to the north or to the south. When, however,
the moon’s motion in latitude has brought her into the sun’s path
through the zodiac, and she thus comes diametrically opposite to the
sun, there is an eclipse. Now the moon is in latitude right on the
zodiac,[128] when she is in the constellations of Cancer, Scorpio, Aries
and Taurus: so Posidonius and his followers tell us.
147. The deity, say they, is a living being, immortal, rational, perfect
or intelligent in happiness, admitting nothing evil [129], taking
providential care of the world and all that therein is, but he is not of
human shape. He is, however, the artificer of the universe and, as it
were, the father of all, both in general and in that particular part of
him which is all-pervading, and which is called many names according to
its various powers. They give the name Dia (Δία) because all things are
due to (διά) him; Zeus (Ζῆνα) in so far as he is the cause of life (ζῆν)
or pervades all life; the name Athena is given, because the ruling part
of the divinity extends to the aether; the name Hera marks its extension
to the air; he is called Hephaestus since it spreads to the creative
fire; Poseidon, since it stretches to the sea; Demeter, since it reaches
to the earth. Similarly men have given the deity his other titles,
fastening, as best they can, on some one or other of his peculiar
attributes.
148. The substance of God is declared by Zeno to be the whole world and
the heaven, as well as by Chrysippus in his first book Of the Gods, and
by Posidonius in his first book with the same title. Again, Antipater in
the seventh book of his work On the Cosmos says that the substance of
God is akin to air, while Boethus in his work On Nature speaks of the
sphere of the fixed stars as the substance of God. Now the term Nature
is used by them to mean sometimes that which holds the world together,
sometimes that which causes terrestrial things to spring up. Nature is
defined as a force moving of itself, producing and preserving in being
its offspring in accordance with seminal principles[130] within definite
periods, and effecting results homogeneous with their sources. 149.
Nature, they hold, aims both at utility and at pleasure, as is clear
from the analogy of human craftsmanship. That all things happen by fate
or destiny is maintained by Chrysippus in his treatise De fato, by
Posidonius in his De fato, book ii., by Zeno and by Boethus in his De
fato, book i. Fate is defined as an endless chain of causation, whereby
things are, or as the reason or formula by which the world goes on. What
is more, they say that divination in all its forms is a real and
substantial fact, if there is really Providence. And they prove it to be
actually a science on the evidence of certain results: so Zeno,
Chrysippus in the second book of his De divinatione, Athenodorus, and
Posidonius in the second book of his Physical Discourse and the fifth
book of his De divinatione. But Panaetius denies that divination has any
real existence.
150. The primary matter they make the substratum of all things: so
Chrysippus in the first book of his Physics, and Zeno. By matter is
meant that out of which anything whatsoever is produced. Both substance
and matter are terms used in a twofold sense according as they signify
(1) universal or (2) particular substance or matter. The former neither
increases nor diminishes, while the matter of particular things both
increases and diminishes. Body according to them is substance which is
finite: so Antipater in his second book On Substance, and Apollodorus in
his Physics. Matter can also be acted upon, as the same author says, for
if it were immutable, the things which are produced would never have
been produced out of it. Hence the further doctrine that matter is
divisible ad infinitum. Chrysippus says that the division is not ad
infinitum, but itself infinite; for there is nothing infinitely small to
which the division can extend. But nevertheless the division goes on
without ceasing.
151. Hence, again, their explanation of the mixture of two substances
is, according to Chrysippus in the third book of his Physics, that they
permeate each other through and through, and that the particles of the
one do not merely surround those of the other or lie beside them. Thus,
if a little drop of wine be thrown into the sea, it will be equally
diffused over the whole sea for a while and then will be blended[131]
with it.
Also they hold that there are daemons (δαίμονες) who are in sympathy
with mankind and watch over human affairs. They believe too in heroes,
that is, the souls of the righteous that have survived their bodies.
Of the changes which go on in the air, they describe winter as the
cooling of the air above the earth due to the sun’s departure to a
distance from the earth; spring as the right temperature of the air
consequent upon his approach to us; 152. summer as the heating of the
air above the earth when he travels to the north; while autumn they
attribute to the receding of the sun from us. As for the winds, they are
streams of air, differently named[132] according to the localities from
which they blow. And the cause of their production is the sun through
the evaporation of the clouds. The rainbow is explained as the
reflection of the sun’s rays from watery clouds or, as Posidonius says
in his Meteorology, an image of a segment of the sun or moon in a cloud
suffused with dew, which is hollow and visible without intermission, the
image showing itself as if in a mirror in the form of a circular arch.
Comets, bearded stars, and meteors are fires which arise when dense air
is carried up to the region of aether. 153. A shooting star is the
sudden kindling of a mass of fire in rapid motion through the air, which
leaves a trail behind it presenting an appearance of length. Rain is the
transformation of cloud into water, when moisture drawn up by the sun
from land or sea has been only partially evaporated. If this is cooled
down, it is called hoar-frost. Hail is frozen cloud, crumbled by a wind;
while snow is moist matter from a cloud which has congealed: so
Posidonius in the eighth book of his Physical Discourse. Lightning is a
kindling of clouds from being rubbed together or being rent by wind, as
Zeno says in his treatise On the Whole; thunder the noise these clouds
make when they rub against each other or burst. 154. Thunderbolt is the
term used when the fire is violently kindled and hurled to the ground
with great force as the clouds grind against each other or are torn by
the wind. Others say that it is a compression of fiery air descending
with great force. A typhoon is a great and violent thunderstorm
whirlwind-like, or a whirlwind of smoke from a cloud that has burst. A
“prester” is a cloud rent all round by the force of fire and wind.
Earthquakes, say they, happen when the wind finds its way into, or is
imprisoned in, the hollow parts of the earth: so Posidonius in his
eighth book; and some of them are tremblings, others openings of the
earth, others again lateral displacements,[133] and yet others vertical
displacements.
155. They maintain that the parts of the world are arranged thus. The
earth is in the middle answering to a centre; next comes the water,
which is shaped like a sphere all round it, concentric with the earth,
so that the earth is in water. After the water comes a spherical layer
of air. There are five celestial circles: first, the arctic circle,
which is always visible; second, the summer tropic; third, the circle of
the equinox; fourth, the winter tropic; and fifth, the antarctic, which
is invisible to us. They are called parallel, because they do not
incline towards one another; yet they are described round the same
centre.[134] The zodiac is an oblique circle, as it crosses the parallel
circles. 156. And there are five terrestrial zones: first, the northern
zone which is beyond the arctic circle, uninhabitable because of the
cold; second, a temperate zone; a third, uninhabitable because of great
heats, called the torrid zone; fourth, a counter-temperate zone; fifth,
the southern zone, uninhabitable because of its cold.
