In composing his biographies, Diogenes, not unlike Plutarch, the most distinguished among the ancient biographers, gave pride of place to emblematic anecdotes. As Plutarch explained at the outset of his life of Alexander, “It is not histories I am writing, but lives; and the most glorious deeds do not always reveal the working of virtue or vice. Frequently, a small thing—a phrase or flash of wit—gives more insight into a man’s character than battles where tens of thousands die, or vast arrays of troops, or sieges of cities. Accordingly, just as painters derive their likenesses from a subject’s face and the expression of his eyes, where character shows itself, and attach little importance to other parts of the body, so must I be allowed to give more attention to the manifestations of a man’s soul, and thereby mold an image of his life, leaving it to others to describe the epic conflicts.”9 Diogenes seems similarly to assume that a vignette or a telling anecdote may reveal more about the essential character of a philosopher than the canonic writings that generations have intensively studied.
In any case, it is Diogenes Laertius alone who remains our main source for the lives—and legends—of most Greek philosophers.
***
The many doctrinal excerpts—what classicists call “doxography”—present problems of their own in the work of Diogenes Laertius. While most modern scholars largely ignore the tall tales in his Lives, they have never ceased to mine his text for precious evidence of the doctrines put forth by a large number of ancient philosophers and the schools they founded. For the doctrines of some—the Stoics and the school of Epicurus—Diogenes Laertius is a primary or our only source. In some cases it is hard to be sure how reliable his extracts are, since many of the works he cited have been lost. Where experts agree that an extract is genuine, it is hard to be sure how to interpret material presented more or less out of context.
Above all, Diogenes represents a standing challenge to many modern accounts of ancient philosophy. John Cooper, in Pursuits of Wisdom: Six Ways of Life in Ancient Philosophy from Socrates to Plotinus (2012), narrows in on what he calls “mainline” philosophers—theoreticians who stress the role of reason and the capacity to reason in philosophy as a way of life. In a footnote, Cooper denigrates the importance of spiritual exercises as a constitutive component of ancient philosophy and on the conversion to a specific ancient philosophy as an existential choice; it’s as if, for him, philosophy just is a reasoned commitment to a system of reasonable doctrines—or it isn’t really philosophy at all.10
But an unprejudiced reading of Diogenes’ Lives suggests that a one-sided emphasis on the capacity to reason as the sine qua non of ancient philosophy is hopelessly anachronistic.
Sometimes joining one of the philosophical schools Diogenes describes involved a suspension of conventional beliefs, and sometimes a suspension of disbelief (as witness the legends surrounding many of the most charismatic founding figures of some major philosophical schools). Sometimes it hinged on the ability to make logical arguments. But sometimes it entailed ritualized regimens, or the memorization of core doctrines, or simply the emulation of an exemplary (if perhaps mythic) individual philosopher (as witness Pythagoras, Empedocles, Socrates, Diogenes the Cynic, Pyrrho, and Zeno of Citium). In his survey of ancient philosophical doctrines, Diogenes himself makes no effort to quarantine what seems purely rational from what seems superstitious, imaginative, dogmatic, or rooted in systematic doubt rather than reasoned knowledge.
Instead of confirming the central importance of the sort of rationality vaunted by some Greek philosophers, such as Plato, Aristotle, and Chrysippus, the work of Diogenes, taken as a whole, rather illustrates “the whimsical constitution of mankind, who must act and reason and believe,” as Hume once put it, “though they are not able, by the most diligent enquiry, to satisfy themselves concerning the foundation of these operations, or to remove the objections, which may be raised against them.”11
In this way the work of Diogenes willy-nilly poses anew the invaluable question What is philosophy?
