Lives of the Eminent Philosophers

by Pamela Mensch

  Notwithstanding this scarcely engaging personality, Diogenes reports at some length on the way Zeno was courted by kings and awarded great honors at Athens in recognition of his sterling character, even though he was an immigrant. What did Zeno actually do to earn such accolades that included celebration in eulogistic verses by famous poets? Are these honors compatible with the subversive author of the Republic? Diogenes tells us nothing of any special acts of courage or kindness or civic benefaction. The most striking features of Zeno’s character, as it emerges from these pages, are frugality, contempt for money or fame, a sharp tongue, and physical and mental toughness. All Diogenes’ leading figures in the Lives are endowed with characters that fit appropriate generic aspects of their philosophies, making them stoical or skeptical in the modern sense of these epithets, as the case may be. But doubts remain about whether Diogenes’ portrayal of Zeno’s life is fully coherent, and if not, why it is not.2

  That issue will occupy us in due course, but to begin, a prior question needs to be asked. Why did Diogenes devote more space to the biography and doctrines of the Stoic Zeno than to any other figure in his vast collection of philosophical luminaries? The earlier Zeno of the paradoxes is probably more familiar as a name to the modern public. That familiarity, however, is an accident of history. Given the prominence of Stoicism in both ancient and early modern philosophy, Zeno of Citium should be as famous a name as Epicurus. Diogenes, writing some five hundred years after the origins of Stoicism, registers Zeno’s significance by making this life the longest of the collection. Much of it, conforming to Diogenes’ practice in dealing with the leading Greek philosophers, covers the doctrines of the founder’s movement rather than his actual vita. But we are still left with the fact that the pages under Zeno’s name occupy 160 “chapters” (the numbered subdivisions in this edition) of Diogenes’ complete work. Next in descending order of magnitude come the lives of Epicurus at 154 chapters, Plato at 109, Diogenes of Sinope (the Cynic) at 62, Pythagoras at 50, Pyrrho at 48, Aristotle at 35, and Socrates at 30. These lives are the longest in Diogenes Laertius’ entire collection, which comprises eighty-two individuals in all. Zeno of Citium tops the list in sheer volume of space.

  Statistics of relative length apart, these eight lives, from Diogenes’ historical perspective, completely match the significance and influence of the schools or movements associated with the names. Thus, taking them now in their chronological order, we have Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato (founder of the Academy), Diogenes (reputed founder of Cynicism), Aristotle (founder of the Peripatos), Pyrrho (reputed founder of Skepticism), Epicurus (founder of the Garden), and Zeno (founder of Stoicism). Even from a modern perspective one would be hard put to discard any member of this octet in favor of substituting some other name. All eight figures except Socrates were founding fathers of distinct philosophies or schools, and Diogenes Laertius, in line with the doxographical tradition that he follows, views Socrates as a de facto founder. He makes Socrates the originator of philosophical ethics (1.14), with a succession of “Socratics” that includes Plato and subsequent Academics, and a further line of succession through the Cynics right down to the Stoic Chrysippus over a time span of two and a half centuries (1.15).

  After factoring in the relative lengths of these lives, we may still be surprised by the coverage devoted to the Cynic Diogenes and to post-Aristotelian philosophers, and even more surprised by the brevity accorded to Aristotle himself. Diogenes Laertius’ allocations of space to these figures, however, or rather the allocations he found in his sources, reflect philosophical and historical judgments that were being made in the late Hellenistic and early Roman imperial epochs. Epicurus (the only philosopher besides Plato to whom Diogenes assigns an entire book) and Zeno were the founders of this period’s most popular and culturally diffused philosophies. Aristotle would have to wait another century for his philosophical greatness to be fully acknowledged. Diogenes’ seventh book continues after Zeno with the lives and doctrines of six later Stoics, making it the longest book of all and about one quarter of the whole oeuvre in extent.