Nature in their view is an artistically working fire, going on its way
to create; which is equivalent to a fiery, creative, or fashioning
breath. And the soul is a nature capable of perception. And they regard
it as the breath of life, congenital with us; from which they infer
first that it is a body and secondly that it survives death. Yet it is
perishable, though the soul of the universe, of which the individual
souls of animals are parts, is indestructible. 157. Zeno of Citium and
Antipater, in their treatises De anima, and Posidonius define the soul
as a warm breath; for by this we become animate and this enables us to
move. Cleanthes indeed holds that all souls continue to exist until the
general conflagration; but Chrysippus says that only the souls of the
wise do so.[135]
They count eight parts of the soul: the five senses, the generative
power in us, our power of speech, and that of reasoning. They hold that
we see when the light between the visual organ and the object stretches
in the form of a cone: so Chrysippus in the second book of his Physics
and Apollodorus. The apex of the cone in the air is at the eye, the base
at the object seen. Thus the thing seen is reported to us by the medium
of the air stretching out towards it, as if by a stick.
158. We hear when the air between the sonant body and the organ of
hearing suffers concussion, a vibration which spreads spherically and
then forms waves and strikes upon the ears, just as the water in a
reservoir forms wavy circles when a stone is thrown into it. Sleep is
caused, they say, by the slackening of the tension in our senses, which
affects the ruling part of the soul. They consider that the passions are
caused by the variations of the vital breath.
Semen is by them defined as that which is capable of generating
offspring like the parent. And the human semen which is emitted by a
human parent in a moist vehicle is mingled with parts of the soul,
blended in the same ratio in which they are present in the parent. 159.
Chrysippus in the second book of his Physics declares it to be in
substance identical with vital breath or spirit. This, he thinks, can be
seen from the seeds cast into the earth, which, if kept till they are
old, do not germinate, plainly because their fertility has evaporated.
Sphaerus and his followers also maintain that semen derives its origin
from the whole of the body; at all events every part of the body can be
reproduced from it. That of the female is according to them sterile,
being, as Sphaerus says, without tension, scanty, and watery. By ruling
part of the soul is meant that which is most truly soul proper, in which
arise presentations and impulses and from which issues rational speech.
And it has its seat in the heart.
160. Such is the summary of their Physics which I have deemed adequate,
my aim being to preserve a due proportion in my work. But the points on
which certain of the Stoics differed from the rest are the following.
Ariston the Bald, of Chios, who was also called the Siren, declared the
end of action to be a life of perfect indifference to everything which
is neither virtue nor vice; recognizing no distinction whatever in
things indifferent, but treating them all alike. The wise man he
compared to a good actor, who, if called upon to take the part of a
Thersites or of an Agamemnon, will impersonate them both becomingly. He
wished to discard both Logic and Physics, saying that Physics was beyond
our reach and Logic did not concern us: all that did concern us was
Ethics.
161. Dialectical reasonings, he said, are like spiders’ webs, which,
though they seem to display some artistic workmanship, are yet of no
use. He would not admit a plurality of virtues with Zeno, nor again with
the Megarians one single virtue called by many names; but he treated
virtue in accordance with the category of relative modes. Teaching this
sort of philosophy, and lecturing in the Cynosarges, he acquired such
influence as to be called the founder of a sect. At any rate Miltiades
and Diphilus were denominated Aristoneans. He was a plausible speaker
and suited the taste of the general public. Hence Timon’s verse about
him:[136]
One who from wily Ariston’s line boasts his descent.[137]
162. After meeting Polemo, says Diocles of Magnesia, while Zeno was
suffering from a protracted illness, he recanted his views. The Stoic
doctrine to which he attached most importance was the wise man’s refusal
to hold mere opinions. And against this doctrine Persaeus was contending
when he induced one of a pair of twins to deposit a certain sum with
Ariston and afterwards got the other to reclaim it. Ariston being thus
reduced to perplexity was refuted. He was at variance with Arcesilaus;
and one day when he saw an abortion in the shape of a bull with a
uterus, he said, “Alas, here Arcesilaus has had given into his hand an
argument against the evidence of the senses.”
163. When some Academic alleged that he had no certainty of anything,
Ariston said, “Do you not even see your neighbour sitting by you?” and
when the other answered “No,” he rejoined,
Who can have blinded you? who robbed you of luminous eyesight?
The books attributed to him are as follows:
Panaetius and Sosicrates consider the Letters to be alone genuine; all
the other works named they attribute to Ariston the Peripatetic.
164. The story goes that being bald he had a sunstroke and so came to
his end. I have composed a trifling poem upon him in limping iambics as
follows:[138]
Wherefore, Ariston, when old and bald did you let the sun roast your
forehead? Thus seeking warmth more than was reasonable, you lit
unwillingly upon the chill reality of Death.
There was also another Ariston, a native of Iulis;[139] a third, a
musician of Athens; a fourth, a tragic poet; a fifth, of Halae, author
of treatises on rhetoric; a sixth, a Peripatetic philosopher of
Alexandria.
165. Herillus of Carthage declared the end of action to be Knowledge,
that is, so to live always as to make the scientific life the standard
in all things and not to be misled by ignorance. Knowledge he defined as
a habit of mind, not to be upset by argument, in the acceptance of
presentations. Sometimes he used to say there was no single end of
action, but it shifted according to varying circumstances and objects,
as the same bronze might become a statue either of Alexander or of
Socrates. He made a distinction between end-in-chief and subordinate
end: even the unwise may aim at the latter, but only the wise seek the
true end of life. Everything that lies between virtue and vice he
pronounced indifferent. His writings, though they do not occupy much
space, are full of vigour and contain some controversial passages in
reply to Zeno.
166. He is said to have had many admirers when a boy; and as Zeno wished
to drive them away, he compelled Herillus to have his head shaved, which
disgusted them.
His books are the following:
Dionysius, the Renegade,[140] declared that pleasure was the end of
action; this under the trying circumstance of an attack of ophthalmia.
For so violent was his suffering that he could not bring himself to call
pain a thing indifferent.
He was the son of Theophantus and a native of Heraclea. At first, as
Diocles relates, he was a pupil of his fellow-townsman, Heraclides, next
of Alexinus and Menedemus, and lastly of Zeno.
167. At the outset of his career he was fond of literature and tried his
hand at all kinds of poetry; afterwards he took Aratus[141] for his
model, whom he strove to imitate. When he fell away from Zeno, he went
over to the Cyrenaics, and used to frequent houses of ill fame and
indulge in all other excesses without disguise. After living till he was
nearly eighty years of age, he committed suicide by starving himself.
The following works are attributed to him:
These three, then, are the heterodox Stoics. The legitimate successor to
Zeno, however, was Cleanthes: of whom we have now to speak.
168. Cleanthes, son of Phanias, was a native of Assos. This man, says
Antisthenes in his Successions of Philosophers, was at first a pugilist.
He arrived in Athens, as some people say, with four drachmas only, and
meeting with Zeno he studied philosophy right nobly and adhered to the
same doctrines throughout. He was renowned for his industry, being
indeed driven by extreme poverty to work for a living. Thus, while by
night he used to draw water in gardens, by day he exercised himself in
arguments: hence the nickname Phreantles or Well-lifter was given him.