***
The goal of this edition has been to render Diogenes into an English prose that is fluent yet faithful to the original Greek. Throughout, Pamela Mensch has avoided easy glosses in English of passages that are inherently hard to fathom in the original Greek. The annotation is aimed at the general rather than specialist reader, and explains the various references to people, places, practices, and countless mythological characters as they occur.12
The text of Diogenes’ Lives comes down to us through a manuscript tradition roughly two thousand years long. In the process of copying and recopying the manuscripts, errors and omissions have inevitably occurred. Modern editors have attempted to correct the text by removing erroneous additions and restoring passages that they believe have been lost. Our translation marks these editorial interventions using two devices. Braces—like these: {/}—are used to indicate text that is in the manuscript tradition but which we, following other modern editions, regard as corrupt. Angled brackets () indicate text that is not in the manuscripts but has been introduced by editors in an attempt to reconstruct what Diogenes’ original text might have said; in cases where we are uncertain how the text should be reconstructed, we put ellipses within those angled brackets.
Works by Lui Shtini from the series The Matter of an Uncertain Future, 2011.Pencil on paper, 36 x 28 cm.
The letters of Epicurus preserved in Book 10 present a different kind of editorial challenge. Modern scholars generally agree that certain passages in these letters are genuine parts of Diogenes’ text, but not genuine parts of Epicurus’ letters. Rather, these passages are thought to represent a later commentary on the letters, which was incorporated into the text of the letters from which Diogenes transcribed them. Such passages of commentary have been italicized and enclosed in square brackets.
If an unfamiliar proper name mentioned in a section of the text for the first time is not given a footnote, then the person mentioned usually is someone whom Diogenes Laertius is using as a source. The Glossary of Ancient Sources, which starts on page 634, will offer more information on such people.
The selection of essays that follows the translation will give readers a sample of some of the latest scholarship in the field.
Mensch has worked from the new, authoritative Greek text established by Tiziano Dorandi and published by Cambridge University Press—with one significant exception. As Dorandi points out, there are no chapter headings in the most important extant Greek manuscripts for the parts of the text that concern an individual philosopher, perhaps a sign that Diogenes wished his text to be regarded as a whole rather than as a series of separate chapters on individual philosophers. In order to make the work easier for ordinary readers to approach, we have nevertheless followed the traditional convention of assigning the names of individual philosophers to the relevant parts of the text where each is discussed.
In commissioning and reviewing the essays, I have been assisted by James Allen, Dorandi, Anthony Grafton, A. A. Long, and Glenn Most. I have asked the contributors to keep in mind lay readers, but some of the philological and philosophical issues at stake are fairly technical. Not every reader will be interested in every essay.
The notes to the text come from several hands. James Romm annotated the historical references, while Jay Elliott focused on philosophical notations. Madeline Miller (a novelist by choice and a classicist by training, who is no relation to the present writer) annotated most of the mythological references with help from Kyle Mest.
Trent Duffy copyedited the text and notes and served as production editor during the long process of turning this complicated manuscript into a book. In editing the essays, I also had the valuable assistance of Prudence Crowther.
The many images and maps that accompany the main text have been selected by Timothy Don. Since these images are meant to illustrate the ongoing influence of many of the philosophical anecdotes compiled by Diogenes, we have included material that is modern as well as ancient. The book was design
ed by Jason David Brown.
The Triumph of Fame over Death, South Netherlandish, c. 1500–1530. The winged figure of Fame, riding in a chariot pulled by a team of white elephants and sounding a trumpet, heralds the appearance of four famous men: two philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, and two rulers, Alexander the Great (bearing a golden scepter) and Charlemagne (lower left). Death, symbolized by the two female figures, is trampled underfoot.
Our common goal has been to make Lives as accessible as possible to English-speaking readers—and at the same time to convey some of the essential strangeness of what philosophy once was, in hopes that readers may wonder anew at what philosophy might yet become.
1 Richard Hope, The Book of Diogenes Laertius: Its Spirit and Its Method (New York, 1930), 96, 201.
2 Montaigne, Essays, bk. II, ch, 10, “Of Books.”
3 Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, “Schopenhauer as Educator,” #8.
4 It is telling that perhaps his most extensive and explicitly critical treatment of a philosopher occurs in the case of Bion of Borysthenes, whose superstitious piety at the end of his life flagrantly contradicted the outspoken atheism he had espoused previously: see the poem at 4:55–57.
