Diogenes of Oinoanda

“ For Diogenes possessed nothing that is usually offered, incense or libations or money to buy them with. But if he held right opinions about the gods, that in itself was enough. For he worshipped them with his whole soul, thus offering them as I think the most precious of his possessions, the dedication of his soul through his thoughts. Let not the Cynic be shameless, but led by reason let him first make subservient to himself the emotional part of his soul so that he may entirely do away with it and not even be aware that he is superior to pleasures. ”

“ Keep up a good heart, pretty. It’s only people going by.’
But for all that, Diogenes barked and barked, and burrowed and burrowed, with pertinacious fury; and whenever he stopped to listen, appeared to receive some new conviction into his mind, for he set to, barking and burrowing again, a dozen times. Even when he was persuaded to return to his breakfast, he came jogging back to it, with a very doubtful air; and was off again, in another paroxysm, before touching a morsel.
‘If there should be someone listening and watching,’ whispered Florence. ”

“ In strange contrast to these two worthies was their friend whom they called Diogenes. He himself, had you questioned him ever so closely, could not have told you from what ancestry or what unknown parent had come to him that air of swagger and of assurance which his avowed penury had never the power to subdue. Tall above the average, powerfully built and solidly planted on firm limbs he looked what he easily might have been, a gentleman to the last inch of him. The brow was fine and broad, the nose sensitive and well shaped, the mouth a perfect expression of gentle irony. ”

“ Now consider whether Diogenes did not above all other men profess this belief, since he freely exposed his body to hardships so that he might make it stronger than it was by nature. He allowed himself to act only as the light of reason shows us that we ought to act; and the perturbations that attack the soul and are derived from the body, to which this envelope of ours often constrains us for its sake to pay too much attention, he did not take into account at all. ”

“ If nothing is left undone by them, neither shall anything be left unspoken by me. Diogenes, when he was being sold, chiding like a teacher one of these degenerate creatures, said very manfully, “Come, youngster, buy for yourself a man,” chastising his meretriciousness by an ambiguous speech. But for those who are men to shave and smooth themselves, how ignoble! As for dyeing of hair, and anointing of grey locks, and dyeing them yellow, these are practices of abandoned effeminates; and their feminine combing of themselves is a thing to be let alone. ”

“ In a treatise in which he discussed the nature of the Gods he contended for the unity of the Deity, and asserted that man is unable to know him by any sensible representation, since he is unlike any being on earth; and demonstrated the sufficiency of virtue for happiness, by the doctrine that outward events are regulated by God so as to benefit the wise and good.
Diogenes, a native of Sinope in Pontus, who was born b.c. 412, was one of his few disciples; he came at an early age to Athens, and became notorious for the most frantic excesses of moroseness and self-denial. ”

“ Similarly they relate of Diogenes of Sinope,262 when he began to be a philosopher, that the Athenians were celebrating a festival, and there were public banquets and shows and mutual festivities, and drinking and revelling all night, and he, coiled up in a corner of the market-place intending to sleep, fell into a train of thought likely seriously to turn him from his purpose and shake his resolution, for he reflected that he had adopted without any necessity a toilsome and unusual kind of life, and by his own fault sat there debarred of all the good things. At that moment, however, they say a mouse stole up and began to munch some of the crumbs of his barley-cake, and he plucked up his courage and said to himself, in a railing and chiding fashion, "What say you, Diogenes? ”

“ She held the theory that if Diogenes had stayed at home and attended to business, instead of prowling around Athens with a smelly lantern, he would have been visited by any number of honest men. Everything comes to him who waits might be a trite proverb, but experience had taught her that it was a true one. ”

“ He is a man of action, an invincible swordsman, a——"
"Dondersteen, my good Hals!" ejaculated Diogenes gaily, "you'll shame me before these gentlemen."
"There's naught to be ashamed of, sir, in the eulogy of a friend," said Cornelius Beresteyn with quiet dignity, "and 'tis a pleasure to an old man like me to look on one so well favoured as yourself. Ah, sir! 'tis but sorrow that I shall know in future.... My daughter ... you have heard...?"
"I know the trouble that weighs on your soul, mynheer," replied Diogenes simply. ”

