Hegesians: Hegesiakoi. Hegesias would have been active from the late 4th to early 3rd century BC.
happiness cannot exist: since a preponderance of pleasure cannot be consistently assured for any length of time, happiness cannot properly be said to exist; the originality of this branch of the school lies in this depressing insight.
can both be desirable: according to the circumstances, depending on the current balance of pleasure and pain.
makes it his end to live without pain and distress: since we are so little able to ensure any continuous stay of pleasure and happiness, it is better to concentrate on avoiding distress; and this can best be achieved by a general cultivation of indifference, adiaphoria, toward pain, pleasure, and life itself. By a back-route the Hegesians thus arrived at a position that came surprisingly close to that of the Cynics.
for the sage, death is: it can be assumed that Hegesias merely argued that the sage will recognize that death, and thus suicide, is best in certain circumstances, and that, by contrast, it is foolish to regard life as being unequivocally good, or indeed as tending on the whole to be more good than bad.
the Death-persuader: Peisithanatos.
Ptolemy: Ptolemaios I Soter, king of Egypt from 323 to 283, who had annexed Cyrene; Hegesias would presumably have been lecturing in Alexandria.
Annicerians: Annikeirioi. Anniceris was a contemporary of Hegesias; according to the Suda, he lived at the same time as Alexander the Great (reigned 336–323), but he would presumably have died considerably later than Alexander.
nonetheless be happy: since they were less narrowly hedonistic than the Hegesians, thinking that satisfaction could also be found in human relationships and various aspects of social life, they were accordingly less pessimistic, supposing that there is more that can be added to the positive side of the balance.
out of a natural feeling of goodwill: it would seem that the Annicerians explicitly recognized other values in addition to pleasure. Epicurus attached notable importance to friendship, but it is doubtful whether (theoretically at least) he valued it as anything other than a source of pleasure. The Annicerians appear to have been less dogmatic, taking the common-sense view that altruistic sentiments and behaviour can be of value not merely in so far they are conducive to pleasure, but as a source of meaning and fulfilment in our lives.
Antipatros: the founder of the line to which Anniceris and Hegesias belonged (see 614).
Dionysios the dialectician: Dionysios of Chalcedon, active in the latter part of the 4th century and associated with the Megarian school; Theodoros evidently studied with him because, exceptionally among the Cyrenaics, he had a taste for sophistic argument.
joy and grief… the supreme good and evil: this shows that Theodoros struck out on a path of his own, diverging quite sharply from Cyrenaic orthodoxy. Instead of locating the end (exclusively or primarily) in pleasurable sensations as enjoyed in the moment, he proposed instead that that ultimate good is chara, joy or delight, a settled state of the soul, which is founded in turn in practical wisdom. Correspondingly, pleasure is not unequivocally good, but can be good or bad according to the circumstances, whereas the wisdom that enables us to achieve that state of joy is good in itself.
nature… common opinion: in judging whether something is good or bad, we should consider solely whether it is in accordance with nature, without attaching any importance to the prescriptions of the law or to social and moral conventions. Here Theodoros comes close to the Cynics, deliberately setting out to shock people by advocating unholy actions and shameless behaviour. He was in fact more an eclectic than a Cyrenaic in any strict sense.
arguments based on question and answer: this was how he put into effect the training that he had received in dialectic. The sophistic arguments that he employed in this connection were rather different from the paradoxical arguments that the Cynics advanced in defence of their more scandalous ideas (although it may be noted that a similar argument is ascribed to Aristippos in 574–5). One may hope that he did not take them too seriously.
called ‘god’: by humorous inversion of his name of ‘atheist’.
the hierophant Eurycleides: high priest of the cult of Demeter at Eleusis, who initiated people into the Eleusinian Mysteries, providing them with the secret revelations that were supposed to assure them of a better lot in the afterlife. This involved not only verbal instruction, but also ritual and religious theatre. The exact content of the revelation is unknown because those who were due to be initiated had to swear a strict oath of secrecy.
