Lives of the Eminent Philosophers

by Pamela Mensch

  9 After Sparta’s defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War (404 BC), the Spartans established an oligarchy in Athens, the so-called Thirty; this regime promptly conducted a bloody purge of its enemies.

  10 The founder of Epicureanism. Diogenes discusses his life and views at 10.1–154.

  11 Namely, his Phoenician compatriots living in Citium.

  12 A Phoenician city on the Levant, today part of Lebanon.

  13 Antigonus II Gonatas (c. 320–239 BC), a king of Macedonia who sought to fill his court at Pella with philosophers, poets, and intellectuals.

  14 This Olympiad began in 260 BC.

  15 Although they perhaps incorporate details transmitted in the biographical tradition, the letters that follow are probably not authentic.

  16 This letter does not survive.

  17 The wording and form suggest that this decree is probably authentic (if fragmentary).

  18 Arrhenides was archon in 262 BC. The term “prytany” denotes a portion of the year during which a particular Athenian tribe was given executive control over the Assembly. The twenty-first of Maemacterion would fall sometime in November.

  19 The locations of the Platonic and Aristotelian schools, respectively.

  20 Since Citium was a largely Phoenician city, Zeno admitted to non-Greek origins by acknowledging it as his birthplace.

  21 A vast fortune. A talent consisted of six thousand drachmas.

  22 Flute girls in Athens were often considered freely available as sexual partners.

  23 Because at the end of a bench he could have only one person next to him, not two.

  24 Cleanthes of Assos, Zeno’s successor as head of the Stoa. Diogenes discusses his life and work at 7.168–76.

  25 Demochares was an Athenian politician (c. 360–275 BC) and nephew of the more famous statesman Demosthenes. Apparently he had established a close alliance with King Antigonus Gonatas of Macedonia, who exercised hegemony over the Greek world during the mid-third century BC and dispensed largesse to influential Athenian speakers.

  26 The state-sponsored cemetery in the Cerameicus was used to inter war dead and other honored public servants. At 7.11, Zeno was awarded an honorary tomb in the Cerameicus not at Antigonus’ request but by decree of the Assembly.

  27 A Greek nonsense word that also sometimes refers to a stringed instrument.

  28 A philosopher and logician from the Dialectical school and, like Zeno, a student of Diodorus Cronus (not to be confused with the more famous Philo, the Hellenized Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria).

  29 The compound Greek word gymnorruparoi signifies men who were both dirty and too poor to afford decent clothes.

  30 An Athenian statesman. The Greek word here translated “infatuated” makes clear that Zeno’s attraction was a sexual one.

  31 The referent of “those people” is vague; presumably, pederasts are meant, though elsewhere Zeno appears to belong to this category (see 7.13).

  32 The Attic four-drachma coin was made of silver and bore the image of an owl.

  33 Ariston of Chios (c. 320–c. 250 BC), the Stoic whose life and views Diogenes discusses at 7.160–64.

  34 Antisthenes (c. 445–c. 365 BC) is considered the forerunner of the Cynic sect. His life and views are discussed at 6.1–19.

  35 Head of the Platonic Academy for more than forty years starting about 314 BC. Diogenes discusses his life and views at 4.16–23.

  36 Euripides’ Suppliant Maidens 861–63. The lines are spoken by Adrastus, king of Argos, in a description of Capaneus, one of his allies in the war of the Seven Against Thebes.

  37 In ancient Greece, heavy use of unguents and scents was considered luxurious and effeminate.

  38 A Stoic who, after contracting a painful eye condition, abandoned his school and joined the hedonist Cyrenaics. Diogenes discusses his life and views at 7.166–67.

  39 Both Ptolemy I Soter (c. 367–282 BC) and Ptolemy II Philadelphus (308–246 BC) reigned during Zeno’s lifetime, but Diogenes likely means the latter here.

  40 That is, to use verbal arguments.

  41 Polemon was a Platonist (see 4.16–20), so Diogenes applauds a philosopher who was willing to study with diverse teachers.

  42 One of several well-known logical conundrums of the day (see 7.44).

  43 The Greek term kathēkon means “what is appropriate” or “what is fitting.” Starting with Zeno, Stoics used it to characterize right action or action in accordance with Nature.

