Diogenes’ Repartees
One day when Plato had invited to his house friends coming from Dionysius, Diogenes trampled upon his carpets and said, “I trample upon Plato’s vainglory.” Plato’s reply was, “How much pride you expose to view, Diogenes, by seeming not to be proud.” Others tell us that what Diogenes said was, “I trample upon the pride of Plato,” who retorted, “Yes, Diogenes, with pride of another sort.”
Some one took him into a magnificent house and warned him not to expectorate. He cleared his throat and discharged the phlegm into the man’s face, saying he couldn’t find a meaner receptacle. One day he shouted out for men, and when people collected, hit out at them with his stick, saying, “I called for men, not scoundrels.”
When he was captured and put up for sale, he was asked what he could do. He replied, “Govern men.” And he told the crier to give notice in case anybody wanted to purchase a master for himself. Having been forbidden to sit down, “It makes no difference,” said he, “for in whatever position fishes lie, they still find purchasers.” To Xeniades who purchased him he said, “You must obey me, although I am a slave; for, if a physician or a steersman were in slavery, you would obey him.”
When he was sunning himself in the Craneum, Alexander came and stood over him and said, “Ask of me any boon you like.” To which he replied, “Stand out of my light” … Alexander is reported to have said, “Had I not been Alexander, I should have liked to be Diogenes.”
He used also to reason thus: “All things belong to the gods. The wise are friends of the gods, and friends hold things in common. Therefore all things belong to the wise.
A Cynic Love Affair
Hipparchia fell in love with the discourses and the life of Crates, and would not pay attention to any of her suitors, their wealth, their high birth or their beauty. But to her Crates was everything. She used even to threaten her parents she would make away with herself, unless she were given in marriage to him. Crates therefore was implored by her parents to dissuade the girl, and did all he could, and at last, failing to persuade her, got up, took off his clothes before her face and said, “This is the bridegroom, here are his possessions; make your choice accordingly; for you will be no helpmeet of mine, unless you share my pursuits.”
The girl chose and, adopting the same dress, went about with her husband and lived with him in public and went out to dinners with him. Accordingly she appeared at the banquet given by Lysimachus, and there put down Theodorus, known as the atheist, by means of the following sophism. Any action which would not be called wrong if done by Theodorus, would not be called wrong if done by Hipparchia. Now he does no wrong when he strikes himself: therefore neither does she do wrong when she strikes him. He had no reply wherewith to meet the argument, but tried to strip her of her cloak. But she showed no sign of alarm or of the perturbation natural in a woman.
“Not one tower hath my country nor one roof,
But wide as the whole earth its citadel
And home prepared for us to dwell therein”
Stoics: Beware of Pity
Grief or pain they hold to be an irrational mental contraction. Its species are pity, envy, jealousy, rivalry, heaviness, annoyance, distress, anguish, distraction. Pity is grief felt at undeserved suffering; envy, grief at others’ prosperity; jealousy, grief at the possession by another of that which one desires for oneself; rivalry, pain at the possession by another of what one has oneself.
[According to the Stoics], the wise are infallible. They do no hurt to others or to themselves. At the same time they are not pitiful and make no allowance for anyone; they never relax the penalties fixed by the laws, since indulgence and pity and even equitable consideration are marks of a weak mind, which affects kindness in place of chastizing. Nor do they deem punishments too severe. Again, they say that the wise man never wonders at any of the things which appear extraordinary,
Of the three kinds of life, the contemplative, the practical, and the rational, they declare that we ought to choose the last, for that a rational being is expressly produced by nature for contemplation and for action. They tell us that the wise man will for reasonable cause make his own exit from life, on his country’s behalf or for the sake of his friends, or if he suffer intolerable pain, mutilation, or incurable disease.
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References:
- Laertius, Diogenes. Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. Trans. Robert Drew Hicks. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925.
- Laertius, Diogenes. “Lives of the Eminent Philosophers”. Perseus Digital Library. Accessed March 17, 2018. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0258 ; ebooks @ Adelaide. March 14, 2014. Accessed March 17, 2018. https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/d/diogenes_laertius