He is said to have been brought into court to answer the inquiry how so
sturdy a fellow as he made his living, and then to have been acquitted
on producing as his witnesses the gardener in whose garden he drew water
169. and the woman who sold the meal which he used to crush. The
Areopagites were satisfied and voted him a donation of ten minas, which
Zeno forbade him to accept. We are also told that Antigonus made him a
present of three thousand drachmas. Once, as he was conducting some
youths to a public spectacle, the wind blew his cloak aside and
disclosed the fact that he wore no shirt, whereupon he was applauded by
the Athenians, as is stated by Demetrius of Magnesia in his work on Men
of the Same Name. This then also increased the admiration felt for him.
There is another story that Antigonus when attending his lectures
inquired of him why he drew water and received the reply, “Is drawing
water all I do? What? Do I not dig? What? Do I not water the garden? or
undertake any other labour for the love of philosophy?” For Zeno used to
discipline him to this and bid him return him an obol from his
wages.[142] 170. And one day he produced a handful of small coin before
his acquaintance and said, “Cleanthes could even maintain a second
Cleanthes, if he liked, whereas those who possess the means to keep
themselves yet seek to live at the expense of others, and that too
though they have plenty of time to spare from their studies.” Hence
Cleanthes was called a second Heracles. He had industry, but no natural
aptitude for physics, and was extraordinarily slow. On which account
Timon describes him thus:[143]
Who is this that like a bell-wether ranges over the ranks of men, a
dullard, lover of verse, hailing from Assos,[144] a mass of rock,
unventuresome.
And he used to put up with gibes from his fellow-pupils and did not mind
being called the ass, telling them that he alone was strong enough to
carry the load of Zeno. 171. Once when he was reproached with cowardice,
he replied, “That is why I so seldom go wrong.” Again, when extolling
his own manner of life above that of the wealthy, he used to say that,
while they were playing at ball, he was at work digging hard and barren
ground. He would often find fault with himself too, and one day when
Ariston heard him doing this and asked, “Who is it you are scolding so?”
he, laughing, said, “An old man with grey hairs and no wits.” To some
one who declared that Arcesilaus did not do what he ought, his reply
was, “No more of this; do not censure him. For if by his words he does
away with duty, he maintains it at all events by his deeds.” And
Arcesilaus rejoined, “I am not to be won by flattery.” Whereupon
Cleanthes said, “True, but my flattery consists in alleging that your
theory is incompatible with your practice.”
172. When some one inquired of him what lesson he ought to give his son,
Cleanthes in reply quoted words from the Electra:
Silence, silence, light be thy step.[145]
A Lacedaemonian having declared that toil was a good thing, he was
overjoyed and said,
Thou art of gentle blood, dear child.[146]
Dicit autem Hecato in Sententiis eum, cum adulescens quidam formosus
dixisset, Si pulsans ventrem ventrizat, pulsans coxas coxizat, dixisse,
Tibi habeas, adulescens, coxizationes: nempe vocabula quae conveniunt
analogia non semper etiam significatione conveniunt.[147] Once in
conversation with a youth he put the question, “Do you see?” and when
the youth nodded assent, he went on, “Why, then, don’t I see that you
see?”
173. He was present in the theatre when the poet Sositheus uttered the
verse –
Driven by Cleanthes’ folly like dumb herds,[148]
and he remained unmoved in the same attitude. At which the audience were
so astonished that they applauded him and drove Sositheus off the stage.
Afterwards when the poet apologized for the insult, he accepted the
apology, saying that, when Dionysus and Heracles were ridiculed by the
poets without getting angry, it would be absurd for him to be annoyed at
casual abuse. He used to say that the Peripatetics were in the same case
as lyres which, although they give forth sweet sounds, never hear
themselves. It is said that when he laid it down as Zeno’s opinion that
a man’s character could be known from his looks, certain witty young men
brought before him a rake with hands horny from toil in the country and
requested him to state what the man’s character was. Cleanthes was
perplexed and ordered the man to go away; but when, as he was making
off, he sneezed, “I have it,” cried Cleanthes, “he is effeminate.” 174.
To the solitary man who talked to himself he remarked, “You are not
talking to a bad man.” When some one twitted him on his old age, his
reply was, “I too am ready to depart; but when again I consider that I
am in all points in good health and that I can still write and read, I
am content to wait.” We are told that he wrote down Zeno’s lectures on
oyster-shells and the blade-bones of oxen through lack of money to buy
paper. Such was he; and yet, although Zeno had many other eminent
disciples, he was able to succeed him in the headship of the school.
He has left some very fine writings, which are as follows:
This, then, is the list of his works.
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:[149]
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.
177. Amongst those who after the death of Zeno became pupils of
Cleanthes was Sphaerus of Bosporus, as already mentioned.[150] After
making considerable progress in his studies, he went to Alexandria to
the court of King Ptolemy Philopator.[151] One day when a discussion had
arisen on the question whether the wise man could stoop to hold
opinion,[152] and Sphaerus had maintained that this was impossible, the
king, wishing to refute him, ordered some waxen pomegranates to be put
on the table. Sphaerus was taken in and the king cried out, “You have
given your assent to a presentation which is false.” But Sphaerus was
ready with a neat answer. “I assented not to the proposition that they
are pomegranates, but to another, that there are good grounds for
thinking them to be pomegranates. Certainty of presentation and
reasonable probability are two totally different things.” Mnesistratus
having accused him of denying that Ptolemy was a king, his reply was,
“Being of such quality as he is, Ptolemy is indeed a king.”
178. The books that he wrote were as follows:
179. Chrysippus, the son of Apollonius, came either from Soli or from
Tarsus, as Alexander relates in his Successions. He was a pupil of
Cleanthes. Before this he used to practise as a long-distance runner;
but afterwards he came to hear Zeno, or, as Diocles and most people say,
Cleanthes; and then, while Cleanthes was still living, withdrew from his
school and attained exceptional eminence as a philosopher. He had good
natural parts and showed the greatest acuteness in every branch of the
subject; so much so that he differed on most points from Zeno, and from
Cleanthes as well, to whom he often used to say that all he wanted was
to be told what the doctrines were; he would find out the proofs for
himself. Nevertheless, whenever he had contended against Cleanthes, he
would afterwards feel remorse, so that he constantly came out with the
lines:[153]
Blest in all else am I, save only where
I touch Cleanthes: there I am ill-fortuned.
180. So renowned was he for dialectic that most people thought, if the
gods took to dialectic, they would adopt no other system than that of
Chrysippus. He had abundance of matter, but in style he was not
successful. In industry he surpassed every one, as the list of his
writings shows; for there are more than 705 of them. He increased their
number by arguing repeatedly on the same subject, setting down anything
that occurred to him, making many corrections and citing numerous
authorities. So much so that in one of his treatises he copied out
nearly the whole of Euripides’ Medea, and some one who had taken up the
volume, being asked what he was reading, replied, “The Medea of
Chrysippus.”