hauled in front of the court of the Areiopagos: Theodoros was prosecuted, or at least came under danger of being prosecuted, in this ancient Athenian court on a charge of atheism, during the period when Demetrios of Phaleron held power in the city (i.e. from 317 to 307; probably during the latter part of that period). The present account by Diogenes Laertius suggests that Demetrios, a man who had wide intellectual interests, intervened to save him from being brought in front of the court, so enabling him to make a safe voluntary departure from Athens; but most other accounts state that he was actually convicted and banished. What may actually have happened is that Demetrios intervened to save him from being executed as a result of his conviction. Philo indicates in 635 that he was tried for atheism and corruption of the young, and it seems that his talk and writings would have provided ample evidence to support such a charge.
to drink hemlock: this claim may be confidently rejected because so much is recorded about his subsequent life. This Amphicrates may perhaps be identified with the Athenian sophist and rhetorician of that name from the 1st century BC.
Metrocles the Cynic: a follower of Crates, see 459.
also told of Diogenes and Aristippos: see 596; and Diogenes and Plato too, see 125.
Megas: a stepson of Ptolemy I Soter, the founder of the Macedonian ruling dynasty in Egypt. After initially holding power in Cyrene as a governor, he seized power in his own right in 276 and ruled there until his death in 250.
expelled from Cyrene: probably during the disturbances in the late 320s that preceded Ptolemy’s annexation of Cyrene, or possibly during the unsuccessful revolt against Ptolemy’s rule in 313.
Ptolemy, son of Lagos: i.e. Ptolemy Soter; his court was an obvious destination for Theodoros because Cyrene was under his power.
Lysimachos: a Macedonian officer who established a kingdom on either side of the Hellespont, embracing Macedonia, Thrace, and Asia Minor. Since Lysimachos first assumed the title of king in 306 or somewhat later, Theodoros’ visit must have fallen after that date if he was in fact king at the time.
Semele… to bear Dionysos: while Semele, a Theban princess, was pregnant with the god Dionysos, she persuaded her lover Zeus to visit her in his full divine form; this caused her death, but Zeus snatched out her unborn child and sewed him into his thigh, to enable him to be brought to birth at the proper time. So it was really Zeus who caused her death rather than any inability to bear her divine child.
hateful to the gods: cf. 214 and note.
put off the ship by the Argonauts: it was commonly thought that Heracles had been left behind at an early stage of the voyage of the Argonauts, and various explanations were offered, one being that he was simply too heavy for the ship (Apollodorus, Library 1.9.19, citing Pherecydes). The real explanation was that he was a late addition to the story, and so had no worthy role to play in the seizing of the golden fleece when the ship reached its destination.
rots in the ground or in the air above: this accords with a standard Cynic attitude about burial (see 395–7); it need not be assumed that the phrase about rotting below or above originated with Theodoros, the humour lies in his bravado in applying it in this particular situation, when he has been threatened with a very painful death. This response is also ascribed to Anaxarchos, a philosopher who accompanied Alexander to the East (Gnomologium Vaticanum 64): ‘When King Alexander said to the natural philosopher Anaxarchos, “I’ll hang you”, he replied, “Direct your threats against others, it makes no difference to me whether I rot above the ground or beneath it.”’ But it may be assumed that this is a secondary attribution.
Telesphoros: an officer in the service of Lysimachos (conceivably to be identified with the nephew of Antigonos the One-Eyed mentioned in other connections) who was supposed to have offended the king by joking at a banquet that his wife Arsinoe was much given to vomiting (Athenaeus 14, 616c). The king responded by enclosing him in a cage and inflicting picturesque punishments on him.
poisonous fly: cantharis, the ‘Spanish fly’, actually a kind of beetle; here we have variations on the preceding story, in which Theodoros responds with suitable impertinence to similar threats from the king.
