Not long before his death at the age of 32, Alexander the Great – after having conquered the known world – is said to have wept that there were no more worlds to conquer; the cynic philosopher Diogenes, in contrast, believed that nothing was of much importance, certainly not human vanity and ambition. The two men were contemporaries, so obviously it would have been interesting if men with two such contrasting world views had met, and the historian Plutarch indeed records just such a meeting. Meetings of this kind between ‘great’ men and philosophical individuals are said – mostly wishfully – to occur in all societies, but there is a consensus that Plutarch is here recording something that did actually happen.
Myths about Alexander sprang up during his lifetime, or were invented over the following centuries. The earliest source, for example, for Alexander’s tears at running out of worlds to conquer is a late one, the 3rd century AD philosopher Aelian, and he seems to be misquoting a remark of Alexander’s that was recorded by Plutarch: when he heard a philosopher say that there were an infinite number of universes, Alexander – perhaps shedding a tear as he spoke – remarked that ‘There are so many worlds, and I have not yet conquered even one’.
Diogenes was described by Plato as ‘Socrates gone mad’, in that he took the scepticism associated with Socrates to extremes and willfully challenged authority and custom. but Diogenes and his admirers disagreed: they saw his position as entirely rational. Custom may dictate that it is not polite to eat in the marketplace, but the proscription is irrational: if you are hungry while in the marketplace. why should you not eat in the marketplace? Your appetites, even your sexual ones (as he is said to have publicly demonstrated in what was certainly a step too far for those in his presence), are no one’s business but your own.
Alexander came to Corinth in 336 BC. Corinth was the centre of his recently assassinated father’s Hellenic confederacy, and the young king (aged 20) had serious business to settle. He had to bind the fractious Hellenic world under his leadership and also prepare for a difficult campaign against the Persians. Yet he also wanted to meet the old cynic Diogenes, who was then about 70, living in a barrel, and quite possibly plagued by fetching young women as in the 1882 painting by John William Waterhouse (Waterhouse’s painting also depicts a lamp, which Diogenes carried in order to fruitlessly look for an honest man, and a bunch of the onions he had for dinner).
The meeting fulfilled all expectations: Alexander asked Diogenes if there was anything he could do for him, and Diogenes asked him to stop blocking the sun’s rays. Alexander’s henchmen were reported to be outraged by this disrespect, then astonished when Alexander said if he were not Alexander, he would want to be Diogenes.
What Happened Next
Alexander defeated the Persians, and established an empire stretching from Greece to India, an empire obtained and ruled with the characteristic ruthlessness of a despot, tempered occasionally with assiduously publicized acts of generosity. The practical request given by Diogenes became Alexander’s symbolic image – a young man whose exploits blotted out the sun. Diogenes died in Corinth in the same year as Alexander, 323 BC, indeed supposedly on the same day in June.
Alexander and Diogenes helped to colour in each other’s iconic image. Different as they were, they were also very much alike in one thing, their perception of the world they inhabited as being a world stretching far beyond the world of Greek history and culture. Diogenes is claimed to have been quite possibly the first individual to truly think of himself – or at least to declare himself – as a citizen of the world, and Alexander is seen by some as establishing the first world empire, though Cyrus the Great (see c.540 BC: Cyrus the Great doesn’t know what to make of the Spartan Embassy) has a good claim to have been there first; certainly Alexander saw Cyrus as some sort of precursor, and is claimed to have ordered the restoration of Cyrus’ tomb (a claim that remains archaeologically unproven).
Neither cynic nor conqueror had that irritating (only ancient, of course) Greek cast of mind which saw different peoples as necessarily barbarians, ‘barbarian’ meaning someone who literally talked rubbish, ‘bar bar). Alexander seems to have thought of the people he conquered – or slaughtered – as being pretty much like his Greek subjects, and Diogenes thought of everyone as equally deluded, whether Greek or barbarian. See 327 BC: Alexander meets the naked philosophers