96 Such are the lives of the various Cynics. We will now add an account of the doctrines* that they hold in common, for we consider this too to be a philosophical school, and not, as some maintain, simply a way of life. They choose to dispense with logic and physics,* much like Ariston of Chios,* to concentrate entirely on ethics. Diocles ascribes to Diogenes* what others attribute to Socrates, reporting him as saying that ‘We must enquire into whatever of good and ill comes to pass within our halls’. They also dispense with the standard subjects of study.* Antisthenes used to say accordingly that those who have not yet acquired proper self-mastery should not study literature, so as not to become distracted by extraneous interests. They reject geometry too, and music, and all such studies. Diogenes thus remarked, when someone showed him a clock,* that it was ‘a useful device to save one from being late for dinner’. And to someone who gave a musical recital in front of him, he said,
‘’Tis wisdom that governs men and cities well,
Not the twanging of lyres and whistling of flutes.’*
They maintain, furthermore, that the end is to live in accordance with virtue, as Antisthenes says in his Heracles,* just as with the Stoics; for the two schools have a certain affinity with one another. It has thus been said that Cynicism is a short cut to virtue. The same manner of life was also adopted by Zeno of Citium.*
They also hold that we should live a simple life, feeding only to sustain ourselves, wearing only a single cloak, and scorning wealth, repute, and high birth. Some indeed are vegetarians and drink nothing but cold water, and are contented to live in whatever shelter they can find, even storage-jars, like Diogenes, who used to say that it is the privilege of gods to need nothing, and of those who are like the gods to need little.*
They hold, furthermore, that virtue can be taught, as Antisthenes asserts in his Heracles, and can never be lost once acquired; and that the wise man is worthy of love, and can never go astray, and is a friend to all who are like him; and that we should leave nothing to fortune. All that falls between virtue and vice they hold to be indifferent,* in the same way as Ariston of Chios.
(Diogenes Laertius 6.103–5)
97 He marvelled that the grammarians should enquire into the misfortunes of Odysseus while remaining ignorant of their own;* that the musicians should tune the strings of their lyre while allowing the disposition of their soul to remain out of harmony; that the mathematicians should gaze up at the sun and moon and yet fail to see what lies beneath their feet;* that the orators should be so earnest in praising justice and yet never practise it.
(Diogenes Laertius 6.27–8; G374)
98 The plays entered for the festival of Dionysos* he called big puppet-shows for fools.
(Diogenes Laertius 6.24; G487)
99 A young man was once delivering a recitation, and Diogenes, who had filled the fold of his cloak with lupin seeds, began to swallow them down directly opposite him; and when he had captured the attention of the crowd,* he professed to be quite astounded that everyone should have turned away from the speaker to look at him.
(Diogenes Laertius 6.48; G393)
100 On hearing that a young man who had been associating with all the sophists was eager to associate with him too, he said,
‘Come not here, you turncoat, to snivel at my feet.’*
(Gnomologium Vaticanum 193; G498)
101 A geometer accused Diogenes of being uncultivated and ignorant. ‘You’ll have to forgive me’, he replied, ‘for not having learned what Cheiron never taught Achilles.’*
(Stobaeus 3.31.118; G373)
102 To someone who was talking about astronomical matters, he said, ‘And how many days did it take you to get down from the sky?’*
(Diogenes Laertius 6.39; G371)
103 When someone asked Diogenes about how things proceed in the heavens, he said, ‘I’ve never been up there.’
(Tertullian, To the Nations 2.2; G337)
104a An astronomer was pointing in the market-place to a diagram representing the stars, and was saying that ‘these here are the wandering stars’;* on hearing this, Diogenes said, ‘Don’t lie, my friend, it’s not these that are wandering astray, but those over there’—pointing to the people standing around.
(Stobaeus 2.1.23; G372)
104b An astronomer was drawing a diagram of the stars in the market-place and saying ‘these are the wandering ones’. ‘Oh no, you wretch,’ cried Diogenes. ‘It’s not those that are roaming astray, but these people here, who are standing around you and gazing at you as if you had just come down from the sky.’
(Gnomologium Parisinum 7)
105 He used to say that there are two kinds of training,* one mental and the other bodily. Through constant physical exercise, mental impressions are produced which facilitate the realization of virtuous actions. The one kind of training cannot achieve its full effect without the other, since good health and strength belong no less among the qualities that are essentially required, both for the soul and for the body.
He put forward arguments to prove that physical exercise can ease the way to the attainment of virtue. It can be seen how in the handicrafts and other arts, the craftsmen acquire remarkable dexterity through the constant practice of their art, and how flautists and athletes likewise come to excel in their respective fields through assiduous and unceasing effort; and if they had changed the scope of their training so that it was also carried over to their soul, their labours would have proved neither fruitless nor ineffective.