Phocion: ‘the Good’, 402–318 BC, an Athenian statesman and general who was famous for his austere and upright character. Various tales are told about his disreputable son Phocos in Plutarch’s biography of him.
a companion woman: hetaira, the Greek term for a courtesan; so this is one of the sophistic arguments that so appealed to Theodoros. A hetaira, who could be an accomplished woman, should be distinguished from a pornē, a prostitute in a brothel, like Phocos’ inamorata.
Hiketes: the name that is given here to Diogenes’ father, named elsewhere as Hicesias (see 2).
a pupil of Socrates: evidently Diogenes’ supposed master Antisthenes; there is no need for the author of the letter to name him.
two paths that lead to happiness: the motif of the choice between difficult and easy paths originally goes back to a speech by the sophist Prodicos of Ceos (c.465–c.395), who recounted a little parable about the choice of Heracles, in which the hero had to decide whether to take the hard and strenuous path to virtue, or the short and easy path to pleasure and vice. Although Prodicos’ work has not survived, the essential features of this tale are recorded in Xenophon’s summary of it in Memorabilia 2.1.21–34. Since Heracles was adopted as an exemplar by Antisthenes, it is appropriate that Antisthenes should be presented as imposing a comparable choice on Diogenes. But both paths now lead to the same end, happiness and self-fulfilment, as approached through a harder or easier route, and the difficult path now specifically represents the Cynic way of life, as supposedly invented by Antisthenes.
led us into town: presumably we are meant to imagine them walking into Athens from the gymnasium of Cynosarges just outside the city, where Antisthenes used to teach (see 533 and relevant note).
oat-brew: trimma, a brew prepared from pounded groats and spices.
this equipment: the standard Cynic uniform and accoutrements, cf. 10 and 11.
to clear away the oil and dirt: although we might tend to think of Diogenes as being dirty, Diogenes Laertius, 6.81, quotes Athenodoros (perhaps the Stoic Athenodoros Cordylion, 1st century BC) as saying that he had a shining body because he oiled himself (cf. Epictetus 3.22.87–9, 4.11.21). That is the idea envisaged here, whether it goes back to the early tradition or is a result of later idealization.
to belabour scoundrels: or against the poets, the text is uncertain here.
dog of heaven: there is an implicit reference in this passage to the meaning of his name, ‘born of Zeus’, as in the poem of Cercidas cited in 398.
and miserable knapsack: much as in Odyssey 13.434–8, but the first line is more like Odyssey 3.467. The goddess disguised Odysseus as an old beggar when he arrived in his homeland, so as to enable him to make secret preparations for his confrontation with the suitors, who had been courting his wife Penelope and seeking to take over his kingdom during his long absence.
the Thebans will surround you again: Crates came from a rich Theban family, so his friends and relations would naturally have accused him of perversely casting himself into misery; cf. in 411, ‘Relations would often visit and try to turn him aside from his course, but he would chase them off with his stick, and remained steadfast.’
Metrocles: the early Cynic and pupil of Crates (see 459).
same things as Heracles: referring particularly to his twelve labours, in which he could be seen as exerting himself to the benefit of the human race.
Socrates… for what is theirs: see 44 and note; the saying can be more appropriately associated with Diogenes than with Socrates, who never begged.
on these grounds: see 18 and note.
the shepherd’s hand: referring to masturbation, as a practice specially associated with shepherds because they live a solitary life while pasturing their sheep.
Paris… once a cattle-herd: the Trojan prince was exposed at birth because his mother had a sinister dream foretelling that he would bring disaster to his homeland, but he was rescued by a herdsman, and herded cattle outside the city during his earlier years; he later provoked the Trojan War, and no end of suffering, by abducting the beautiful Helen, hence the wish expressed here.
learned from Pan: the text is corrupt here, but this proposed reading makes excellent sense, the rustic deity Pan being the patron-god of shepherds. In Dio Chrysostom, Speech 6.17–20, Diogenes recounts a little myth in which it is claimed that Hermes taught the practice of masturbation to Pan during the time of his hopeless passion for Echo, and Pan then passed it on to goatherds.