“ And Diogenes related everything in detail and did not even gloss over the attempted murder. In the morning Mouzaces took this written confession, and other papers addressed to Diogenes which he had found on him as a result of search. From these papers it was evident that the Empress Maria herself had known of Diogenes' attempted rebellion, though she would not entertain the idea of the Emperor's assassination even for a moment, but had diligently sought to divert Diogenes not only from the deed itself, but from the mere thought of it - these papers Mouzaces carried to the Emperor. ”

“ Diogenes introduced us informally, if you recall the afternoon you called here. He is a dreadfully pushing person, Diogenes; but he’s a dear when you know him.”
“I daresay,” Mr Musgrave answered, correctly surmising that Diogenes was the bull-dog. “But I dislike dogs.”
“I should never have thought that,” replied the girl, looking faintly surprised; “because Diogenes likes you. He never speaks to people he doesn’t like; and dogs as a rule know at once when people are not sympathetic. ”

“ For it is evident that Diogenes was not impious, as you aver, but resembled those philosophers whom I mentioned a moment ago. For having regard to the circumstances in which his lot was cast, and next paying heed to the commands of the Pythian god, and knowing that the candidate for initiation must first be registered as an Athenian citizen, and if he be not an Athenian by birth must first become one by law, it was this he avoided, not initiation, because he considered that he was a citizen of the world ”

“ At Olympia, when the herald proclaimed Dioxippus to be victor over the men, Diogenes protested, "Nay, he is victorious over slaves, I over men."
Still he was loved by the Athenians. At all events, when a youngster broke up his tub, they gave the boy a flogging and presented Diogenes with another. Dionysius the Stoic says that after Chaeronea he was seized and dragged off to Philip, and being asked who he was, replied, "A spy upon your insatiable greed." ”

“ Here is a Cynic who says that Diogenes8 was conceited, and who refuses to take cold baths for fear they may injure him, though he has a very strong constitution and is lusty and in the prime of life, and this too though the Sun-god is now nearing the summer solstice. Moreover he even ridicules the eating of octopus and says that Diogenes paid a sufficient penalty for his folly and vanity in that he perished of this diet9 as though by a draught of hemlock. So far indeed is he advanced in wisdom that he knows for certain that death is an evil. ”

“ Plato.
Is not this a contradiction to your own precepts, O Diogenes ? Have you not been censuring me, I need not say how severely, for my intercourse with Dionysius? and yet surely he was wealthy, surely he required the advice of a philosopher, surely he could have done much good with it.
Diogenes.
An Athenian is more degraded by becoming the counsellor of a king, than a king is degraded by becoming the schoolmaster of paupers in a free city. ”

“ Contemporary with Anaxagoras — yet somewhat younger, as far as we can judge, upon doubtful evidence — lived the philosopher Diogenes, a native of Apollonia in Krete. Of his life we know nothing except that he taught during some time at Athens, which city he was forced to quit on the same ground as Anaxagoras. Accusations of impiety were either brought or threatened against him:182 physical philosophy being offensive generally to the received religious sentiment, which was specially awakened and appealed to by the political opponents of Perikles. ”

“ And if Diogenes did sometimes visit a courtesan—though even this happened only once perhaps or not even once—let him who would be a Cynic first satisfy us that he is, like Diogenes, a man of solid worth, and then if he see fit to do that sort of thing openly and in the sight of all men, we shall not reproach him with it or accuse him. ”

“ What noble thing have you produced by your pursuit of philosophy? Who of your most eminent men has been free from vain boasting? Diogenes, who made such a parade of his independence with his tub, was seized with a bowel complaint through eating a raw polypus, and so lost his life by gluttony. Aristippus, walking about in a purple robe, led a profligate life, in accordance with his professed opinions. Plato, a philosopher, was sold by Dionysius for his gormandizing propensities. ”