Nothing whatever in life, he would say, can be brought to a successful conclusion without training; it is capable of overcoming anything. It is thus necessary that, instead of engaging in useless exertions, we should choose those that are in accordance with nature if we are to live a happy life; but through their foolishness, people are unhappy. For in fact the very despising of pleasure is itself a very great source of pleasure provided that one has exercised oneself in that beforehand; and just as those who have become habituated to a life of pleasure find it most disagreeable to cross over to a contrary form of life, so those who have undertaken the opposite course of training find greater pleasure in scorning pleasure than in the pleasures themselves.
Such was the way in which he would argue and he certainly seems to have acted accordingly, re-stamping the currency in very truth, by not ascribing the same worth to merely conventional values as to those that accord with nature; and he thus maintained that his way of life was of the same stamp as that of Heracles,* in so far as he set freedom above all else.
(Diogenes Laertius 6.70–1)
106a Diogenes said that true pleasure lies in having one’s soul in a calm and cheerful state, and that without that, the riches of a Midas or Croesus will bring no benefit; and if one suffers any distress at all over matters small or great, one is not happy but wretched.
(Gnomologium Vaticanum 181; G300)
106b He said that happiness is this and nothing else, to be of truly good heart and never distressed, wherever one is and whatever the moment may bring.
(Stobaeus 4.39.20; G301)
106c He said that true happiness is this, that one’s mind and soul should be perpetually at peace and in good cheer.
(Stobaeus 4.39.21; G306)
107 But we always blame anything other than our own perversity and bad nature, accusing old age, poverty, the circumstances, the day, the hour, the place; and thus Diogenes claimed to have heard the voice of Vice accusing herself and saying, ‘No one other than I myself is to blame for all these ills.’*
Teles, 8.4–9.2 Hense; G468)
108 To someone who said life is bad, he said, ‘Not life, but life lived badly.’
(Diogenes Laertius 6.55; G310)
109 To one who said, ‘I’m ill-suited to philosophy’, he replied, ‘Then why live at all, if you have no interest in living well?’
(Diogenes Laertius 6.65; G362)
110 Diogenes said that people procure what they need to live, but not what they need to live well.
(Stobaeus 3.4.85; G311)
111 Diogenes would constantly say that to manage our lives properly, we need either reason or a rope.*
(Diogenes Laertius 6.24; G303)
112 When he was once in Sparta and saw his host preparing with great eagerness for a festival, he said, ‘And doesn’t a good man consider every day to be a festival?’
(Plutarch, On Tranquillity of Mind 20, 477c; G464)
113 When someone asked him what he had gained from philosophy, he said, ‘This, if nothing else, that I’m prepared for every fortune.’
(Diogenes Laertius 6.63; G360)
114 Diogenes said that he thought he could see Fortune storming out to attack him and exclaiming, ‘But that mad dog alone I cannot hit!’*
(Stobaeus 2.8.21; G148)
115a When he fell prey again to some mishap, he would say, ‘Thank you, Fortune, for having confronted me in such a manly fashion!’; and on such occasions he would walk away whistling.
(Stobaeus 4.44.71; G351)
115b When things came about that were unexpected and contrary to his wish, he would say, ‘Thank you, Fortune, for training me to virtue by means of such afflictions.’
(Codex Patmos 263, no. 58; G331E)
116 To someone who professed to be a philosopher but engaged in sophistical quibblings, he said, ‘You wretch, you defile what is best in a philosopher’s life by your means of argument, and yet you claim to be a philosopher.’
(Stobaeus 3.33.14; G363)
117 When someone proved by an impeccable deduction that he had horns,* he touched his forehead and said, ‘Well, I don’t see any.’ And likewise, when somebody said there is no such thing as motion,* he got up and walked around.
(Diogenes Laertius 6.38–9; G479)
118 It is pleasant to record how wittily Diogenes responded to a sophism of the kind that I mentioned above, when a dialectician from Plato’s school put it forward in the hope of making fun of him. For when the dialectician had asked, ‘That which I am, you are not?’ and Diogenes had assented, and he had then added, ‘Now I am a human being’, and Diogenes had assented to that too, he concluded: ‘So it follows that you are not a human being.’ ‘Now that’, replied Diogenes, ‘is false, but if you want it to become true, start off with me.’
(Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 18, 13.7–8; G480)
119 He used to refer to the discourse of Plato as a waste of time.*
(Diogenes Laertius 6.24; G487)
120 Plato defined man as a two-footed animal without wings,* and was applauded for it; so Diogenes plucked a cock and brought it into the lecture-hall, saying, ‘Here’s Plato’s man!’ As a result the definition was supplemented with the phrase ‘having broad nails’.
(Diogenes Laertius 6.40; G63)
121 When Plato was once talking about his Ideas* and used the terms ‘tableness’ and ‘cupness’,* Diogenes remarked, ‘I can see a table and a cup, but in no way this tableness and cupness.’ ‘Of course not,’ replied Plato, ‘because you have the eyes that are needed to see a cup and table, but lack the intellect through which tableness and cupness can alone be beheld.’