  In this historical context, then, the amplitude of Diogenes’ life of Zeno, with its lengthy survey of all three parts of Stoic philosophy (logic, physics, and ethics), is quite appropriate. What Diogenes could not have foreseen is the exceptional value the life’s doctrinal material would acquire for modern historians of philosophy. That is because the works of the numerous Stoic philosophers he mentions have survived, if at all, only in fragmentary and summary form. Diogenes’ life of Zeno is a uniquely important source of information about Stoic philosophy in its formative Hellenistic period. The doctrinal sections are also distinctive in the sheer number of their references to what Zeno or Chrysippus or some other Stoic actually “said,” often with explicit reference to their specific works. Our other encyclopedic sources for Stoic doctrines generally present the material in the form “as the Stoics say” rather than “as Antipater says in the seventh book of his work On the Cosmos” (7.148). While Diogenes purports to be giving a general account of Stoicism from the time of Zeno onward, he also cites individual Stoic philosophers and their works with unusual frequency, making his work in this regard exceptionally valuable.3

  We can be sure that Diogenes’ authorial contribution to the doctrinal material he records was editorial and bibliographical rather than creative in any interesting philosophical way. What is largely beyond recovery, however, is the methodology he employed in excerpting from his sources. When he reports Posidonius’ theories about the sun’s composition and size, he refers to two of that prolific Stoic philosopher’s books (7.144). He references his statement about the same figure’s opinions on the composition of snow by mentioning the eighth book of Posidonius’ Discourse on Nature (7.153). Should we suppose that Diogenes had these and other such works on his desk? That is unlikely. Most probably he found the bibliographical information in the sources he drew upon, but we can still ask why he took the trouble to report it so precisely. I raise this question because Diogenes’ life of Zeno is a complex composition, not only in the sense that it is a patchwork, but also because it invites many questions about what it seeks to tell us both about Zeno’s biography and about the account of Stoic doctrines as such.

  Of all the ancient philosophical schools, the Stoa in the Hellenistic era was the largest in the sheer number of attested figures who have left a mark on the historical record by their output of books. It was also one of the most diverse schools in the detailed positions adopted by its leading thinkers, especially during its formative years. As in the schools of Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus, Zeno was followed by an official line of successive heads. Book 7 of Diogenes includes the lives of the first two of these figures in the persons of Cleanthes, who was a student of Zeno’s, and Chrysippus, who was probably too young to have actually been taught by the founder. The life of Chrysippus breaks off at the point where Diogenes is in process of recording that philosopher’s enormous bibliography (7.202).

  Between Cleanthes and Chrysippus, Diogenes (7.177) presents the life of Sphaerus. This Stoic, another student of Zeno, became the court philosopher at Alexandria to one of the Ptolemaic kings. Immediately after Diogenes concludes his generic account of Stoic physics but before commencing the life of Cleanthes, he appends brief lives of three dissident Stoics (7.160)—Ariston, Herillus, and Dionysius. These three philosophers had all associated with Zeno, but they came to differ from him sufficiently to be ousted from the orthodox Stoic entourage at Athens, at least from the vantage point of the school as it developed after Zeno’s death. Zeno had a further student, Persaeus, whom we can gauge to have been more compliant; for Zeno sent Persaeus, who had lived with him in Athens and whose father came from Citium, to King Antigonus of Macedonia as a proxy for himself (7.36).

  Both parts of Diogenes’ life of Zeno, the biography section and the much longer doxography, draw on authors who range in date from Zeno’s own lifetime down to the middle years of the first century BC. Following
Chrysippus the most noteworthy Stoic philosophers, as we know from elsewhere, were another Diogenes (of Babylon), Antipater (of Tarsus), Panaetius (of Rhodes), and Posidonius (of Apamea, Syria). These and several others are frequently cited in Diogenes Laertius’ doctrinal sections, especially Posidonius for his views on physics. Some scholars think Diogenes originally ended his book on the Stoics with the lives of these and other later Stoics, but had he done so, that work would have become unwieldy.4 We should assume rather that these later Stoics are represented in the doxography because Diogenes’ sources or some sources of his sources made prominent mention of them.

  Stoic philosophers presented a united front on such basic doctrines as the world’s providential governance and the necessity and sufficiency of virtue for happiness. On much else, including the scope of the school’s curriculum, there was not only disagreement between individual thinkers but also considerable development through time. Whereas Epicureans reverenced their founder’s words and regularly celebrated his birthday, Stoic philosophers were charged by a Platonizing critic with constant quarreling among one another for the more than four centuries up to his own time.5 Diogenes Laertius, as we have seen, indicates schisms among the first generation of Zeno’s students, but disagreements did not stop there. Chrysippus was challenged on points of moral psychology by Posidonius, and Panaetius questioned the doctrine of the world’s everlasting recurrence. Zeno seemingly laid down a broad agenda for his followers, especially in the doctrine of the world’s providential governance and the ethical need to extirpate irrational emotions, but it was Chrysippus who established the school’s intense focus on logic, for which it was famed and also criticized in Roman times.

