194 He criticized people for the way in which they prayed, saying that they asked for the things that seemed good to them, and not for those that truly are.*
(Diogenes Laertius 6.42; G350)
195 It made him angry that people should sacrifice to the gods for good health, and yet at those very sacrifices feast* to the detriment of their health.
(Diogenes Laertius 6.28; G345)
196 Diogenes said, ‘People pray to the gods for good health, and yet most of them consistently act in such a way as to damage their health.’
(Stobaeus 3.6.35; G345)
197 To a couple who were sacrificing to the gods in the hope of having a son, he said, ‘But you don’t sacrifice to ensure what kind of a person he’ll turn out to be?’
(Diogenes Laertius 6.63; G343)
198 On seeing someone being purified in a lustral rite,* he said, ‘Poor wretch, don’t you know that, just as sprinklings of water cannot deliver you from errors of grammar, they will be no more effective in delivering you from the errors of your life?’
(Diogenes Laertius 6.42; G326)
199a When the Athenians urged him to have himself initiated, and said that initiates obtain a privileged position in Hades,* he said, ‘It would be absurd if Agesilaos and Epaminondas* are to lie in the mud while utterly worthless people, just because they have been initiated, are to dwell in the Isles of the Blest.’
(Diogenes Laertius 6.39; G339)
199b When Diogenes heard these lines by Sophocles about the Mysteries:
Thrice-blessed
Are those mortals who have beheld the Mysteries
When they depart to Hades, for they alone will know
Life there, while others meet with nought but evil,*
he said, ‘Do you mean to say that Patakion the thief* will meet with a better lot than Epaminondas, just because he has been initiated?’
(Plutarch, How a Young Man Should Listen to Poets 4.21 ef; G339)
200 When someone marvelled at all the votive offerings on Samothrace,* he said, ‘There would have been a good many more if they were also offered up by those who were not saved.’
(Diogenes Laertius 6.59; G342)
201 One day he saw a woman assuming a none too decorous posture* as she was supplicating the gods; and wanting to free her of her superstition (as Zoilos of Perga records) he went up to her and said, ‘Aren’t you afraid, my good woman, that the god may be standing behind you—for everywhere is full of his presence—and then your posture would be none too decent.’
(Diogenes Laertius 6.37; G344)
202 To Asklepios he dedicated a pugilist* who, whenever people prostrated themselves, would run up to them and give them a beating.
(Diogenes Laertius 6.38; G341)
203 When he was once gathering figs and the custodian said to him, ‘A man hanged himself from that tree not long ago’, he replies, ‘Very well, then, I’ll clear it.’*
(Diogenes Laertius 6.61; G348)
204 The philosopher Diogenes once entered a temple of Heracles as evening was falling, and seizing hold of the wooden image of Heracles, mockingly said, ‘Well then, Heracles, the time has now come for you to serve me as once you served Eurystheus,* and to perform this thirteenth labour of cooking my lentil soup’; and with these words, he thrust it into the fire.
(Oracles of the Greek Gods, no. 70, ed. K. Buresch, Klaros (1889); G131)
205 One day, on seeing the custodians of the temple-treasures leading away a man who had stolen a bowl, he said, ‘The big thieves are arresting the little thief.’
(Diogenes Laertius 6.45; G462)
206 He used to say that when in this life he saw pilots, doctors, and philosophers, man struck him as being the most intelligent of creatures, but when, on the other hand, he saw diviners and dream-readers* and those who consulted them, and those who prided themselves on their reputation and wealth, he then thought there could be no creature more foolish than man.
(Diogenes Laertius 6.24; G375)
207 To those who allowed themselves to be disturbed by their dreams, he used to say that, while they paid little enough attention to what they were doing while they were awake, they devoted all their concern to fancies that they dreamed up while they were asleep.
(Diogenes Laertius 6.43; G327)
208 A man who was highly superstitious once remarked to Diogenes, ‘I could break your head in with a single blow’, to which he retorted, ‘And I for my part could make you tremble with fear simply by sneezing from the left.’*
(Diogenes Laertius 6.48; G346)
209 To someone who marvelled at having found a snake coiled around a bolt,* he said, ‘That’s nothing to wonder at, it would have been stranger by far if you’d seen the pestle coiled around the outstretched snake!’
(Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 7.4.25.1; G463)
210 When Agesilaos of Cos recounted a dream, Diogenes said, ‘You look into how you act and talk in your dreams, but fail to see where you are making a false step while you are awake.’
(Codex Patmos 263, no. 59; G471B)
211 Diogenes the Cynic used to say that Harpalos,* who had enjoyed a successful career as a pirate in those days, offered telling witness against the gods, by having lived so long in such good fortune.
(Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 3.83; G335)
212 The prosperity and good fortune of the wicked, so Diogenes used to say, provides telling evidence against the power of the gods.
(Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 3.88; G335)
213 When asked, ‘Do the gods exist?’, he replied, ‘I don’t know, all I know is that it is expedient that they should.’*
(Tertullian, To the Nations 2.2; G337)
214a To someone who said to him, ‘Are you the Diogenes who doesn’t believe in the existence of the gods?’, he replied, ‘And how could I be, when I consider you to be hateful to the gods?’*
(Epictetus 3.22.90–1; G334)
214b When Lysias the pharmacist asked him whether he believed in the gods, he replied, ‘And how could I not, when I regard you as being hateful to the gods?’
(Diogenes Laertius 6.42; G334)
215 He said that wives should be held in common, recognizing no other union than that between the man who persuades and the woman who yields to persuasion; and for that reason, he thought that sons too should be held in common. He also held there to be nothing improper in stealing from a temple* or eating the meat of any kind of animal; nor even anything ungodly in consuming human flesh, as is plain from the custom of some foreign peoples. According to right reason, so he argued, every substance is to be found in all others* and throughout all things; so in bread, for instance, there are particles of meat, and in vegetables, particles of bread, and also particles of every other substance in every other, in so far as they pass in through certain invisible pores* and enter into combination with it in vaporous form, as he makes clear in his Thyestes, if the tragedies were indeed written by him, and not by Philiscos of Aegina,* a pupil of his, or by Pasiphon,* son of Loucianos, as Favorinos claims in his Miscellaneous Histories, saying that they were written after the death of Diogenes.
(Diogenes Laertius 6.72–3; G132 and 128)
216 Since you have read so much, what do you think of the things that are to be found in the works of Zeno, Diogenes, and Cleanthes?* They teach cannibalism, fathers are to be cooked and eaten by their own sons, and if anyone should prove unwilling and throw away his share of the abominable meal, he who refuses to eat will himself be eaten. Can any voice be found that is more ungodly than that of Diogenes, who teaches children to bring their own parents to sacrifice* and devour them?
(Theophilus, To Autolycus 3.5; G134)
217 Cleanthes in his book On the Way to Dress mentions it [the Republic]* with praise as a work of Diogenes, and gives a general account of its contents, with further discussion of some particular points; and Chrysippos in his work On the State and Law makes mention of it…. In his work On the State, while talking about the uselessness of weapons,* he says that such a view was also stated by Diogenes, which is something that he could only have written about in his Republic. In the treatise Things which should not be chosen for their own sake, Chrysippos states that Diogenes laid down in his state that knucklebones should serve as legal currency.* This is to be found in the work of which we are talking and also in the first book of the treatise Against those who have a different idea of practical reason. In his work On the life in accordance with reason he also makes mention of [Diogenes’ Republic], together with the many impieties contained in it, to which he gives his approval; and he frequently mentions the work and its contents with praise in the fourth book of his treatise On the beautiful and pleasure. And in the third book of his work on justice he speaks of cannibalism as a teaching…. Diogenes himself in his Atreus, Oedipus, and Philiscos acknowledges as his own teachings most of the foul and impious ideas that are to be found in the Republic. Antipater* in his work Against the Philosophical Schools mentions Zeno’s Republic and the doctrines that Diogenes expounds in his Republic, expressing amazement at their impassibility. And some say that the Republic is not by the Sinopean but by someone else…
We must now go on to summarize the noble thoughts of these people,* expending as little time as possible in describing their opinions. It pleases these holy people, then, to assume the lives of dogs, to speak shamelessly and without restraint to everyone without distinction, to masturbate in public, to wear a doubled cloak, to abuse young men whether they love them or not, and whether or not the young men willingly surrender themselves or have to be forced … boys are held in common by all… they have sexual relations with their own sisters and mothers and other close relatives, and with their brothers and sons. To achieve sexual gratification, there is nothing that they will abstain from, not even the use of violence.* The women make advances to men, and seek to persuade them in every way to have intercourse with them, and if they fail in their efforts, offer themselves in the market-place to anyone whatever. Everyone misbehaves with everyone else, husbands have intercourse with their maidservants, wives abandon their husbands to go off with those who better please them. The women wear the same clothing as men and take part in the same activities, differing from them in no way at all.
(Philodemus, On the Stoics 13 ff.; G126)
218 The following books are attributed to him.* The dialogues Cephalion, Ichthyas,* The Jackdaw, Pordalos,* The People of Athens, The Republic, The Moral Art, On Wealth, On Love, Theodoros, Hypsias, Aristarchos, On Death; a collection of letters; and seven tragedies,* Helen, Thyestes, Heracles, Achilles, Medea, Chrysippos, Oedipus.
Sosicrates, however, in the fourth book of his Successions, and Satyros in the fourth book of his Lives, claim that none of these are by Diogenes, and Satyros says that the little tragedies are the work of Philiscos of Aegina, a friend of Diogenes; while Sotion in his seventh book says that the only genuine works of Diogenes are On Virtue, On the Good, On Love, The Beggar, Tolmaios, Pordalos, Cassandros, Cephalion, Philiscos,* Aristarchos, Sisyphos, Ganymedes, the Anecdotes, and the Letters.
(Diogenes Laertius 6.80; G117)