5 Diogenes’ presentation recalls other published notes (hypomnemata) from the same period, as described by Pierre Hadot, The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, trans. Michael Chase (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), 32.
6 This research is summarized by Tiziano Dorandi in his essay on the manuscript tradition—see page 577.
7 Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Babel,” in Collected Fictions, trans. Andrew Hurley (New York: Penguin Books, 1998), 117.
8 Hope, The Book of Diogenes Laertius, quoting Herbert Richards, “Laertiana,” Classical Review 18 (1904): 340–46.
9 Plutarch, “The Life of Alexander,” translation by Pamela Mensch.
10 John Cooper, Pursuits of Wisdom: Six Ways of Life in Ancient Philosophy from Socrates to Plotinus (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2012), see esp. 18–19n, where his target is Pierre Hadot.
11 David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, sect. XII, 128.
12 The notes avoid commenting on various possible readings of the Greek text, or on the philosophical substance of the various views that Diogenes reproduces. Variant forms of the information found in Diogenes are cited only sparingly. Readers interested in a more comprehensive annotation of the text, including the varied extant classical sources for specific epigrams, textual excerpts, or legends and lore found in Diogenes, should consult the new critical edition of the Greek text prepared by Tiziano Dorandi, Diogenes Laertius: Lives of Eminent Philosophers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). See also the copious scholarly annotation in the French edition prepared under the direction of Marie-Odile Goulet-Caze, Diogène Laërce: Vies et doctrines des philosophes illustres (Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 1999); in the Italian translation edited by Marcello Gigante, Diogene Laerzio: Vite dei filosofi, 3rd ed. (Bari: Laterza, 1987); and the sparser, but still helpful, notes on sources in the Loeb Classical Library edition of the Greek, with an English translation by Robert D. Hicks (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1925).
Translator’s Note
Pamela Mensch
Close translation, with all its unsolvable difficulties, is the only method by which most translators can hope to do justice to an author’s work. The challenge is to respect, capture, and convey the elements of a writer’s style—diction, tone, rhythm, and flow—knowing all the while that compromise in each of these areas is inevitable, and that each compromise, no matter how minute, increases the distance between the reader and the original work. That distance can never be eliminated, which is why all translators are bound to revere their intrepid predecessors, whose efforts become a lasting source of moral support. Thus it is a great pleasure to acknowledge the debt I owe to Robert Drew Hicks, Diogenes’ Loeb Classical Library translator, and to the seven translators of the French edition published in 1999 by Livre de Poche. The ingenuity of Richard Goulet deserves special mention.
Two of our consulting editors gave me extensive help with the doctrinal material in Books 7 and 10: A. A. Long elucidated the Stoic doxography, and James Allen the letters of Epicurus. I am beholden to them for their expertise and generosity. Jay Elliott reviewed the entire translation; his responses, always astute, prompted a great many improvements. James Romm reviewed all the biographical passages, offered me an invaluable trove of suggestions, and showed himself willing to discuss and debate them to my heart’s content, a gift for friendship being among his foremost. And for her unerring grasp of how to make a sentence fulfill its promise, all honor to Prudence Crowther.
Our translation is based on Tiziano Dorandi’s edition of the Greek text, published in 2013 by Cambridge University Press.
Lives of the Eminent Philosophers
Book 1
PROLOGUE
THALES
fl. 585 bc
SOLON
fl. c. 600 bc
CHILON
6th cent. bc
PITTACUS
c. 650–570 bc
BIAS
fl. 6th cent. bc
CLEOBULUS
fl. 6th cent. bc
PERIANDER
c. 627–587 bc
ANACHARSIS
6th cent. bc
MYSON
6th cent. bc
EPIMENIDES
late 7th cent. bc
PHERECYDES
fl. 544 bc
Terra-cotta head from a statue, c. 525–500 BC, Greek, south Italian.
