THE Greek and Latin texts for Diogenes and the early Cynics, and for Aristippos and the Cyrenaics, have been collected by G. Giannantoni in his Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae (Naples, 1990), and I have used the texts in that collection as the main basis for the translations in this volume. For Bion of Borysthenes in Section XVI, I have relied on J. F. Kindstrand’s collection of his fragments and testimonies (Bion of Borysthenes, Uppsala, 1976). For the apocryphal letters in Part 3, I have followed the texts in E. Museler, Die Kynikerbriefe (Paderborn, 1994), and Jacopo Bolzan, Socratis et Socraticorum Epistolae (Padua, diss., 2009); but texts for these can also be found in Giannantoni’s collection.
Although the present collection does not aim at completeness, it is something more than a mere anthology. The great majority of the sayings and anecdotes of Diogenes have been included, and with regard to the apophthegmatic material more generally, the selection is a very full one, embracing, I hope, everything that is of any real interest (apart from a few apophthegms in which the humour rests on the untranslatable word-play). Sayings and anecdotes form the main focus of the book however, and only a more limited selection has been made from the later testimonies, often repetitive in character, about the philosophy and way of life of Diogenes and others.
It will be noted that anecdotes are sometimes repeated in varied forms. Except in the case of a few stories which are central to the biographical tradition about Diogenes, I have generally included variants only where the differences are sufficiently great to make some real difference to the story, or when an anecdote is recorded both in its basic form (as it would have been recorded in a collection of apophthegms) and in a more elaborate version in the work of an author like Plutarch.
References to the sources are included in brackets after each item, beginning with the ancient source and followed by the number in Giannantoni’s collection. With regard to the latter, the reference is given simply as G (e.g. G 133) in the case of the most important figures, that is to say Diogenes, Crates, and Aristippos, and in full for the rest; for Diogenes, Crates, and Aristippos, the full references would be G VB, G VH, and G IVA respectively. Since Giannantoni’s collection is organized in a different way from the present one, some items which are placed separately here are included by him under the same reference, and some material which is presented here as a continuous passage is broken up by him into separate items. For that reason it is occasionally not possible to give a meaningful ‘G’ reference; and in a few cases, there is no such reference because the item was not included by him. For the material relating to Bion of Borysthenes, the second reference, e.g. K30, refers to the item’s number in Kindstrand’s collection. For the apocryphal letters, I have included the standard number for that letter in the heading at the beginning, e.g. ‘Diogenes 44, to Metrocles’, and there are accordingly no references afterwards.
Where the same item is recorded in the same or closely similar form in several ancient sources (e.g. various gnomologia), it would have served no purpose to enumerate all of them here, and the modern collections may be consulted for further detail.