  44 The verses quoted here rearrange the wording of two lines in Hesiod’s Works and Days (293 and 295). Diogenes inverts the order of the original, which cast “the man who thinks up everything for himself” as the best of all.

  45 A yellow legume; it is high in alkaloids that can be toxic but are easily removed by soaking or boiling.

  46 These verses, in the dactylic meter of Greek epic, are probably a quote, but the source is unknown.

  47 Posidippus of Cassandreia and Philemon were both comic playwrights of the late fourth and early third centuries BC.

  48 A line from a lost poem of Timotheus of Miletus (446–357 BC).

  49 Three men named Antiphon are known to us; it’s unclear which of them Diogenes is referring to here.

  50 An allusion to the myth of the giants who piled one mountain on another in order to scale heaven and fight the gods.

  51 Diogenes the Cynic is discussed at 6.20–81; his student Zenodotus is not otherwise known.

  52 Autarkeia, a state in which one needs nothing and thus has complete freedom of action, was a goal that both Stoics and Epicureans strove for.

  53 Cadmus was a mythical Phoenician prince whose sister, Europa, was abducted by Zeus. Cadmus went in search of her and, after finding her safe in Greece, founded the city of Thebes there, becoming its king. He was thought to have imported the first alphabet into Greece.

  54 The daughters of Memory are the nine Muses; only one of the nine (Erato) dealt with tales of erotic love.

  55 In his Epigrams, Diogenes wrote verses about famous figures in a variety of meters, earning it the alternate title Pammetros, meaning “[Poems of] All Meters.”

  56 The word has been added in some editions to repair an apparent gap in the text; “other” is also a possible emendation.

  57 Perhaps meaning the tree rather than its fruit. The significance is obscure, as is that of Socrates’ swearing “by the dog.”

  58 The Stoics held that only the wise are proper objects of love and affection (see 7.120).

  59 Athenodorus of Tarsus (fl. mid-first entury BC), a Stoic philosopher at the court of Augustus and a friend of Cicero and Strabo.

  60 See 9.25–29.

  61 Pyrrhus (319–271 BC), a king of Epirus, led his forces against the Romans and Macedonians in several battles. Since he emerged victorious from one such battle after sustaining terrible losses, his name gives us the modern term “Pyrrhic victory.”

  62 According to Stoic doctrine, wealth is neither good nor bad in itself (see 7.104).

  63 The paragraph that begins here continues the list of Zeno’s students and followers begun at 7.36.

  64 A little-known Stoic of the first century BC.

  65 Otherwise unknown.

  66 A pupil (c. 240–152 BC) of Chrysippus, he became head of the Stoa in the early second century BC. In 156 BC he traveled to Rome, where he helped to stimulate interest in Stoicism.

  67 Posidonius of Apamea, a historian and polymath (c. 135–c. 51 BC). After studying in Athens under Panaetius, he moved to Rhodes and made the city a second center for Stoic thought.

  68 Archedemus of Tarsus, a Stoic philosopher, was probably a student of Diogenes of Babylon.

  69 Otherwise unknown.

  70 Panaetius of Rhodes (c. 185–109 BC), author of On Moral Obligations, was a Stoic philosopher.

  71 Zeno of Tarsus succeeded Chrysippus as head of the Stoa in 204 BC.

  72 See Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians, 2.7: “When Zeno of Citium was asked how dialectic differs from rhetor
ic, he clenched his fist and spread it out again, and said, ‘like this’—characterizing compactness and brevity as the hallmark of dialectic by the clenching, and hinting at the breadth of rhetorical ability through the spreading and extension of his fingers.”

  73 Both terms, in their original Greek sense, meant standards for judgment. The Stoics used them especially to mean standards for distinguishing truth from falsehood.

  74 Arguments presented in a standardized form so as to reveal their validity, or general forms for such arguments (see 7.78).

  75 Each of these arguments represents a paradox. The Horned argument, for example, ran: “What you haven’t lost, you still have; you haven’t lost horns; therefore, you have horns” (see 2.108).

  76 That is, influenced by specialized knowledge such as that of a painter or doctor.

  77 The heart, which the Stoics identified as the seat of reason (see 7.159).

  78 A giant and the son of the goddess Gaia (earth), he attempted to rape the nymph Leto, mother of Apollo and Artemis. His punishment was to be bound to stakes in the underworld, where vultures fed upon his liver.