181. Apollodorus of Athens in his Collection of Doctrines, wishing to
show that what Epicurus wrote with force and originality unaided by
quotations was far greater in amount than the books of Chrysippus, says,
to quote his exact words, “If one were to strip the books of Chrysippus
of all extraneous quotations, his pages would be left bare.” So much for
Apollodorus. Of Chrysippus the old woman who sat beside him used to say,
according to Diocles, that he wrote 500 lines a day. Hecato says that he
came to the study of philosophy, because the property which he had
inherited from his father had been confiscated to the king’s treasury.
182. In person he was insignificant, as is shown by the statue in the
Ceramicus, which is almost hidden by an equestrian statue hard by; and
this is why Carneades called him Crypsippus or Horse-hidden. Once when
somebody reproached him for not going with the multitude to hear
Ariston, he rejoined, “If I had followed the multitude, I should not
have studied philosophy.” When some dialectician got up and attacked
Cleanthes, proposing sophistical fallacies to him, Chrysippus called to
him. “Cease to distract your elder from matters of importance; propound
such quibbles to us juniors.” Again, when somebody who had a question to
ask was steadily conversing with him in private, and then upon seeing a
crowd approaching began to be more contentious, he said:
Ah! brother mine, thine eye is growing wild:
To madness fast thou’rt changing, sane but now.[154]
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:[155]
He alone has understanding; the others flit shadow-like around;
and
But for Chrysippus, there had been no Porch.
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 dizziness and departed this life five days afterwards, having
reached the age of seventy-three years, in the 143^(rd) Olympiad.[156]
This is the date given by Apollodorus in his Chronology. I have toyed
with the subject in the following verses:[157]
Chrysippus turned giddy after gulping down a draught of Bacchus; he
spared not the Porch nor his country nor his own life, but fared
straight to the house of Hades.
185. Another account is that his death was caused by a violent fit of
laughter; for after an ass had eaten up his figs, he cried out to the
old woman, “Now give the ass a drink of pure wine to wash down the
figs.” And thereupon he laughed so heartily that he died.
He appears to have been a very arrogant man.[158] At any rate, of all
his many writings he dedicated none to any of the kings. And he was
satisfied with one old woman’s judgement, says Demetrius in his work
called Men of the Same Name. When Ptolemy wrote to Cleanthes requesting
him to come himself or else to send some one to his court, Sphaerus
undertook the journey, while Chrysippus declined to go. On the other
hand, he sent for his sister’s sons, Aristocreon and Philocrates, and
educated them. Demetrius above mentioned is also our authority for the
statement that Chrysippus was the first who ventured to hold a
lecture-class in the open air in the Lyceum.
186. There was another Chrysippus, a native of Cnidus, a physician,[159]
to whom Erasistratus says that he was under great obligation. And
another besides, a son[160] of the former, court-physician to Ptolemy,
who on a false charge was dragged about and castigated with the lash.
And yet another was a pupil of Erasistratus, and another the author of a
work on Agriculture.
To return to the philosopher. He used to propound arguments such as the
following: “He who divulges the mysteries to the uninitiated is guilty
of impiety. Now the hierophant certainly does reveal the mysteries to
the uninitiated, ergo he is guilty of impiety.”[161] Or again: “What is
not in the city is not in the house either: now there is no well in the
city, ergo there is none in the house either.” Yet another: “There is a
certain head, and that head you have not. Now this being so, there is a
head which you have not, therefore you are without a head.” 187. Again:
“If anyone is in Megara, he is not in Athens: now there is a man in
Megara, therefore there is not a man in Athens.” Again: “If you say
something, it passes through your lips: now you say wagon, consequently
a wagon passes through your lips.” And further: “If you never lost
something, you have it still; but you never lost horns, ergo you have
horns.” Others attribute this to Eubulides.
There are people who run Chrysippus down as having written much in a
tone that is gross and indecent. For in his work On the ancient Natural
Philosophers at line 600 or thereabouts he interprets the story of Hera
and Zeus coarsely, with details which no one would soil his lips by
repeating. 188. Indeed, his interpretation of the story is condemned as
most indecent. He may be commending physical doctrine; but the language
used is more appropriate to street-walkers than to deities; and it is
moreover not even mentioned by bibliographers, who wrote on the titles
of books. What Chrysippus makes of it is not to be found in Polemo nor
Hypsicrates, no, nor even in Antigonus. It is his own invention. Again,
in his Republic he permits marriage with mothers and daughters and sons.
He says the same in his work On Things for their own Sake not Desirable,
right at the outset. In the third book of his treatise On Justice, at
about line 1000, he permits eating of the corpses of the dead. And in
the second book of his On the Means of Livelihood, where he professes to
be considering a priori how the wise man is to get his living, occur the
words: 189. “And yet what reason is there that he should provide a
living? For if it be to support life, life itself is after all a thing
indifferent. If it be for pleasure, pleasure too is a thing indifferent.
While if it be for virtue, virtue in itself is sufficient to constitute
happiness. The modes of getting a livelihood are also ludicrous, as e.g.
maintenance by a king; for he will have to be humoured: or by friends;
for friendship will then be purchasable for money: or living by wisdom;
for so wisdom will become mercenary.” These are the objections urged
against him.
As the reputation of his writings stands so high, I have decided to make
a separate catalogue of them, arranged according to the class of subject
treated. And they are as follows:
I. Logic.
books.
II. Logic dealing with the subject matter.
Simple, one book.Of the Complex Judgement, addressed to Athenades, two
books.Of Negative Judgements, addressed to Aristagoras, three books.Of
Affirmative Judgements, addressed to Athenodorus, one book.Of Judgements
expressed by means of Privation, addressed to Thearus, one book.Of
Indefinite Judgements, addressed to Dion, three books.On the Variety of
Indefinite Judgements, four books.On Temporal Judgements, two books.On
Judgements in the Perfect Tense, two books.
Gorgippides, one book.Of a True Hypothetical Judgement, addressed to
Gorgippides, four books.191. Choosing from Alternatives, addressed to
Gorgippides, one book.A Contribution to the Subject of Consequents, one
book.On the Argument which employs three Terms, also addressed to
Gorgippides, one book.On Judgements of Possibility, addressed to Clitus,
four books.A Reply to the Work of Philo on Meanings, one book.On the
Question what are False Judgements, one book.
books.Of Inquiry, four books.Epitome of Interrogation and Inquiry, one
book.Epitome of Reply, one book.Of Investigation, two books.Of Answering
Questions, four books.
Nominatives and Oblique Cases, addressed to Phylarchus, one book.Of
Hypothetical Syllogisms, addressed to Apollonides, one book.A Work,
addressed to Pasylus, on Predicates, four books.
classified according to subject matter, one book.Of Modification of
Significance, addressed to Stesagoras, two books.Of Proper Nouns, two
books.