he was beaten: this story is not recorded among the surviving anecdotes of Diogenes, and it is in fact more likely that this was a joke from the popular tradition than a story specifically associated with Diogenes.
duly grateful: cf. 46.
house of a young man: Olympia was of course a festival site rather than a town, so this story has been tacked on rather ineptly. Cf. 145 and 594.
the pancratiast Cicermos: the pancration was a form of wrestling in which punching and kicking were also allowed; this Cicermos is a fictional character. Nothing is recorded about the recipient of this letter.
crown… palm branch: a crown of wild olive, associated with Olympian Zeus, was the official prize at the Olympic games, while the palm branch was a standard token of victory.
picked by lot: in the combat sports, pairs of opponents would be picked out by lot in each round of the contest, and the victors would pass on to the next round; so the ultimate victor did not have to compete against all other contestants. If there were uneven numbers of contestants, furthermore, an athlete could gain a bye from one round into another without having to compete.
did you defeat Cicermos: a serious point lies behind this apparently frivolous question, since for a Cynic the real fight is the one that he fights with himself, to achieve self-mastery. When Cicermos is converted to the Cynic way, he will cease to compete against others.
from leather thongs and fists: before competing in the pancration and boxing, athletes would wind leather thongs around their hands. These would provide a measure of protection for their hands, and also render their punches more damaging.
strength to call off his journey: he would have been returning home to make a ceremonial entrance into his city (cf. 70), be greeted with adulation, and receive a civic reception; but he has now come to realize that none of this has any value.
courtyard: aithrion, the Greek equivalent for the Latin word atrium, presumably referring to a courtyard in the gymnasium in the Craneion (where this meeting with Alexander is usually placed, e.g. 236); cf. Lucian, Anacharsis 2.
the Aloadai: two gigantic brothers who wanted to storm Olympos by piling mountains on top of one another, but were killed by Apollo before they could do so (Odyssey 11.306–20). There is a corrupt passage before this.
Dionysios, the tyrant of Syracuse: i.e. Dionysios II, who was finally deposed in 344. This letter develops the well-known story of a supposed meeting with Diogenes during his exile (see 251), bringing in the tradition that he was obliged to work as a primary-school teacher (an ill-rewarded and poorly regarded occupation).
A pity that you’re teaching: Diogenes means to suggest that he is a bad teacher, but Dionysios misinterprets his statement as an expression of sympathy; the Greek expression is more directly ambiguous.
festival of Hermes: since Hermes was the tutelary deity of the gymnasia, celebrations and contests would be held in gymnasia in his honour during the festival of the Hermaia. Diogenes refers to this festival in particular because it would often provide an occasion for rowdy behaviour among the young men. Plato’s Lysis is set in a wrestling-school during the Hermaia (see 206d ff., although there is no reference here to any indecorous behaviour).
in a letter: evidently another apocryphal letter.
war against the barbarians: referring specifically to Alexander’s campaigns in Asia.
drive off any beasts that might cause me any harm: cf. 397.
Niobe… remembered to eat: Iliad 24.602; see 255 and relevant note.
to bad masters moreover: i.e. to their uncontrolled desires; cf. 151–2.
promised him his freedom: in all other accounts Diogenes is in fact sold by the pirates, and this version in which they themselves want to learn from him is exceptional. Otherwise this letter simply recounts a selection of the usual stories from the tale of his auction (see Section IX).
