The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers Diogenes Laërtius (first ebook reader .TXT) 📖

said that it was possible that such a thing might happen by chance, Dionysius sent him back word once more, “You will find this passage too:

“An aged monkey is not easily caught;
He’s caught indeed, but only after a time.”

And he added, “Heraclides knows nothing of letters, and has no shame.”

And there were fourteen persons of the name of Heraclides: First, this man of whom we are speaking; the second was a fellow citizen of his, who composed songs for Pyrrhic dances, and other trifles; the third was a native of Cumae, who wrote a history of the Persian war in five books; the fourth was also a citizen of Cumae, who was an orator and wrote a treatise on his art; the fifth was a native of Calatia or Alexandria, who wrote a Succession in six books, and a treatise on Ships, from which he was called Lembos; the sixth was an Alexandrian, who wrote an account of the peculiar habits of the Persians; the seventh was a dialectician of Bargyleia who wrote against Epicurus; the eighth was a physician, a pupil of Hicesius; the ninth was a physician of Tarentum, a man of great skill; the tenth was a poet, who wrote Precepts; the eleventh was a sculptor of Phocaea; the twelfth was an Epigrammatic poet of considerable beauty; the thirteenth was a Magnesian who wrote a history of the reign of Mithridates; the fourteenth was an astronomer who wrote a treatise on Astronomy.

Book VI Antisthenes

Antisthenes was an Athenian, the son of Antisthenes. And he was said not to be a legitimate Athenian, in reference to which he said to someone who was reproaching him with the circumstance: “The mother of the Gods too is a Phrygian,” for he was thought to have had a Thracian mother. On which account, as he had borne himself bravely in the battle of Tanagra, he gave occasion to Socrates to say that the son of two Athenians could not have been so brave. And he himself, when disparaging the Athenians who gave themselves great airs as having been born out of the earth itself, said that they were not more noble as far as that went than snails and locusts.

Originally he was a pupil of Gorgias the rhetorician, owing to which circumstance he employs the rhetorical style of language in his Dialogues, especially in his Truth and in his Exhortations. And Hermippus says that he had originally intended in his address at the assembly, on account of the Isthmian games, to attack and also to praise the Athenians and Thebans and Lacedaemonians, but that he afterwards abandoned the design when he saw that there were a great many spectators come from those cities. Afterwards, he attached himself to Socrates, and made such progress in philosophy while with him, that he advised all his own pupils to become his fellow pupils in the school of Socrates. And as he lived in the Piraeus, he went up forty furlongs to the city every day, in order to hear Socrates, from whom he learnt the art of enduring, and of being indifferent to external circumstances, and so became the original founder of the Cynic school.

And he used to argue that labor was a good thing, by adducing the examples of the great Hercules and of Cyrus, one of which he derived from the Greeks and the other from the barbarians.

He was also the first person who ever gave a definition of discourse, saying: “Discourse is that which shows what anything is or was.” And he used continually to say: “I would rather go mad than feel pleasure.” And: “One ought to attach oneself to such women as will thank one for it.” He said once to a youth from Pontus, who was on the point of coming to him to be his pupil, and was asking him what things he wanted: “You want a new book, and a new pen, and a new tablet;”⁠—meaning a new mind. And to a person who asked him from what country he had better marry a wife, he said: “If you marry a handsome woman, she will be common;54 if an ugly woman, she will be a punishment to you.” He was told once that Plato spoke ill of him, and he replied: “It is a royal privilege to do well, and to be evil spoken of.” When he was being initiated into the mysteries of Orpheus, and the priest said that those who were initiated enjoyed many good things in the shades below⁠—“Why, then,” said he, “do not you die?” Being once reproached as not being the son of two free citizens, he said: “And I am not the son of two people skilled in wrestling; nevertheless, I am a skillful wrestler.” On one occasion he was asked why he had but few disciples, and said: “Because I drove them away with a silver rod.” When he was asked why he reproved his pupils with bitter language, he said: “Physicians too use severe remedies for their patients.” Once he saw an adulterer running away, and said: “O unhappy man! how much danger could you have avoided for one obol!” He used to say, as Hecaton tells us in his Apothegms: “That it was better to fall among crows,55 than among flatterers; for that they only devour the dead, but the others devour the living.” When he was asked what was the most happy event that could take place in human life, he said: “To die while prosperous.”

On one occasion one of his friends was lamenting to him that he had lost his memoranda, and he said to him: “You ought to have written them on your mind, and not on paper.” A favorite saying of his was: “That envious people were devoured by their own disposition, just as iron is by rust.” Another was: “That those who wish to