625 Those who were known as the Hegesians* adopted the same ends, pleasure and pain. Neither gratitude, nor friendship, nor beneficence, have any real existence in their view, because we do not choose any of these for their own sake, but for the advantages that we can draw from them, and when those are no longer to be found, the things themselves cease to exist also. Happiness is altogether impossible, since the body is afflicted with many sufferings, and the mind shares in the sufferings of the body and is troubled accordingly, and fortune, furthermore, prevents many of our hopes from being realized; so for these reasons happiness cannot exist.* Life and death can both be desirable.* They supposed that nothing is pleasant or unpleasant by nature, and as a result of deficiency, or novelty, or surfeit, some can find pleasure and others displeasure in the same things. Poverty and wealth count for nothing with regard to pleasure, since the rich do not experience pleasure in a different way from the poor. Slavery and freedom make no difference when it comes to the calculation of pleasure, and neither do nobility and low birth, or good and bad repute. If to the foolish life is advantageous, to the wise it is a matter of indifference. The wise man does everything for the sake of his own personal interest, because he thinks that no one else is of equal value to himself; for even if he could reap the greatest benefits from another person, these would not measure up to those that he could provide for himself. They placed no value on the senses, furthermore, because they do not provide accurate knowledge, but said that we should do whatever appears to be in accordance with reason. They said that we should forgive people for their faults, since no one commits a fault of his own free will, but only under the constraint of some passion. And we should not hate people, but try to show them a better way. The sage will not surpass others so much in the choice of goods as in the avoiding of evils, since he makes it his end to live without pain or distress,* a result which will be achieved best by those who make no distinction between the causes of pleasure.
(Diogenes Laertius 2.93–6; G IV F 1)
626 Hegesias of Cyrene: he maintained that neither friendship nor gratitude exist; according to him, these do not exist in themselves, but a person who has need of things offers gratitude, while one who possesses somewhat more confers benefits. He also said that for the foolish, life is a good thing, while for the sage, death is,* for which reason some have called him the Death-persuader.*
(Epiphanius, Against Heresies 3.2.9; G IV F 2)
627a To tell the truth, death separates us from bad things and not from good; and it was this thought that Hegesias of Cyrene developed with such eloquence that King Ptolemy* had to forbid him from speaking about the matter in his lectures, because many of his pupils resolved to commit suicide after having heard him.
(Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.34.83; G IV F 3)
627b What value should we attach to the eloquence of Hegesias the Cyrenaic? He portrayed the evils of life in such a vivid manner that, once he had introduced such a miserable idea of the human lot into the hearts of his listeners, he inspired many of them with the desire to seek a voluntary death, to such a point that King Ptolemy forbade him to discuss the matter any further.
(Valerius Maximus, 8.9, ext. 3; G IV F 5)
628 The book of Hegesias that I referred to is called The Man who Starved himself to Death; it tells how a man set out to starve himself to death, and when his friends tried to restrain him, responded by enumerating all the miseries of human life.
(Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.34.84; G IV F 4)
629 Through his arguments Hegesias persuaded many of his listeners to starve themselves to death.
(Plutarch, On Affection for Offspring 5, 497d; G IV F 6)
630 While agreeing with them [the Hegesians] in other regards, the Annicerians* admitted that friendship, gratitude, and respect for one’s parents do have a place in life, and that one may sometimes act out of love of one’s country. As a consequence the sage, even if he has his troubles, will nonetheless be happy,* even if few pleasures accrue to him. The happiness of a friend is not desirable for its own sake, since it is not perceptible even to one who is close to him. Reason is not sufficient on its own to enable a person to have confidence in himself and to rise above the opinions of the crowd, but it is necessary that we should educate our character to overcome the bad dispositions that have developed in us over a long period of time. A friend should be welcomed not merely because of his usefulness (for otherwise, if that were to fail, we would have nothing to do with him), but also out of a natural feeling of goodwill,* on the account of which we are even willing to put up with hardships. For although pleasure is accepted as the end, and we are distressed at being deprived of it, we willingly endure the privation nonetheless because of the affection that we feel for our friend.
(Diogenes Laertius 2.96–7; G IV G 3)
631 Those known as the Annicerians, from the Cyrenaic school, laid down no general definition of the end of life, but ascribed a specific end to each action, the pleasure that arises from the action itself. These Cyrenaics reject Epicurus’ definition of pleasure, namely the removal of pain, calling that the condition of a corpse; for we rejoice on account not only of pleasure, but also of the company of others and their esteem.
(Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 2.21.130.7–8; G IV G 4)
632 And if it is the case that the night does not take away our happiness, why should it be taken away by a day that resembles the night? On this subject Antipatros* the Cyrenaic made a remark which is far from inept even if it is a little coarse: when some lasses were once condoling with him over his blindness, he said, ‘Why trouble yourselves? Do you suppose the night does not bring pleasures of its own?’
(Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.38.112; G IV C 1)
633 Those who were called the Theodoreans derived their name from the Theodoros mentioned above, and followed his doctrines. Theodoros was a man who entirely rejected the customary beliefs about the gods. I have chanced upon a book of his entitled About the Gods, which is by no means contemptible; it was from this book, so they say, that Epicurus drew most of the things that he said about this matter.
Theodoros was a pupil of Anniceris and of Dionysios the dialectician,* as Antisthenes reports in his Successions of the Philosophers. He regarded joy and grief as being the supreme good and evil,* the one deriving from wisdom and the other from foolishness. Wisdom and justice he viewed as goods, and their opposites as evils, while he held pleasure and pain to be of intermediate value. He rejected friendship because it exists neither between the foolish nor between the wise; for in the case of the foolish, when the advantage to be gained from it is removed, the friendship too disappears, whilst the wise are self-sufficient and have no need of friends. He said, furthermore, that it is reasonable for the wise man not to risk his life for his country, since he should not throw away his own wisdom to bring benefit to fools.
He said that the world is our country. Theft, adultery, and sacrilege are justifiable on occasion, since none of these acts is foul by nature, if one puts aside the common opinion* that is held about them, which is merely designed to keep fools in check. The wise man will indulge his passions with those whom he loves quite openly and without any embarrassment. He would thus develop arguments such as this: ‘Is a woman who is expert in grammar useful in so far as she is expert in grammar?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And a boy or youth who is expert in grammar useful in so far as he is expert in grammar?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And again, is a woman who is beautiful useful in so far as she is beautiful, and a boy or youth who is beautiful useful in so far as he is beautiful?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And a beautiful boy, then, or youth will be useful for that for which he is beautiful?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Then he is useful for having sexual intercourse with.’ And when this was conceded, he concluded, ‘So if someone engages in intercourse in so far as that is useful, he commits no wrong, nor does he commit any wrong by making use of beauty for that which it is useful for.’ It was through such arguments based on question and answer* that he would uphold his view.
It seems that he was called ‘god’.* Stilpo once questioned him as follows: ‘Is it the case, Theodoros, that you are who you declare yourself to be?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And you say that you are god?’ ‘Indeed.’ ‘Then you are god.’ And when Theodoros showed himself satisfied with this, Stilpo said with a laugh, ‘But on those grounds, you wretch, you could admit to being a jackdaw too and a host of other things.’
One day Theodoros was sitting beside the hierophant Eurycleides.* ‘Tell me, Eurycleides,’ he said, ‘who are those who violate the Mysteries?’ And when the hierophant replied, ‘Those who reveal them to the uninitiated’, Theodoros said, ‘Then you yourself are violating them when you expound them to the uninitiated.’ And in truth, he would hardly have escaped from being hauled in front of the court of the Areiopagos* if Demetrios of Phaleron had not come to his rescue. Amphicrates, however, in his book About Famous Men, claims that he was condemned to drink hemlock.*…
It is said that when he was once walking around in Corinth with a large train of pupils, Metrocles the Cynic,* who was washing chervils, cried out to him, ‘Hey, you sophist, you wouldn’t need so many pupils if you’d been contented to wash vegetables!’, to which Theodoros retorted, ‘And if you’d learned to associate with human beings, you’d have no use for these vegetables.’ As has already been mentioned, a similar story is also told of Diogenes and Aristippos.*
Such, then, was Theodoros and his teachings. He finally departed for Cyrene and lived there with Megas,*continuing to be held in high honour. When he was initially expelled from Cyrene,* he is said to have made this witty remark, ‘This is an excellent thing that you’re doing, men of Cyrene, to drive me out of Libya into Greece!’