III. Logic, as concerned with words or phrases and the sentence.
Words, addressed to Sosigenes and Alexander, five books.Of Anomalous
Words or Phrases, addressed to Dion, four books.Of the Sorites Argument
as applied to Uttered Words, three books.On Solecisms, one book.On
Solecistic Sentences, addressed to Dionysius, one book.Sentences
violating Ordinary Usage, one book.Diction, addressed to Dionysius, one
book.
books.Of the Arrangement of Words Spoken, four books.193. Of the
Arrangement and Elements of Sentences, addressed to Philip, three
books.Of the Elements of Speech, addressed to Nicias, one book.Of the
Relative Term, one book.
Forms of Speech, addressed to Apollas, four books.On Figurative
Ambiguities, one book.Of Ambiguity in the Moods of the Hypothetical
Syllogism, two books.A Reply to the Work of Panthoides on Ambiguities,
two books.Introduction to the Study of Ambiguities, five books.Epitome
of the Work on Ambiguities, addressed to Epicrates, one book.Materials
collected for the Introduction to the Study of Ambiguities, two books.
IV. Logic as concerned with syllogisms and moods.
Dioscurides, five books.194. Of Syllogisms, three books.Of the
Construction of Moods, addressed to Stesagoras, two books.Comparison of
the Judgements expressed in the Moods, one book.Of Reciprocal and
Hypothetical Syllogisms, one book.To Agathon, or Of the Problems that
remain, one book.On the Question what Premisses are capable of
demonstrating a given Conclusion with the Aid of one or more Subsidiary
Premisses, one book.Of Inferences, addressed to Aristagoras, one
book.How the same Syllogism may be drawn up in several Moods, one
book.Reply to the Objections brought against drawing out the same
Argument syllogistically and without a Syllogism, two books.Reply to the
Objections against the Analyses of Syllogisms, three books.Reply to
Philo’s Work on Moods, addressed to Timostratus, one book.Collected
Logical Writings, addressed to Timocrates and Philomathes: a Criticism
of their Works on Moods and Syllogisms, one book.
book.On the Primary Indemonstrable Syllogisms, addressed to Zeno, one
book.On the Analysis of Syllogisms, one book.Of Redundant Arguments,
addressed to Pasylus, two books.Of the Rules for Syllogisms, one book.Of
Introductory or Elementary Syllogisms, addressed to Zeno, one book.Of
the Introductory Moods, addressed to Zeno, three books.Of the Syllogisms
under False Figures, five books.Syllogistic Arguments by Resolution in
Indemonstrable Arguments, one book.Inquiries into the Moods: addressed
to Zeno and Philomathes, one book. (This appears to be spurious.)
(This also is spurious.)196. Variable Arguments concerning the Mean,
three books. (Spurious.)A Reply to Ameinias’ “Disjunctive Syllogisms,”
one book.
books.Hypothetical Syllogisms upon the Laws, again addressed to
Meleager, one book.Hypothetical Syllogisms to serve as Introduction, two
books.Hypothetical Syllogisms consisting of Theorems, two
books.Solutions of the Hypothetical Arguments of Hedylus, two
books.Solutions of the Hypothetical Arguments of Alexander, three books.
(Spurious.)On Explanatory Symbols, addressed to Laodamas, one book.
Aristocreon, one book.Arguments of the Mentiens Type, to serve as
Introduction, one book.Of the mentiens Argument, addressed to
Aristocreon, six books.
False and True, one book.197. To those who solve the Mentiens by
dissecting it, addressed to Aristocreon, two books.Proofs showing that
Indefinite Arguments ought not to be dissected, one book.Reply to
Objections urged against those who condemn the Dissection of Indefinite
Arguments, addressed to Pasylus, three books.Solution in the Style of
the Ancients, addressed to Dioscurides, one book.On the Solution of the
Mentiens, addressed to Aristocreon, three books.Solutions of the
Hypothetical Arguments of Hedylus, addressed to Aristocreon and Apollas,
one book.
Mentiens are false, one book.Of the Sceptic who denies, addressed to
Aristocreon, two books.Negative Arguments, to serve as Logical
Exercises, one book.Of the Argument from Small Increments, addressed to
Stesagoras, two books.Of the Arguments affecting Ordinary Suppositions
and on those who are Inactive or Silent, addressed to Onetor, two
books.198. Of the Fallacy of “the Veiled Person,” addressed to
Aristobulus, two books.On the Puzzle of “the Man who escapes Detection,”
addressed to Athenades, one book.Eighth series:Of the “Nobody” Puzzle,
addressed to Menecrates, eight books.Of the Arguments derived from the
Indeterminate and the Determined, addressed to Pasylus, two books.Of the
“Nobody” Argument, addressed to Epicrates, one book.Ninth series:Of
Sophisms, addressed to Heraclides and Pollis, two books.Of Dialectical
Puzzles, addressed to Dioscurides, five books.Reply to the Method of
Arcesilaus, dedicated to Sphaerus, one book.Tenth series:Attack upon
Common Sense, addressed to Metrodorus, six books.Defence of Common
Sense, addressed to Gorgippides, seven books.
V. Under Logic.
above-mentioned main divisions dealing with isolated logical
investigations not included in separate wholes of the subjects
enumerated. The total of the logical writings is three hundred and
eleven.
199. 1. Ethics dealing with the classification of ethical conceptions.
book.Ethical Theses, one book.Probable Premisses for Ethical Doctrines,
addressed to Philomathes, three books.Definitions of the Good or
Virtuous, addressed to Metrodorus, two books.Definitions of the Bad or
Vicious, addressed to Metrodorus, two books.Definitions of the Morally
Intermediate, addressed to Metrodorus, two books.Definitions of the
Generic Notions [in Ethics], addressed to Metrodorus, seven
books.Definitions concerned with other Branches of Science, addressed to
Metrodorus, two books.
Definitions, addressed to Metrodorus, seven books.
addressed to Laodamas, seven books.200. Probabilities in Support of the
Definitions, addressed to Dioscurides, two books.Of Species and Genera,
addressed to Gorgippides, two books.Of Classifications, one book.Of
Contraries, addressed to Dionysius, two books.Probable Arguments
relative to the Classifications, Genera and Species, and the Treatment
of Contraries, one book.
books.Points of Etymology, addressed to Diocles, four books.
addressed to Philomathes, one book.On the Right Way of reading Poetry,
two books.A Reply to Critics, addressed to Diodorus, one book.
201. 2. Ethics dealing with the common view and the sciences and virtues
thence arising.
Timonax, one book.How it is we name each Thing and form a Conception of
it, one book.Of Conceptions, addressed to Laodamas, two books.Of Opinion
or Assumption, addressed to Pythonax, three books.Proofs that the Wise
Man will not hold Opinions,[163] one book.— Of Apprehension, of
Knowledge and of Ignorance,[164] four books.Of Reason, two books.Of the
Use of Reason, addressed to Leptines.
Demonstration, addressed to Zeno, two books.202. Of Dialectic, addressed
to Aristocreon, four books.Of the Objections urged against the
Dialecticians, three books.Of Rhetoric, addressed to Dioscurides, four
books.
three books.Of Art and the Inartistic, addressed to Aristocreon, four
books.Of the Difference between the Virtues, addressed to Diodorus, four
books.A Reply to Critics, addressed to Diodorus, one book.Of the
Characters of the several Virtues, one book.Of Virtues, addressed to
Pollis, two books.