“ Then, the hoary, hairy, dog-baptized, who scoffed at all the decencies of life, not to speak of its amenities, and had no gentle Plato's pride of refinement, with all the brutal pride of coarseness—did Diogenes worthily represent the best functions of manhood? ”

“ Plutarch forces the morality of his personages to the fore; Diogenes gives details of both the good and the bad in his. Plutarch is solid and systematic; Diogenes is lighter and lacks system. I prefer Diogenes Laertius to Plutarch, and if I were especially interested in any of the illustrious ancients of whom they write, I should vastly prefer the letters of the men themselves, if any existed, or otherwise the gossip of their tentmakers or washerwomen, to any lives written of them by either Diogenes Laertius or Plutarch. ”

“ DIOGENES.
This eccentric individual was a native of Sinope, a city of Pontus, and born 419 B. C. Having been banished from his native place, with his father, upon the accusation of coining false money, he went to Athens, and requested Antisthenes, the Cynic, [11] to admit him among his disciples. That philosopher in vain attempted to drive away the unfortunate supplicant. He even threatened to strike him; but Diogenes told him he could not find a stoic hard enough to repel him, so long as he uttered things worthy of being remembered. ”

“ Though the character of Diogenes has never excited any general zeal of imitation, there are many who resemble him in his taste of wine; many who are frugal, though not abstemious; whose appetites, though too powerful for reason, are kept under restraint by avarice; and to whom all delicacies lose their flavour, when they cannot be obtained but at their own expense.
Nothing produces more singularity of manners and inconstancy of life, than the conflict of opposite vices in the same mind. He that uniformly pursues any purpose, whether good or bad, has a settled principle of action ”

“ When some one asked that he might have back his cloak, "If it was a gift," replied Diogenes, "I possess it; while, if it was a loan, I am using it." A supposititious son having told him that he had gold in the pocket of his dress, "True," said he, "and therefore you sleep with it under your pillow." 63. On being asked what he had gained from philosophy, he replied, "This at least, if nothing else – to be prepared for every fortune." Asked where he came from, he said, "I am a citizen of the world." [37] Certain parents were sacrificing to the gods, that a son might be born to them. ”

“ To a subtler critic it is obvious that Diogenes was a man of very strong and successful ambitions, though his ambitions were different from those of most men. He solved the problem of his own life by following with all the force and courage of his genius a line of conduct which made him, next to Alexander, the most famous man in Greece. ”

“ Except the Lord keep the city, the watchmen wake but in vain. Therefore we must pray to God and ask Him to be our protection and guard." At that time it was whispered abroad that the man had attempted the Emperor's life with the connivance of Diogenes. The Emperor did not give any credence to these stories, but became more angered by them, and continued being patient with Diogenes and pretended to know nothing until the point of the sword was literally almost touching his throat. ”

“ The question being asked why footmen are so called, he replied, "Because they have the feet of men, but souls such as you, my questioner, have." He asked a spendthrift for a mina. The man inquired why it was that he asked others for an obol but him for a mina. "Because," said Diogenes, "I expect to receive from others again, but whether I shall ever get anything from you again lies on the knees of the gods." Being reproached with begging when Plato did not beg, "Oh yes," says he, "he does, but when he does so –
He holds his head down close, that none may hear." ”

“ Whereas it is notorious that most of our Professors never lay out a Farthing either in Pen, Ink, or Paper. Others are for deriving them from Diogenes, because several of the leading Men of the Sect have a great deal of the cynical Humour in them, and delight much in Sun-shine. But then again, Diogenes was content to have his constant Habitation in a narrow Tub; whilst our Philosophers are so far from being of his Opinion, that it's Death to them to be confined within the Limits of a good handsome convenient Chamber but for half an Hour. ”