Maron, a man who was a wine-seller: when Odysseus sacked Maron’s home-city on the north coast of the Aegean while returning from Troy, he spared Maron and his family because he was a priest of Apollo; and Maron showed his gratitude by giving Odysseus twelve jars of strong honey-sweet wine and other splendid gifts (Odyssey 9.196–205). So Maron was not exactly a wine-seller, and Diogenes’ remark here is humorously intended. Maroneia was the home-city of Hipparchia and her brother Metrocles; its name was not actually changed to Hipparchia.
at home: it would seem that in this series of letters, Hipparchia is living apart from Crates, presumably in her family home in Maroneia because she is expecting the child mentioned in 665. In the letter in which Crates responds to the news of the birth of the child, it is indicated that she has not told him about her pregnancy, so we should probably regard these letters as having been deliberately composed as a series to build up a little story, in which Crates is initially worried that she is simply falling back into an ordinary female way of life, and finds some confirmation for his worries when she sends him a garment that she has woven.
a new tunic: this is merely another version of the preceding letter, taken from a different source. One may suspect that some prose-narrative about Hipparchia provided the story which different authors used as a basis for composing apocryphal letters.
given birth: Crates and Hipparchia were said to have had a son called Pasicles (see 411, but nothing is recorded about the circumstances of his birth and rearing.
Aithra gave to Theseus: Aigeus, king of Athens, was tricked into sleeping with Aithra, a princess of Troezen. Before leaving her, he hid a sword and pair of sandals under a heavy stone, and told Aithra that if she gave birth to a son, and he was able to raise the stone when he grew up, she should send him to Athens with the sword and sandals as tokens of his paternity. When Hipparchia’s child grows up, she is to send him to Athens fitted out as a Cynic, since the Cynic way of life provides the surest security in life. This presupposes that she will remain apart from Crates for a long while.
rear him as a stork: referring to the popular belief that old storks are fed by their young (Aristotle, History of Animals 615b 23–4, cf. Aristophanes, Birds 1353–7). It is not clear whether he means just for his own old age (implying that Hipparchia would remain apart from him) or for the old age of the two of them.
Diogenes 32, to Aristippos: this comes from the collection of Cynic Letters, from which all the preceding letters have been drawn.
the tyrant: Dionysios of Syracuse.
washing chicory to eat with my bread: see 125 and note.
the stone-quarries: the notorious quarries to the north of the city where prisoners were confined and put to work.
in conflict with your reason: I have omitted the final part of this sentence because the text becomes too corrupt.
Aristippos 27, to his daughter Arete: this and the following letters are drawn from a different collection from the preceding, the Letters of Socrates and the Socratics. It should be remembered that the teaching of Aristippos was transmitted to his grandson of the same name through his daughter Arete. In this letter Aristippos is imagined as having fallen ill while trying to sail home to Cyrene in his old age, and is communicating his final wishes to his daughter, in what is in effect a sort of will; his true bequest lies not in material wealth, but in the wisdom that Arete will pass on to her son.
Lipari: one of the Aeolian Islands off the north coast of Sicily; since it does not lie on the route from Syracuse to North Africa, a story of separate origin has presumably been worked in here.
Berenice: in Cyrenaica, in the region of modern Benghazi.
Xanthippe and Myrto: Xanthippe is familiar as Socrates’ wife in the works of Xenophon (e.g. Symposium 2.10) and Plato (Phaedo 60a), but later sources also refer to another wife or female companion of his named Myrto. Plutarch mentions a work by Aristotle, On Nobility of Birth, as a source for this, but doubts whether the work is genuine, and says that the Stoic philosopher Panaitios exposed the tradition about Myrto as being inauthentic (Plutarch, Life of Aristides 27.3–4). Diogenes Laertius, 2.26, who again refers to Aristotle, indicates that some people regarded Myrto as the first wife of Socrates, while others described her as living with him as an additional wife along with Xanthippe (no wonder Xanthippe was so ill-tempered). The whole story sounds like a fiction, perhaps originating in some Hellenistic biography, although it is not inconceivable that Socrates had been married to another woman before his marriage to Xanthippe.
the Mysteries: the Eleusinian Mysteries: see 199 and notes.
Lamprocles, son of Socrates: his eldest son (Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.2.1), no more than an adolescent at the time of his father’s death (Plato, Phaedo 116b). Aristotle describes Socrates’ descendants as being fatuous and torpid (Rhetoric 1390b 30–2), in evident contrast to Arete and the young Aristippos.
no longer wish to rear your daughter: the significance of this is unclear because the following passage is very corrupt.