3. Ethics, dealing with things good and evil.
to Aristocreon, ten books.Proofs that Pleasure is not the End-in-chief
of Action, four books.Proofs that Pleasure is not a Good, four books.Of
the Arguments commonly used on Behalf of [Pleasure].
[1] Cf. Clem. Alex. Strom. i. 66.
[2] Cf. Plutarch, De exilio, 607 a; Sen. De const. sap. c. 18, 5.
[3] Probably the battle in 426 B.C. mentioned in Thuc. iii. 91.
[4] There is the same untranslateable pun upon καινοῦ̂ “new” and καὶ νοῦ
“a mind too,” as in ii. 118.
[5] Cf. M. Anton. vii. 36 Ἀντισθενικόν, βασιλικὸν μὲν εὐπράττειν, κακῶς
δὲ ἀκούειν, and Plutarch, Alex. c. 41 (of Alexander).
[6] Cf. Plato, Phaedrus 260 c.
[7] Cf. Aelian, Var. Hist. ix. 35.
[8] Here follow three extracts of Cynic maxims or rules of conduct; for,
strictly speaking, they had no tenets proper (δόξαι, δόγματα). The last
(13) seems to be derived from Diocles.
[9] Anth. Pal. ix. 496.
[10] i.e. Erato; cf. Athen. xiii. p. 555 b, Ap. Rhod. iii. 1.
[11] It seems clear that the passage which begins here is not from the
same source as that (in 14) which precedes the epigram.
[12] Anth. Pal. vii. 115.
[13] An eminent politician. Pausanias, i. cc. 25, 26, describes a statue
of Olympiodorus in the Acropolis, and takes occasion to recount his
exploits, how (c. 288 B.C.) he delivered Athens from the Macedonians
(cf. Plut. Demetr. c. 46). As to the variant Ἀθηνόδωρος, nothing is
known of any Athenian politician of that name.
[14] Some of the stories which follow are so much alike that it is
charitable to suppose that Laertius drew from more than one collection
of the sayings of Diogenes.
[15] Obviously Favorinus was not the author (vide infra) whom Laertius
followed here.
[16] The point of Sotion’s version is best seen if for the indirect τὸν
Πλάτωνα τ��ν κύνα (sc. πατεῖν) we substitute the direct speech τὸν
Πλάτωνα ὁ κύων (sc. πατῶ).
[17] From Epictetus iii. 15. 4 it is evident that competition in digging
trenches (ἐν τῷ ἀγῶνι παρορύσσεσθαι) formed a part of the course of
preparation which athletes underwent at Olympia.
[18] Cf. Ecclus. iv. 31 (36) μὴ ἔστω ἡ χείρ σου ἐκτεταμένη εἰς τὸ λαβεῖν
καὶ ἐν τῷ ἀποδιδόναι συνεσταλμένη, “let not thine hand be stretched out
to receive, and shut when thou shouldest repay.”
[19] Menagius, followed by Hubner, on the authority of Ambrosius, reads
“Hermippus”; for among the works of Menippus enumerated by Laertius
below (101) there is no mention of a “Sale of Diogenes.”
[20] Eur. Med. 410.
[21] Nauck, T.G.F.², Adesp.284.
[22] Cf. Plut. Alex. c. 14.
[23] Where the wool was of fine quality, as near Tarentum (Hor. Carm.
ii. 6. 10 “pellitis ovibus”), the fleeces were protected by coverings of
skin, partly against damage from brambles and partly to preserve the
colour (Varro, R. R. ii. 2). We are reminded of what Augustus said when
he heard of the execution of Antipater, “It is better to be Herod’s pig
than his son.”
[24] i.e. “some day you’ll come to the gallows.”
[25] “You would not see so many bones if I were the dog,” was Dante’s
retort when annoyed by similar attentions at the table of Can Grande.
[26] Shepherd’s Bush.
[27] Cf. inf. vii. 111; 1 Tim. vi. 10, “The love of money is the root of
all evil.”
[28] i.e. a whirlpool engulfing a man’s livelihood.
[29] Hom. Il. x. 343, 387.
[30] Cf. Hom. Il. v. 40, xviii. 95.
[31] i.e. Plato. This anecdote is found in Aelian, Var. Hist. xiv. 33
εἰώθει δέ, φασίν, ὁ Πλάτων περὶ Διογένους λέγειν ὅτι μαινόμενος οὗτος
Σωκράτης ἐστίν.
[32] Eur. Phoen. 40.
[33] Hom. Il. v. 366, viii. 45. In the Homeric lines, however, ἐλάαν is
a verb in the infinitive mood: “he lashed the steeds to make them run.”
[34] Il. v. 83.
[35] As Chiron was the wisest and best, so Eurytion was the most
intemperate, of the Centaurs: “Eurytion, ebriosus ille Centaurus”
(Menagius).
[36] Literally “Diogenes the Hound”; cf. ii. 66.
[37] If this answer is authentic, it apparently shows that the famous
term “cosmopolitan” originated with Diogenes.
[38] There is no such line in our mss. of Homer; it is unknown to the
Scholiasts and to Eustathius. Joshua Barnes, in his edition of the
Iliad, introduced it as xvi. 82a. Pope rendered it, about 1718, as
follows (Il. xvi. 86): <quote>
[39] “Sarapis” was represented, like Pluto, as seated with an animal by
his side having the head of a dog, lion, or wolf combined (according to
Baumeister) in “a three-headed Cerberus.”
[40] Il. iii. 65.
[41] Od. i. 157, iv. 70.
[42] 70–73. As 74 joins on well to 69, the intermediate specimens of
Cynic maxims (cf. note on 10) are clearly an insertion, probably from a
different source.
[43] It has been conjectured that the Pasiphon meant was the philosopher
of Eretria, to whom Persaeus attributed the composition of spurious
Socratic Dialogues (v. supra, ii. 61). Modern scholars incline to regard
him as the author of the Πίναξ attributed to Cebes by D. L. ii. 125 (v.
Susemihl, Griechische Literatur in der Alexandrinerzeit, i. p. 20,
Welcker, Kl. Schr. i. p. 422, n. 18). Wilamowitz conjectures that
Λουκιανοῦ has displaced the local adjective of his birthplace.
[44] “Harpalus” according to Cic. N. D. iii. 34. 83.
[45] Anth. Pal. xvi. 334.
[46] Anth. Pal. vii. 116.
[47] 324–321 B.C.
[48] Cf. Epictet. iii. 22. 88 ὡς Διογένης ἐποίει‧ στίλβων γὰρ περιήρχετο
καὶ αὐτὸ τὸ σῶμα ἐπέστρεφε τοὺς πολλούς.