(Diogenes Laertius 2.97–101; G IV H 13)
634 While he was staying at the court of Ptolemy, son of Lagos,* the king once sent him to Lysimachos* as an ambassador. He expressed himself with such boldness on this occasion that Lysimachos asked him, ‘Tell me, Theodoros, wasn’t it you who was expelled from Athens?’, to which he replied, ‘Yes, because the city of Athens was no more able to bear me than Semele was able to bear Dionysos,* and cast me out.’ And when Lysimachos then said, ‘Take care that you never come back to us again’, he replied, ‘I shan’t, unless Ptolemy sends me.’ Mithras, the treasurer of Lysimachos, who was present at the meeting, remarked, ‘So it seems that it is not only gods whom you refuse to recognize, but kings also.’ ‘And how could it be the case’, replied Theodoros, ‘that I do not recognize the gods, when I consider you to be hateful to the gods?’*
(Diogenes Laertius 2.102–3; G IV H 13)
635 When Theodoros, known as the Atheist, had been banished from Athens, so the story goes, and had taken refuge at the court of Lysimachos, one of the officials there reproached him for his banishment, mentioning at the same time why this had come about, because he had been condemned for atheism and the corrupting of the young, to which he replied, ‘I have not been banished, but have suffered the same fate as was also suffered by Heracles, son of Zeus. For when he was put off the ship by the Argonauts,* it was not because he had done anything wrong, but because he was weighing down the ship, being as heavy on his own as an entire crew and cargo, and so caused his fellow-travellers to fear that the ship might founder. And so I too have had to change my home, because the citizens of Athens were unable to measure up to the loftiness and greatness of my mind, and I thus fell prey to their envy.’ When Lysimachos then went on to ask, ‘Weren’t you banished from your native land through envy?’, he replied, ‘Not through envy, but because the superiority of my nature was such that my country could not contain it; for as when Semele was pregnant with Dionysos and was unable to bear him for the complete term, Zeus, overcome by anxiety, drew the unborn child from her belly before the full term, and appointed the child to be of equal rank with the heavenly deities; and so it was with me too, since my country was too small to bear the huge burden of my philosophical genius, some divine spirit or god decided to remove me and set me down in Athens.’
(Philo, That Every Good Man is Free 127–30; G9)
636a When Lysimachos threatened to have him crucified, he replied, ‘If you are to make such horrible threats, do please address them to your courtiers; for it makes no difference to Theodoros whether he rots in the ground or in the air above.’*
(Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.43.102; G IV H 8)
636b When a tyrant threatened to have him killed and then left un-buried, the philosopher Theodoros replied, ‘Do as you please, you have a half-pint of blood in your power; as for the burial, how foolish you are if you suppose that it matters a whit to me whether I rot above the ground or beneath it.’
(Seneca, On Tranquillity of Mind 14.3; G IV He 8)
637 It would be absurd to contend that Theodoros lost his freedom of speech [because of his exile], that man who, when King Lysimachos said to him, ‘So your country has cast out a man such as you’, replied to him, ‘Yes, because I was too much for it to bear, just as Dionysos was too much for Semele.’ And when the king showed him Telesphoros* shut up in a cage with his eyes gouged out, and said to him, ‘That’s how I treat those who injure me’, he replied, ‘And what does it matter to Theodoros whether he rots above the ground or beneath it?’
(Plutarch, On Exile 16, 606b; G IV H 9)
638a When threatened with death by Lysimachos, Theodoros replied, ‘What a truly amazing feat, to have acquired the power of a poisonous fly!’*
(Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.40.117; G IV H 7)
638b When Theodoros of Cyrene had once spoken with excessive boldness to Lysimachos, and the king threatened him with death, he replied, ‘Aren’t you ashamed, Lysimachos, great king that you are, to threaten those who are just, when unable to vanquish them, with what a poisonous fly can achieve?’
(Gnomologium Vaticanum 352; G IV H 7)
638c When King Lysimachos threatened to have him killed, Theodoros said, ‘I’d failed to realize that it isn’t the power of a king that you have, but that of a draught of hemlock.’
(Stobaeus 3.2.32; G IV H 7)
639 Theodoros of Cyrene said that there can never be any sufficient pretext to justify the wise man in taking his own life; and accordingly he posed this question: to disdain human misfortunes, and to feel oneself driven by them to take one’s own life, how can that not conflict with the position of one who has said that only the noble is good, and only the shameful is bad?
(Stobaeus 4.52.16; G IV H 26)
640 This son of Phocion,* [Phocos] so they say, turned out to be a thoroughly worthless man, and conceived a passion for a girl who lived in a brothel. He happened to be present while Theodoros was putting forward this argument in the Lyceum: ‘If there is nothing wrong in ransoming a male friend, the same is true with regard to a female friend; and if there is nothing wrong with ransoming a male companion, the same is true of a companion woman’;* and so assuming that this argument held good in relation to his own situation, he paid for the deliverance of his prostitute companion.