Prologue
1 The discipline of philosophy, some say, originated among the barbarians.1 The Persians, they say, had their Magi,2 the Babylonians or Assyrians their Chaldaeans,3 the Indians their Naked Sages,4 and the Celts and Galatians their so-called Druids and Semnotheoi,5 as Aristotle says in his Magicus6 and Sotion in the twenty-third book of his Succession. And they mention that Ochus7 was a Phoenician, Zamolxis8 a Thracian, and Atlas9 a Libyan.
2 According to the Egyptians, Hephaestus10 was the son of the Nile; and philosophy, over which their priests and prophets presided, began with him. Between Hephaestus and Alexander of Macedon11 there elapsed 48,863 years, in the course of which there occurred 373 eclipses of the sun and 832 of the moon.12
Between the Magi, the first of whom was Zoroaster the Persian,13 and the capture of Troy,14 there elapsed five thousand years, as Hermodorus the Platonist says in his work On Mathematics. Xanthus the Lydian, however, says that six thousand years separated Zoroaster from Xerxes’ crossing,15 and that he was succeeded by a great many Magi, including Ostanas, Astrampsychus, Gobryas, and Pazatas, until the overthrow of the Persians by Alexander.16
3 But these authors fail to notice that they attribute to the barbarians the accomplishments of the Greeks, with whom not only philosophy but the human race itself began. Let us consider, in any case, that Musaeus was a native Athenian, and Linus a Theban.17 The former, they say, was the son of Eumolpus, and was the first to compose a Theogony and a Sphere; he declared that all things come into being from unity and into unity are resolved. He died at Phalerum,18 and this elegiac couplet is his epitaph:
Here the Phalerean soil holds Musaeus,
The beloved son of Eumolpus.
It is from the father of Musaeus that the Eumolpidae19 at Athens get their name.
4 As for Linus, they say that he was the son of Hermes and the Muse Urania.20 He composed a work describing the creation of the world, the routes of the sun and moon, and the origins of animals and fruits. His poem begins with this line:
There was a time when all things came into being at once.
Hence Anaxagoras,21 borrowing this idea, said that all things were originally together until Mind came and placed them in order. Linus is said to have died in Euboea, struck by an arrow of Apollo,22 and this epitaph was composed for him:
Here the earth has received the Theban Linus,
<
br /> The son of the fair-crowned Muse Urania.
And thus philosophy began with the Greeks; its very name resists translation into foreign speech.23
5 But those who attribute its invention to barbarians bring forward Orpheus the Thracian,24 declaring him a philosopher and the most ancient. For my part, I do not know whether one should call a person who spoke as he did about the gods a philosopher. And what should we call a man who did not hesitate to attribute to the gods all human experience, including the obscene deeds committed rarely by certain men with the organ of speech?25 The story goes that Orpheus met his death at the hands of women.26 But according to the epitaph at Dium in Macedonia he was struck by a thunderbolt; the epitaph runs as follows:
Here the Muses laid the Thracian, Orpheus of the Golden Lyre,
Whom high-ruling Zeus slew with a smoking shaft.
6,7 But those who say that philosophy originated with the barbarians explain the form it takes in each instance. They say that the Naked Sages and Druids express their philosophy in riddles, urging men to honor the gods and to do no evil and to practice courage. Clitarchus, at any rate, in his twelfth book, says that the Naked Sages despise even death itself. The Chaldaeans, they say, apply themselves to astronomy and prediction; and the Magi devote their time to serving the gods with sacrifices and prayers, thinking that only their prayers are heard; they declare their views about the substance and origin of the gods, whom they hold to be fire, earth, and water; they condemn statues of gods, and especially the idea that some gods are male and others female. They hold discussions about justice, and consider cremation impious; they think it pious to sleep with one’s mother or daughter, as Sotion says in his twenty-third book; they practice divination and prediction and say that the gods appear to them in visible form. Furthermore, they say that the air is full of images that stream forth like an exhalation and penetrate the eyes of the keen-sighted. They prohibit ornaments and the wearing of gold. Their clothing is white, their beds made of straw, and their diet composed of vegetables, cheese, and coarse bread; their staff is a reed, with which, it is said, they prick the cheese so as to take it up and eat it.
Lives of the Eminent Philosophers Page 2