[49] Not the same as Bryson of Heracleia, whom we know from the Platonic
Epistles, from Aristotle, and from Athenaeus (xi. p. 508). He may,
however, have been the disciple of Pythagoras mentioned by Iamblichus
(Vita Pyth. c. 23).
[50] Anth. Plan. v. 13.
[51] Anth. Pal. vii. 326.
[52] Anth. Pal. ix. 497.
[53] 328–324 B.C.
[54] Hom. Il. i. 591.
[55] Nauck, T.G.F.², Adesp. 285
[56] Eur. Bacch. 1236.
[57] Nauck, T.G.F.², Crat. i. p. 810.
[58] “Menippus ille, nobilis quidem canis,” Varro apud Nonium 333. Cf.
Lucian, Icaromenippus 15, Bis Accusatus 33. Varro’s Saturae Menippeae, a
mixture of prose and verse, were an imitation of the style of Menippus,
although their subject matter was original and genuinely Roman.
[59] Strabo, however (xvi. p. 759), speaks of him as σπουδογέλοιος.
[60] For a fragment from his Banquet see Athenaeus 502 c.
[61] Anth. Plan. v. 41.
[62] Cf. Cic. Brut. 91, 315 “post a me tota Asia peragrata est, [fuique]
cum summis quidem oratoribus, quibus-cum exercebar ipsis lubentibus;
quorum erat princeps Menippus Stratonicensis meo iudicio tota Asia illis
temporibus disertissimus,” and Strabo xvi. 660.
[63] Hom. Od. iv. 392.
[64] Cf. Eur. Antiope, Frag. 205 Dind.
[65] Cynosura, Dog’s Tail, like Dog’s Head, Cynoscephalus, was the name
of several promontories, notably one in Athens and one in Salamis.
Relatively to Cynicism, “holding on by the dog’s tail” would seem a more
appropriate interpretation.
[66] Our word “colonnade” better describes a roofed building, supported
at least on one side by pillars and thus affording a public thoroughfare
like an arcade or cloister, but open to the sun and air. Owing, however,
to the Latin “porticus” Zeno’s school has received in English literature
the appellation of “the Porch.” The frescoes or pictures, with which the
Stoa was adorned, made it in some sense the National Gallery of Athens.
For further information see by all means Frazer’s note on Pausanias i.
15 (vol. ii. pp. 132–137).
[67] Probably the Thirty met in the Stoa and passed sentence of death
there. It is not likely that this was the place of execution.
[68] Pliny, N. H. xxxiv. 92.
[69] 260–256 B.C.
[70] Cf. Tarn, Antig. Gon. p. 309, especially note 106; he considers the
decree, as we have it, a fusion of two genuine decrees, (1) voting a
crown to Zeno in his life-time, (2) decreeing a public funeral after his
death.
[71] The security for the loan was either the cargo shipped or the
vessel itself. As the risk was great, the interest was proportionately
high. Demosth. Or. xxxiv. 23, l. 17, lvi. 17.
[72] Zeno must have foreseen that this compliment would be followed by a
request to use his undoubted influence with the king on behalf of
Demochares. who, as an Athenian patriot and the nephew of Demosthenes,
was out of favour at the Macedonian court. Indeed the fact of his making
such advances at all is so strange that Ferguson (p. 172) and Tarn (p.
94, note 11) feel constrained to offer hypothetical explanations.
[73] Tarn, Antig. Gon. p. 310, well compares Plato, Politicus 260 c, and
Epicurus (ap. Senec. Ep. 7. 11), “satis enim magnum alter alteri
theatrum sumus.”
[74] Frag. 38 D.
[75] Cf. Od. xi. 281, 271.
[76] Frag. 39 D.
[77] Cf. Il. ii. 831, xxiii. 133.
[78] Cf. Athen. xiv. p. 629 b.
[79] Supplices, 861–863.
[80] The change of φωνῆς φωνήν to σωφροσύνης σωφροσύνην is due to Cobet.
Cf.130 ὥρα ἄνθος ἀρετῆς,and 173. For virtue in general Cobet’s change
here substitutes the particular virtue required. Von Arnim, adhering
more closely to the mss., would replace φωνῆς by ῥώΜης and retain φωνήν,
which would give the meaning, “Beauty he called the flower of strength,
while according to others it was the voice which he called the flower of
beauty.”
[81] Hesiod’s lines as they stand (Works and Days, 293 f.) run thus: “He
is best of all, who finds out everything for himself; that man too is
good who follows good advice.”
[82] Cf. ii. 32.
[83] Of Timotheus. See Nauck, T.G.F. p. 51.
[84] Anth. Plan. iii. 104.
[85] Anth. Pal. vii. 117.
[86] Anth. Pal. ix. 496.
[87] Anth. Pal. vii. 118.
[88] Perhaps an error for Zeno of Tarsus.
[89] Laertius adheres to his plan of arranging doctrine under two heads:
(1) a general or summary, (2) a particular, treatment; cf. inf. vii. 48
κεφαλαιωδῶς κατὰ μέρος. Here follows a valuable and full doxography,
extending to 160, collected from various sources; 49–83 come from
Diocles. The classification is roughly as follows: divisions of
Philosophy, 39–41; Logic, 42–83; Ethics, 84–131; Physics, 132–160.
[90] The word φαντασία (=appearance or appearing) is a technical term in
Stoic logic for which no one English equivalent is as yet unanimously
adopted. It denotes the immediate datum of consciousness or experience,
whether presented to sense or in certain cases to the mind. Hence
“presentation” is nearer than “perception” or “impression.” It might be
thought to correspond to Locke’s “simple ideas,” for which Hume
substituted “impressions and ideas”; but this is hardly so; for
φαντασίαι are “given” as it were from without, and then with them as
materials the mind itself constructs general notions and concepts.
[91] Cf. Plut. Mor. 874 e, and inf. 62, 83.
[92] Cf. supra, 38 note. This distinction between the general and
particular treatment is also frequent in Sextus Empiricus: e.g. Pyrrh.
Hyp. i. 5 ὁ καθόλου λόγος as opposed to ὁ εἰδικὸς λόγος.
[93] i.e. the Babylonian.
[94] Probably “adverb.”
[95] Sc. Apollodorus and his school; cf. inf. 64.
[96] = “the,” masc., fem. and neut., singular and plural.
[97] Nauck, T.G.F.², Eur. 839.
[98] The author seems to have confused “term,” which Antipater defines,
with “definition,” which, as Chrysippus says, is simply “giving back”
the meaning in other words. Zeller’s correction ἰδίου ἀπόδοσις for καὶ ἡ
ἀπόδοσις comes from a scholion on Dionysius Thrax.
[99] Cf. Stob. Ecl. i. 136. 21 W.
[100] “Direct Predicate” answers to our Active Verb, “Predicate
reversed” to our Passive; cf. supra, 43.
[101] and so have personal subjects
[102] We should expect τὰ δὲ παρασυμβάματα to follow (cf. Luc. Vit.
Auct. 21). By παρασύμβαμα is meant an impersonal verb with subject in
oblique case, as μέλει μοι. For other conjectures see Zeller, Phil. der
Gr. iii. 13, 89 note 2, 90.