  79 One of the Cyclopes, a race of savage, one-eyed giants. The most famous of them is Polyphemus, whose blinding by Odysseus in the Odyssey causes Polyphemus’ father, Poseidon, to turn against the hero.

  80 A mythical race of diminutive men. Their name derives from the Greek pugme, a measurement that indicated the length between elbow and knuckle, the supposed height of a pygmy.

  81 Another word for centaur.

  82 That is, by inference from things evident to the senses.

  83 Antipater of Tarsus was a second-century BC Stoic philosopher and teacher of Panaetius.

  84 Boethus of Sidon was a second-century Stoic philosopher and student of Diogenes of Babylon.

  85 The Greek term here translated as “voice” can refer to any sound.

  86 Scholars have identified five different dialects of Greek in the ancient world; the ancients themselves usually spoke of four (Attic, Doric, Ionic, and Aeolian).

  87 The sound of a harp string, something like the English word “twang.”

  88 These are the subject forms of the definite article in Greek: masculine, feminine, and neuter singular, followed by the plural forms.

  89 Crinis (dates unknown) was a Stoic philosopher and author of a work titled Art of Dialectic.

  90 Ancient Greek was usually written without spaces between words; this has often given rise to confusion.

  91 Like Latin and Sanskrit, Greek is an inflected language, using a variety of cases to perform different grammatical functions.

  92 A river in Argos and the personified river-god who controlled its waters.

  93 The reference is to the Iliad 9.96. This is how Agamemnon is typically addressed in Homer.

  94 Priam was the mythical king of Troy and the father of fifty sons, including the heroes Hector, Paris, and Troilus.

  95 A line from The Lyre Player, a lost comedy by Menander.

  96 Apollophanes, born in Antioch, was an intimate of Ariston of Chios and is said to have written two works, Ariston (about Ariston of Chios) and On Natural Philosophy.

  97 The passages missing here included Stoic definitions of justice and temperance.

  98 A common belief in the ancient world along with its opposite, that ugliness and evil go together.

  99 Iliad, 1.81–82. The seer Calchas fears that if he identifies the king as responsible for the plague in the Greek camp, Agamemnon will eventually take vengeance upon him.

  100 The Greek term austēros could also mean bitter in flavor.

  101 A stade is an ancient measure of distance, equal to about an eighth of a mile; our term “stadium” is derived from the Greek word for the length of the racecourse at Olympia. Canopus was an Egyptian city located on the western side of the Nile Delta.

  102 Diogenes discussed the life and views of Heraclides of Tarsus (fl. c. 125 BC) in the last, lost section of Book 7.

  103 The mythical ferryman in Hades who conveyed the souls of the dead across the River Styx.

  104 A celebrated flute player.

  105 This would have included grammar, music, poetry, and rhetoric.

  106 A character from the play The Hated Man, by Menander, which survives in fragments. Thrasonides, a soldier, loves Cratea, a slave he has taken in war. She believes he has killed her brother and spurns his advances. Rather than force himself on her, he frees her from bondage.

  107 The Stoics believed that the universe was generated from fire and was periodically renewed by being consumed in a universal conflagration (see 7.137).

  108 Dia in Greek is the accusative case of the name Zeus. This figure, and each of the gods that follow, were, in traditional Greek mythology, separate entities with separate domains. The Stoics, on the other hand, saw them as alternate titles for their single god.

  109 Beings intermediate between gods and men. The famous daimōn of Socrates is mentioned at 2.32.

  110 Hero cults, where dead heroes were worshipped, were ubiquitous in ancient Greece.

  111 In the Greek world the four principal winds were usually personified as divinities: Boreas (the North Wind), Notus (the South), Eurus (the East), and Zephyros (the West).

  112 The distinctions between these phenomena are unclear, since in other Greek texts the phrase “bearded star” was a synonym for comet.

  113 Sphaerus of Borysthenes was a third-century Stoic philosopher taught by Zeno and Cleanthes. According to Cicero, he was particularly admired for his definitions; none of his works have survived. Diogenes briefly discusses his life and views at 7.177–78.

  114 Part woman and part bird, the Sirens had the power to enchant listeners with their song. Ariston presumably earned the nickname for his persuasiveness.