  Signs of disagreement and difference of emphasis between individual Stoics are explicit in Diogenes’ outline of Stoic doctrines, especially in its introductory pages (7.39–42), and they continue to be evident later if we read between the lines. Equally noteworthy, on the other hand, is how often Chrysippus’ name and works are cited alongside those of Zeno, indicating their community of viewpoint (7.134, 136, 142–43, 148, and 150). I take this solidarity as an indication that Diogenes was working from sources that wanted to emphasize continuity between the founder of the school and Zeno’s second and greatest successor. Unlike Epicurus, who was notorious for his large output of books, Zeno was not a voluminous author. Just as we have wondered about what exactly Zeno did to impress the Athenians so strongly during his residence in their city, we may also ask whether Stoicism would have become one of Greece’s greatest philosophical schools without the strong input of Chrysippus. To sharpen the relevance of this question, I turn now to take a closer look at the biographical sections of Diogenes’ life of Zeno.

  ***

  We may begin with an analytical summary of the contents, to which I attach the paragraph numbers in parentheses. I also note the names of the main sources cited or probably used for these paragraphs by Diogenes or by Diogenes’ sources, together with the approximate dates of their flourishing. The names of Stoic philosophers are printed in bold.

  A. Nationality and physique (7.1): Timotheus (c. 250 BC), Apollonius (50 BC), Persaeus (280 BC), and Chrysippus (240 BC).

  B. Philosophical teachers (7.2): Hecaton (80 BC) and Apollonius.

  C. Conversion to philosophy (7.3–5).

  D. List of Zeno’s writings (7.4).

  E. Zeno’s lectures in the Athenian Stoa (7.5).

  F. Zeno’s honors and decrees at Athens (7.6–12): Apollonius.

  G. Biographical chitchat (7.12–16): Antigonus of Carystus (240 BC).

  H. Anecdotes and sayings (7.16–24): Apollonius.

  I. Other philosophical teachers, philosophical claims (7.25–26): Hippobotus (200 BC) and Hecaton.

  J. Poets’ verses on Zeno (7.27).

  K. Zeno’s death (7.28): Persaeus and Apollonius.

  L. Epigrams by various poets (7.29–30).

  M. Epigram by Diogenes (7.31).

  N. Conversion to philosophy again (7.31–32): Demetrius of Magnesia (50 BC).

  O. Summary, criticism, and expurgation of Zeno’s Republic (7.32–34).

  What are we to make of this biography?6 The points of greatest interest and puzzlement are sections B and I on Zeno’s philosophical teachers, and sections C and N on Zeno’s conversion to philosophy. Why did Diogenes present this material twice, and why did he intersperse these sections with different subject matter? Rather than account for these issues as due simply to Diogenes’ random or thoughtless methods of composition, we should take them as evidence, drawn from his various sources, of disagreements and uncertainties concerning the appropriate way to present the life of the Stoa’s founder some two hundred years after Zeno’s death, at a time when Stoicism, especially at Rome, had become the most illustrious and influential school of philosophy.

  In approaching the accounts of Zeno’s teachers and conversion, we know that an important source of some of his material and its organization was Apollonius of Tyre, who wrote a work in more than one book on Zeno’s life during the first century BC.7 Apollonius is named five times in Diogenes’ life of Zeno, more often than any other authority. What chiefly indicates Apollonius’ significance, however, is not statistical but the strong probability that his Life of Zeno, just like the sources of Philodemus’ contemporaneous History of Stoics, sought to minimize the influence of Cynicism on Zeno’s philosophical formation and lifestyle.8 Evidence for this claim is indirect but more than mere conjecture. Before turning to it, we need first to see that a minimally Cynic Zeno is in stark tension to the general structure of Diogenes’ composition.