[103] An attempt to distinguish what we call the Middle Voice from the
Passive – as e.g. συνέθεντο, “they made compacts with each other,” is
more active (ὀρθά) than passive (ὔπτια).
[104] Cf. Philo, L. A. iii. 201 (L.C.L. i. p. 436) ὁ ἄνθρωπος καὶ
ἀντιδρᾷ καὶ ὥσπερ ἀντιπέπονθε σχηματίζων ἑαυτὸν πρὸς τὸ κείρεσθαι, “the
man” – as distinct from a fleece being shorn – “is both active and
passive, as he suits his motions to the shaving.”
[105] Nauck, T.G.F.², Adesp. 177; cf. Galen, xiii. p. 363 K.
[106] Iliad ix. 96.
[107] Nauck, T.G.F.², Adesp. 286.
[108] Cf. Sext. Emp. Adv. math. viii. 429.
[109] The example is badly chosen, confusing contrary with
contradictory.
[110] Cf. Sext. Emp. Pyrrh. Hyp. ii. 157 sq.
[111] Cf. supra, 44.
[112] Here Laertius, as the text stands, gives examples of the Sorites
and the Nobody, but none of the other three fallacies, the Veiled,
Concealed, Horned.
[113] The vulgate, in which I have made no change, has been regarded
with suspicion. Von Arnim conjectures: “For if the logician ought to
have something to say about the correct use of terms, how could he fail
to lay down the proper names for actions?”
[114] One of the older Stoics; cf. Frag. Vet. Stoic. i. 90.
[115] It is obviously not courage which is here defined, but apparently
wisdom over again. Hence I have marked a lacuna.
[116] “Indirectly”: more literally “contributing, as intermediary
(μέσην), to.”
[117] With Arnim’s correction, wheat would exchange for 1 1/2 times the
quantity of barley. The three meanings of ἀξία are also given, but in a
different order, by Stobaeus, Ecl. ii. 83. 10, who explains this as
ἀμοιβὴν τοῦ δοκιμαστοῦ.
[118] The reading πραχθέν is now accepted in place of προαχθέν. “Duty,”
it should be noted, is a very inadequate rendering of καθῆκον, which in
the present passage applies to the proper behaviour of plants and
animals no less than to that of human beings. Cf. Stob. Ecl. ii. 85. 13
ὂ πραχθὲν εὔλογον ἀπολογίαν ἔχει; Sext. Emp. vii. 158.
[119] The ordinary meaning of the verb καθήκειν is well seen in Hdt.
vii. 22 ὁ γὰρ Ἄθως ἐστὶ ὄρος μέγα τε καὶ ὀνομαστὸν ἐς θάλασσαν κατῆκον
(“for Athos is a great and famous mountain, reaching down to the sea”).
The term seems to have passed from this meaning to signify figuratively
that which extends to, affects, or is incumbent on us: as near an
approach, perhaps, to the idea of duty as can be expected in any ancient
system of Ethics, which regards human conduct not as obedience to law,
but as determination and pursuit of good.
[120] Il. i. 81, 82.
[121] Regarded as passages down to the underworld; cf. Virg. Aen. vi.
240 seq., 299.
[122] The words in brackets read like a marginal note, afterwards
inserted in the text.
[123] αὐτοῦ̂τοῦ κόσμου.
[124] “The same part” ̔τὸ αὐτὸ μέροσ̓ may refer to the quality of dryness
last mentioned.
[125] “World” is normally the best rendering of κόσμος. “Universe,”
which some prefer, better suits τὸ ὅλον.
[126] The reading ἀσώματα can be retained if we alter ταῦτα to λεκτά,the
sense thus being “the meanings of spoken words are also incorporeal.”
Yet a parallel change is required in 134. Professor Pearson suggests
εἶναι δὲ καὶ τὰ ἀσώματα ὁμοίως, introducing 141.
[127] and not always then
[128] i.e. the moon’s latitude relatively to the zodiac is nil.
[129] into him
[130] Or perhaps “seminal proportions.” This obscure expression would
seem intended to assimilate all development and evolution to the growth,
whether of plants or animals, from seed.
[131] For the meaning of this verb (συμφθείρεσθαι) see Wilamowitz on
Eur. H. F. 932, and Plut. Mor. 436 b.
[132] The lacuna of the mss. can be filled from the parallel passage of
Aetius, Diels, Doxographi Graeci, p. 374 a 23.
[133] For καυματίας of mss. Cobet reads κλιματίας.
[134] The κέντρον is rather an axis (namely, a diameter of the celestial
sphere) than a point.
[135] Cf. Aet. Plac. iv. 19. 4 (Arnim, ii. p. 140).
[136] Frag. 40 D.
[137] So Wachsmuth. Diels would prefer: “deriving winning manners from
the wiles of Ariston.”
[138] Anth. Plan. v. 38.
[139] The town in Ceos to which Bacchylides belonged: Ael Var. Hist. iv.
15.
[140] Cf. 37.
[141] i.e. the author of the astronomical poem Φαινόμενα, not the
statesman of that name, the protagonist of the Achaean League, whose
Life we have in Plutarch.
[142] A slave allowed by his master to hire himself out to another
master was bound by Attic law to refund to his own master a part
̔ἀποφορά̓ of the wages he received. Zeno claimed a part of his pupil’s
earnings.
[143] Frag. 41 D.
[144] Diels’ reading λίθος gives the line a far better rhythm.
[145] Eur. El. 140.
[146] Hom. Od. iv. 611.
[147] Transcribers note: Hicks preferred to translate this lurid
anecdote into Latin. A rough English translation of the Greek text is:
“Hecato tells us in his Anecdotes, that once when a pretty lad invented
a word for thigh-slapping (mêrizei) by analogy with the word for
belly-slapping (gastrizei), Cleanthes replied that he should stick to
parting-the-thighs (diamêrizei), for words which correspond by analogy
do not always correspond by meaning.”
[148] Nauck, T.G.F.², p. 823.
[149] Anth. Plan. v. 36.
[150]
37.
[151] 222–205 B.C.
[152] Cf. sup.162.
[153] Eur. Or. 540–1.
[154] Eur. Or. 253.
[155] Od. x. 495.
[156] 208–204 B.C.
[157] Anth. Pal. vii. 706.
[158] In 185–189; cf. Wilamowitz, Antig. von K. pp. 104sq.
[159] Cf. viii. 89–90, and note ad loc.; also Pliny, N. H. xxix. 5.
[160] Or perhaps a grandson, as Wilamowitz suggests, Antig. von Kar. p.
326.
[161] Cf. supr. ii. 101.
[162] A well-known fallacy; see Book II. 108.
[163] Cf. supra,162.
[164] Cf. Cicero, Acad. post. 42 “sed inter scientiam et inscientiam
comprehensionem illam, quam dixi, collocabat” [sc. Zeno]; Sext. Emp.
Adv. math. vii. 151.