  115 Thersites and Agamemnon, both portrayed in Book 1 of Homer’s Iliad, represent two ends of the heroic spectrum, the ugly, hunchbacked private soldier and the highborn king.

  116 The name of a gymnasium located outside the walls of Athens, within a sanctuary of Heracles. It was a common gathering place for philosophers, most notably Antisthenes (see 6.13).

  117 Neither man is well-known, but Diphilus may be the third-century BC comic playwright of that name.

  118 Head of the Platonic Academy from c. 314 to 270/69 BC. Diogenes discusses his life and views at 4.16–20.

  119 Because he has knowledge rather than mere opinion (see 7.121). The point of the ensuing anecdote is that Ariston was uncertain, like one who has an opinion rather than true knowledge.

  120 Persaeus of Citium (c. 306–c. 243 BC) became a teacher of Stoic philosophy.

  121 Arcesilaus headed the Platonic Academy at the start of its Middle phase. He was generally doubtful about the attainability of knowledge, and in particular cast doubt on the reliability of the senses. Diogenes discusses his life and views at 4.28–45.

  122 The quote comes from a lost comedy of Cratinus.

  123 Also known as Ariston of Ceos and (as Diogenes terms him just below) Ariston of Iulis.

  124 Chalcedon was a Megarian colony on the Asiatic side of the Bosporus. Some manuscripts have Karchēdonios rather than Chalchēdonios, which would instead make Herillus a Carthaginian.

  125 This abandonment of Stoic teachings in favor of the Cyrenaics, the school that valued pleasure as the highest good, earned Dionysius his nickname (see 7.37).

  126 A city on the southern coast of the Black Sea.

  127 Heraclides Ponticus, a fourth-century Peripatetic; Diogenes discusses his life and views at 5.86–94.

  128 Alexinus was a Megarian. Menedemus of Eretria (c. 339–265 BC) was a founder of the Eretrian school (see 2.125–44).

  129 Aratus of Soli (c. 315–240 BC), the author of the extant Phenomena, a didactic poem about the constellations.

  130 A city on the northeast shore of the Aegean Sea, across from the island of Lesbos.

  131 The translation of the phrase here rendered as “cooked the grain” is uncertain.


  132 A council of political elders who made up the high court of Athens.

  133 A mina was worth a hundred drachmas.

  134 Antigonus II Gonatas (c. 320–239 BC) was a king of Macedonia; he sought to fill his court at Pella with philosophers, poets, and other intellectuals.

  135 The ascetic practice of wearing a rough wool cloak with no soft tunic beneath was usually associated with the Cynics (see 6.13).

  136 Under Athenian law, a slave who hired himself out had to give a portion of any money earned to his master. Zeno apparently put himself in the role of master in regard to his student Cleanthes.

  137 The greatest of Greek heroes, Heracles was much admired by both Stoics and Cynics for his courage, ruggedness, and strength.

  138 Timon here puns on a passage of Homer that describes Odysseus (Iliad 3.196). In the Homeric passage, the word stichas (translated here as “ranks”) refers to “lines” of soldiers, but in a different context can also mean “lines” of written text.

  139 Cleanthes’ native city was famous for a kind of stone used in sarcophagi.

  140 Ariston’s life is found just above (7.160–64).

  141 Diogenes discusses the life and views of Arcesilaus at 4.28–45.

  142 A quote from Euripides’ Orestes (line 140), though the text is slightly different than in our manuscripts of that play. The chorus is speaking to Electra.

  143 Odyssey 4.611. Menelaus, king of Sparta, praises Odysseus’ son Telemachus.

  144 The word for belly is gaster, and the verb for striking the belly is gastrizein. Using that same formula, the boy invents a word for striking the thighs, merizein. Given the popularity of intercrural sex in the ancient world, the word would have a decidedly sexual connotation, hence Cleanthes’ warning that analogous words don’t always have analogous meanings.

  145 Sositheus is known as a tragic playwright, though in this story he seems to be an actor or declaimer of comic verse.

  146 Dionysus and Heracles, as the two gods closest to mortal condition (both being born from mortal mothers), were often portrayed in Greek comedies.

  147 It’s unclear why a sneeze would be regarded as a sign of effeminacy.

  148 The broad, flat surface of the bovine scapula has served as a writing surface in many cultures.