BOOK VI.

LIFE OF ANTISTHENES.

I. Antisthenes was an Athenian, the son of Antisthenes. And he was

said not to be a legitimate Athenian; in reference to which he said to

some one who was reproaching him with the circumstance, “The mother of

the Gods too is a Phrygian;” for he was thought to have had a Thracian

mother. On which account, as he had borne himself bravely in the battle

of Tanagra, he gave occasion to Socrates to say that the son of two

Athenians could not have been so brave. And he himself, when disparaging

the Athenians who gave themselves great airs as having been born out of

the earth itself, said that they were not more noble as far as that went

than snails and locusts.

II. Originally he was a pupil of Gorgias the rhetorician; owing to

which circumstance he employs the rhetorical style of language in

his Dialogues, especially in his Truth and in his Exhortations. And

Hermippus says, that he had originally intended in his address at the

assembly, on account of the Isthmian games, to attack and also to praise

the Athenians, and Thebans, and Lacedæmonians; but that he afterwards

abandoned the design, when he saw that there were a great many spectators

come from those cities. Afterwards, he attached himself to Socrates, and

made such progress in philosophy while with him, that he advised all his

own pupils to become his fellow pupils in the school of Socrates. And

as he lived in the Piræus, he went up forty furlongs to the city every

day, in order to hear Socrates, from whom he learnt the art of enduring,

and of being indifferent to external circumstances, and so became the

original founder of the Cynic school.

III. And he used to argue that labour was a good thing, by adducing the

examples of the great Hercules, and of Cyrus, one of which he derived

from the Greeks and the other from the barbarians.

IV. He was also the first person who ever gave a definition of discourse,

saying, “Discourse is that which shows what anything is or was.” And

he used continually to say, “I would rather go mad than feel pleasure.”

And, “One ought to attach one’s self to such women as will thank one for

it.” He said once to a youth from Pontus, who was on the point of coming

to him to be his pupil, and was asking him what things he wanted, “You

want a new book, and a new pen, and a new tablet;”—meaning a new mind.

And to a person who asked him from what country he had better marry a

wife, he said, “If you marry a handsome woman, she will be common;[54]

if an ugly woman, she will be a punishment to you.” He was told once

that Plato spoke ill of him, and he replied, “It is a royal privilege

to do well, and to be evil spoken of.” When he was being initiated

into the mysteries of Orpheus, and the priest said that those who were

initiated enjoyed many good things in the shades below, “Why, then,” said

he “do not you die?” Being once reproached as not being the son of two

free citizens, he said, “And I am not the son of two people skilled in

wrestling; nevertheless, I am a skilful wrestler.” On one occasion he was

asked why he had but few disciples, and said, “Because I drove them away

with a silver rod.” When he was asked why he reproved his pupils with

bitter language, he said, “Physicians too use severe remedies for their

patients.” Once he saw an adulterer running away, and said, “O unhappy

man! how much danger could you have avoided for one obol!” He used to

say, as Hecaton tells us in his Apophthegms, “That it was better to fall

among crows,[55] than among flatterers; for that they only devour the

dead, but the others devour the living.” When he was asked what was the

most happy event that could take place in human life, he said, “To die

while prosperous.”

On one occasion one of his friends was lamenting to him that he had

lost his memoranda, and he said to him, “You ought to have written them

on your mind, and not on paper.” A favourite saying of his was, “That

envious people were devoured by their own disposition, just as iron is

by rust.” Another was, “That those who wish to be immortal ought to live

piously and justly.” He used to say too, “That cities were ruined when

they were unable to distinguish worthless citizens from virtuous ones.”

On one occasion he was being praised by some wicked men, and said, “I

am sadly afraid that I must have done some wicked thing.” One of his

favourite sayings was, “That the fellowship of brothers of one mind was

stronger than any fortified city.” He used to say, “That those things

were the best for a man to take on a journey, which would float with

him if he were shipwrecked.” He was once reproached for being intimate

with wicked men, and said, “Physicians also live with those who are

sick; and yet they do not catch fevers.” He used to say, “that it was

an absurd thing to clean a cornfield of tares, and in war to get rid

of bad soldiers, and yet not to rid one’s self in a city of the wicked

citizens.” When he was asked what advantage he had ever derived from

philosophy, he replied, “The advantage of being able to converse with

myself.” At a drinking party, a man once said to him, “Give us a song,”

and he replied, “Do you play us a tune on the flute.” When Diogenes asked

him for a tunic, he bade him fold his cloak. He was asked on one occasion

what learning was the most necessary, and he replied, “To unlearn one’s

bad habits.” And he used to exhort those who found themselves ill spoken

of, to endure it more than they would any one’s throwing stones at them.

He used to laugh at Plato as conceited; accordingly, once when there was

a fine procession, seeing a horse neighing, he said to Plato, “I think

you too would be a very frisky horse:” and he said this all the more,

because Plato kept continually praising the horse. At another time, he

had gone to see him when he was ill, and when he saw there a dish in

which Plato had been sick, he said, “I see your bile there, but I do not

see your conceit.” He used to advise the Athenians to pass a vote that

asses were horses; and, as they thought that irrational, he said, “Why,

those whom you make generals have never learnt to be really generals,

they have only been voted such.”