Antisthenes 8, to Aristippos: the remaining letters form an interconnected group; Aristippos gains the upper hand in exchanges with members of the ascetic wing of the Socratic movement, through heavy use of irony and indeed sarcasm. The author of the letters was probably more interested in the presentation of character than in the philosophical content.
Anticyra… hellebore: black hellebore, Helleborus niger, was thought to provide a cure for madness (e.g. Aristophanes, Wasps 1489) and the mountains above Anticyra in Phocis were regarded as an especially good source for that drug (Pausanias 10.36.4).
three Sicilian women: a detail evidently suggested by the anecdote recounted in 573.
Nine Springs: Enneakrounos, a fountain-house in the Agora, built in the 6th century, which was a main source of water for the Athenians.
discourse on Heracles: in which Antisthenes would have been exhorting his listeners to adopt a simple and frugal life.
the Locrian youths: presumably a story invented by reference to a passage in a letter of Plato, which mentions, with little further detail, some Locrian youths who were being entertained at a banquet in Syracuse (Letter 13, to Dionysios, 360ab; the letter is probably inauthentic). Aeschines was a friend of Socrates who was supposed to have visited the Syracusan court after his death, where Plato proved less helpful to him than Aristippos, who is represented as being on good terms with him (see 599 and note). It is Aristippos who helps him out here too; but Aeschines is imagined here as writing to him from Athens, as is plainly indicated in Aristippos’ reply.
Scironian winds: violent north-westerly winds that affected Athens.
Simon: Socratic discourses were circulated as the work of a cobbler called Simon, who was supposed to have written them on the basis of conversations that he heard when Socrates visited his workshop (DL 2.122, which includes a list of the writings ascribed to him). It is hard to know whether this Simon actually existed, although, remarkably enough, excavations have revealed that there was a shoemaker’s workshop in a corner of the Agora which may have belonged to someone of that name.
Prodicos… encomium of Heracles: Prodicos of Ceos (c.460–c.395) was a sophist who made frequent visits to Athens, and seems to have been on good terms with Socrates, to judge by Plato’s references to him. He was particularly interested in linguistic matters, above all the correct use of words. His eulogy of Heracles is mentioned by Plato (Symposium 177b). Its most famous feature, an allegorical tale in which Heracles had to make a choice between the arduous path to virtue and the easy path to pleasure and vice, can be appreciated from the summary of it in Xenophon’s Memorabilia, 2.1.21–34. Phaedo, an associate of Socrates, is reported to have written a work called Simon or the Cobbler’s Tales (DL 2.105), and it is to that work that the present letter is evidently referring when it says that Simon refuted Prodicos with regard to the encomium of Heracles. Now Simon, as a Socratic who was associated with the ascetic wing of the movement, could hardly have objected to the content of Prodicus’ discourse; for, as we have seen, the choice between the hard and easy paths was a favourite theme with the Cynics. So presumably Phaedo suggested that Simon had ‘refuted’ Prodicos with regard to the encomium of Heracles by making plain that Prodicos did not live up to the ideals expressed in it, by contrast to the humble Simon. Prodicos was said to have charged high fees for his instruction, and to have lived in some luxury.
Alcibiades… Phaidros… Euthydemos: young men belonging to the gilded youth of Athens, all familiar from Plato’s dialogues.
Epicrates the Shield-bearer: an Athenian who was active in public affairs after the Peloponnesian War, as a leading democrat. He was nicknamed the Shield-bearer because of his enormous beard, suffering mockery on that account in comedy, and he was presumably picked out for mention here because he had a beard like that of a philosopher (there is in fact a reference to philosophers’ beards later in the letter).
even Pericles: the suggestion that the great Pericles, the leading statesman of Athens, might have frequented Simon’s workshop if he had been less busy can surely be interpreted as sarcastic (even if Diogenes Laertius, 2.123, cites a story about Simon refusing an invitation from Pericles).