(Diogenes Laertius 6.53; G62)
122 On hearing Plato praised, Diogenes said, ‘And what’s so wonderful about him, a man who has practised philosophy all this time and never caused pain to anyone?’*
(Plutarch, On Moral Virtue 12, 452d; G61)
123 Diogenes asked Plato if he was writing a book of laws,* and he said yes. ‘That’s odd, haven’t you written a Republic?’ ‘Yes, I have.’ ‘Well then, didn’t your republic have laws?’ ‘Of course it did.’ ‘Then why on earth do you need to be writing laws again?’
(Stobaeus 3.13.45; G64)
124a Diogenes once asked Plato for three figs from his garden; and when Plato sent a whole bushel, he exclaimed, ‘The same old story—ask him one thing and he’ll reply with a thousand!’
(Stobaeus 3.36.21; G55)
124b Diogenes once asked Plato for some wine, and then for some dried figs also; and Plato sent him a whole jar full. ‘Now if someone asked you what two and two add up to,’ said Diogenes, ‘would you answer: twenty? In just the same way, you neither give what is asked of you, nor answer the questions that are put to you.’ Such was the way in which he mocked him for being a man who talked without end.
(Diogenes Laertius 6.26; G55)
125 Some also ascribe the following story to him; on seeing him washing vegetables,* Plato came up to him and quietly remarked, ‘If you paid court to Dionysios,* you wouldn’t need to be washing vegetables’, to which he replied in the same calm tone, ‘Yes, and if you washed vegetables, you wouldn’t need to be paying court to Dionysios.’
(Diogenes Laertius 6.58; G56)
126 One day, at a sumptuous banquet, he noticed that Plato was merely eating olives.* ‘How is it’, he asked, ‘that our philosopher, after having sailed over to Sicily for the sake of these fine dishes, does not enjoy them when they are set out in front of him?’, to which Plato replied, ‘No, by all the gods, Diogenes, over in Sicily too I lived on the olives and the like for the most part.’ ‘Then why’, said Diogenes, ‘did you need to sail to Syracuse? Can it be that Attica was not producing any olives at the time?’ But Favorinos in his Miscellaneous Tales ascribes this to Aristippos.*
(Diogenes Laertius 6.25; G55)
127 On another occasion, while he was eating some dried figs, he ran across Plato and said, ‘You can have a share of these if you like’; and when Plato took them and ate them, he said, ‘I invited you to take a share of them, not to gobble down the lot.’
(Diogenes Laertius 6.25; G55)
128 When Diogenes offered Aristotle some dried figs, Aristotle realized that he had some witticism ready to deliver* if he failed to accept them; so he took them, and said that Diogenes had lost his witticism along with his figs. When offered some figs on another occasion, he accepted them, raised them up high as one does with babies, and then returned them, saying, ‘Great is Diogenes.’
(Diogenes Laertius 5.18; G68
129 When reproached for begging when Plato did not, he replied, ‘Oh, he begs too, only,
He holds his head close so that others may not hear.’*
(Diogenes Laertius 6.67; G58)
130a Plato was discussing various points in the presence of Diogenes, who was paying little attention to him. Growing irritated at this, the son of Ariston* said, ‘Listen to what I’m saying, dog!’ In no way disconcerted, Diogenes replied, ‘Well I at least have never returned to the place where I was sold from, as dogs do’, alluding to Plato’s return to Sicily.*
(Aelian, Historical Miscellany 14.33; G59)
130b When Plato called him a dog, he said, ‘Oh yes, because I have returned to those who have sold me.’*
(Diogenes Laertius 6.40; G59)
131a One day, when Plato had invited some friends who had come over from Dionysios, Diogenes trampled over his carpets, saying, ‘I’m trampling on Plato’s empty pride’, to which Plato retorted, ‘How much vanity you display, Diogenes, in making a show of not being vain!’
(Diogenes Laertius 6.26; G55)
131b Others claim that Diogenes said, ‘I’m trampling on the vanity of Plato’, to which Plato replied, ‘Yes indeed, Diogenes, with vanity of another kind.’ Sotion says in his fourth book that it was the Dog* who addressed this remark to Plato.
(Diogenes Laertius 6.26; G55)
132 When Diogenes once invited Plato to share his meal in the market-place, Plato said, ‘How charming your unaffectedness would be, if only it were not so affected!’*
(Gnomologium Vaticanum 445; G60)
133 Diogenes was once standing outside and got a soaking, and when the bystanders took pity on him, Plato, who also happened to be present, exclaimed, ‘if you really want to have occasion to pity him, simply walk away!’
(Diogenes Laertius 6.41; G57)
134a It is said that Plato used to say of Diogenes that he was Socrates gone mad.*
(Aelian, Historical Miscellany 14.33; G59)
134b When someone asked him, ‘What sort of a man do you consider Diogenes to be?’, he [Plato] replied, ‘Socrates gone mad.’
(Diogenes Laertius 6.54; G59)
135 Diogenes used to say that Socrates himself had lived a life of luxury; for he had devoted too much concern to his little house, and his little couch, and his sandals* (which Socrates did in fact wear from time to time).
(Aelian, Historical Miscellany 4.11; G256)
136 He said that the school of Eucleides was nothing more than gall.*
(Diogenes Laertius 6.24; G487)