A man said to him one day, “Many people praise you.” “Why, what evil,”

said he, “have I done?” When he turned the rent in his cloak outside,

Socrates seeing it, said to him, “I see your vanity through the hole in

your cloak.” On another occasion, the question was put to him by some

one, as Phanias relates, in his treatise on the Philosophers of the

Socratic school, what a man could do to show himself an honourable and

a virtuous man; and he replied, “If you attend to those who understand

the subject, and learn from them that you ought to shun the bad habits

which you have.” Some one was praising luxury in his hearing, and he

said, “May the children of my enemies be luxurious.” Seeing a young man

place himself in a carefully studied attitude before a modeller, he said,

“Tell me, if the brass could speak, on what would it pride itself?” And

when the young man replied, “On its beauty.” “Are you not then,” said he,

“ashamed to rejoice in the same thing as an inanimate piece of brass?”

A young man from Pontus once promised to recollect him, if a vessel of

salt fish arrived; and so he took him with him, and also an empty bag,

and went to a woman who sold meal, and filled his sack and went away; and

when the woman asked him to pay for it, he said, “The young man will pay

you, when the vessel of salt fish comes home.”

He it was who appears to have been the cause of Anytus’s banishment, and

of Meletus’s death. For having met with some young men of Pontus, who

had come to Athens, on account of the reputation of Socrates, he took

them to Anytus, telling them, that in moral philosophy he was wiser than

Socrates; and they who stood by were indignant at this, and drove him

away. And whenever he saw a woman beautifully adorned, he would go off

to her house, and desire her husband to bring forth his horse and his

arms; and then if he had such things, he would give him leave to indulge

in luxury, for that he had the means of defending himself; but if he had

them not, then he would bid him strip his wife of her ornaments.

V. And the doctrines he adopted were these. He used to insist that

virtue was a thing which might be taught; also, that the nobly born and

virtuously disposed, were the same people; for that virtue was of itself

sufficient for happiness, and was in need of nothing, except the strength

of Socrates. He also looked upon virtue as a species of work, not wanting

many arguments, or much instruction; and he taught that the wise man was

sufficient for himself; for that everything that belonged to any one

else belonged to him. He considered obscurity of fame a good thing, and

equally good with labour. And he used to say that the wise man would

regulate his conduct as a citizen, not according to the established laws

of the state, but according to the law of virtue. And that he would marry

for the sake of having children, selecting the most beautiful woman for

his wife. And that he would love her; for that the wise man alone knew

what objects deserved love.

Diocles also attributes the following apophthegms to him. To the wise

man, nothing is strange and nothing remote. The virtuous man is worthy

to be loved. Good men are friends. It is right to make the brave and

just one’s allies. Virtue is a weapon of which a man cannot be deprived.

It is better to fight with a few good men against all the wicked, than

with many wicked men against a few good men. One should attend to one’s

enemies, for they are the first persons to detect one’s errors. One

should consider a just man as of more value than a relation. Virtue is

the same in a man as in a woman. What is good is honourable, and what is

bad is disgraceful. Think everything that is wicked, foreign. Prudence

is the safest fortification; for it can neither fall to pieces nor be

betrayed. One must prepare one’s self a fortress in one’s own impregnable

thoughts.

VI. He used to lecture in the Gymnasium called Cynosarges, not far from

the gates; and some people say that it is from that place that the sect

got the name of Cynics. And he himself was called Haplocyon (downright

dog).

VII. He was the first person to set the fashion of doubling his cloak,

as Diocles says, and he wore no other garment. And he used to carry a

stick and a wallet; but Neanthes says that he was the first person who

wore a cloak without folding it. But Sosicrates, in the third book of his

Successions, says that Diodorus, of Aspendos, let his beard grow, and

used to carry a stick and a wallet.

VIII. He is the only one of all the pupils of Socrates, whom Theopompus

praises and speaks of as clever, and able to persuade whomsoever he

pleased by the sweetness of his conversation. And this is plain, both

from his own writings, and from the Banquet of Xenophon. He appears to

have been the founder of the more manly Stoic school; on which account

Athenæus, the epigrammatist, speaks thus of them:—

O ye, who learned are in Stoic fables,

Ye who consign the wisest of all doctrines

To your most sacred books; you say that virtue

Is the sole good; for that alone can save

The life of man, and strongly fenced cities.

But if some fancy pleasure their best aim,

One of the Muses ’tis who has convinc’d them.

He was the original cause of the apathy of Diogenes, and the temperance

of Crates, and the patience of Zeno, having himself, as it were, laid the

foundations of the city which they afterwards built. And Xenophon says,

that in his conversation and society, he was the most delightful of men,

and in every respect the most temperate.

IX. There are ten volumes of his writings extant. The first volume is

that in which there is the essay on Style, or on Figures of Speech;

the Ajax, or speech of Ajax; the Defence, of Orestes or the treatise

on Lawyers; the Isographe, or the Lysias and Isocrates; the reply to

the work of Isocrates, entitled the Absence of Witnesses. The second