  The main determining principle of Diogenes’ Lives is “succession,” meaning a line of development that supposedly runs from the founder of a school onward (1.14–16).9 This hoary compositional device could be authentic, in the sense that the line from Plato to Clitomachus (Diogenes, Books 3 and 4) genuinely represents successive heads of the Academy. But the successions could also be quite artificial, as they are in the case of Diogenes’ first book, which runs from Thales to Pherecydes, in a line of figures who long preceded the origin of philosophical schools either in the institutional sense or in a looser sense of master and pupil. According to Diogenes’ introduction of the succession scheme, as we have seen, there was a line from Socrates via Cynics down to the Stoic Chrysippus. In full, this line went from Socrates to Antisthenes to Diogenes of Sinope to Crates to Zeno to Cleanthes to Chrysippus. The second half of the line is a genuine succession, but not the first half. Antisthenes was a leading associate of Socrates, but he did not found a Cynic school in the sense of a formal institution. It is uncertain whether Diogenes studied under him or even met him. Crates did associate with Diogenes, but their association too was informal rather than institutional.

  That brings us to Crates and Zeno. Diogenes Laertius devotes Book 6 of his Lives to a succession of Cynics, starting with Antisthenes and concluding with Menedemus. He ends this life by giving a summary of “the doctrines they [Cynics] held in common” (6.103–5). By way of preface to this account, he alludes to Ariston, Zeno’s dissident pupil, who, he says, agreed with the Cynics in restricting philosophy to ethics. Diogenes’ summary of generic Cynic doctrine includes the following passage, which I quote in full:

  They also hold that the goal is to live in accordance with virtue, as Antisthenes says in his Heracles—exactly like the Stoics. For these two schools have much in common. Hence it has been said that Cynicism is a shortcut to virtue. And it was in the manner of the Cynics that Zeno of Citium lived his life.

  [105] They also think that one should live frugally, eating only for nourishment and wearing only the cloak; and they despise wealth, fame, and noble birth. Some, at any rate, eat nothing but vegetables, drink nothing but cold water, and use whatever shelters or tubs they find, like Diogenes, who used to say that it was characteristic of the gods to need nothing, and of godlike men to need very little.

  They hold that virtue can be taught, as Antisthenes says in his He
racles, and once acquired cannot be lost; that the wise man is worthy of love, has no flaw, and is a friend to his like, and that nothing should be entrusted to fortune. They maintain, like Ariston of Chios, that what is intermediate between virtue and evil is indifferent.

  These, then, are the Cynics. We must turn to the Stoics, whose founder was Zeno, a student of Crates.

  What immediately follows this passage is the first line of Diogenes Laertius’ life of Zeno.

  Diogenes’ readers, then, if they read his work in its book sequence, will not only come to Zeno with the information that he was a student of Crates. They will have also learned that Zeno actually lived the Cynic way of life, consisting of frugality and contempt for wealth, fame, and noble birth. Diogenes’ anecdotal material concerning Zeno illustrates his adoption of these principles (see, for instance, 7.16 and 26).10 The doctrine that virtue is the goal of life also comes up repeatedly (7.7, 8, 10, and 30). Diogenes leaves no doubt, therefore, that Zeno was strongly influenced by Cynicism, and Cynicism as taught by Crates. Yet he doesn’t quite say that Zeno exemplified every Cynic trait mentioned here. Only “some” Cynics are vegetarian abstainers from wine and willing to live in tubs rather than houses. And it is Ariston, Zeno’s dissident pupil, to whom the “indifference” doctrine is attributed. As we are told in Diogenes’ life of Ariston (7.160), he, rather than Zeno, went the whole way with the Cynics.

  That difference, however, as one starts to read the life of Zeno in its Cynic context, is not a matter of any great emphasis. We can expect to hear about Zeno’s tutelage under Crates, as indeed we will hear of it, in some detail. Let us now ask how, if we were conservative Romans of elite status like Cicero, we would respond to a Stoic philosophy that not only advocated contempt for wealth, fame, and noble birth, but also espoused the scandalous doctrines that Zeno had put forth in his Republic, the impetus to which had reached him from Crates and more remotely from the Cynic Diogenes. Cicero dismisses the Cynics or “some Stoics who are virtually Cynics” with scorn and unmistakable disgust (De officiis 1.128). He was not alone in his patrician responses. Some Stoics had already become so embarrassed by Zeno’s Republic that one of them, as Diogenes Laertius tells us in his appendix (7.34), a librarian at Pergamon, actually deleted the offending passages from Zeno’s works.11