In fact, almost nothing is known about the man. (Still, the nineteen or so dialogues Aristotle composed-esteemed for their literary quality by Cicero as “a river of flowing gold”-were somehow mislaid by Western civilization.) But Diogenes Laertius didn’t have a school, as far as anyone knows. Aristotle too founded a school, and his treatises were widely copied and studied. We still have Plato’s dialogues because they were diligently preserved by the Academy. What made this fellow so lucky? It’s not hard to explain why certain works survive. And by dint of that, its author has become what Nietzsche called “the night watchman of the history of Greek philosophy: no one can enter into it unless he has given him the key.” Well, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers showed up. But those other sources are lost, which makes what Diogenes Laertius left behind, to quote the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “truly priceless.” Eighty percent of success is showing up, Woody Allen supposedly said. He may have produced a scissors-and-paste job cribbed from other ancient sources. He may have been credulous and intellectually shallow. Then why waste time on him? For this excellent reason: Diogenes Laertius compiled the sole extant work from antiquity that gives anything like a comprehensive picture of Greek and Hellenistic philosophy. And he had “no talent for philosophical exposition,” declares The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. In his lyric moods he wrote “perhaps the worst verses ever published,” an anthologist pronounced. An “ignoramus,” declared the twentieth-century classicist Werner Jaeger. A “perfect ass”-“ asinus germanus”-one nineteenth-century scholar called him.

George’s Church, Suceava, Romania, sixteenth century Plato, Pythagoras, and Solon fresco in St. He inquired, not whether he should go and seek service with Cyrus, but in what way he should do so.De Agostini Picture Library/G.

Xenophon complied and came into the presence of the god. Xenophon showed this letter to Socrates and asked his advice, which was that he should go to Delphi and consult the oracle. Proxenus, while living in Sardis at the court of Cyrus, wrote a letter to Xenophon at Athens, inviting him to come and seek the friendship of Cyrus. He had an intimate friend named Proxenus, a Boeotian, a pupil of Gorgias of Leontini and a friend of Cyrus. He gained the friendship of Cyrus in the following way. I am vexed with the night and with sleep because I cannot see Clinias, and most grateful to the day and the sun for showing him to me.” I would be content to be blind to everything else if I could but gaze on him alone.

Moreover, he was the first to write a history of philosophers.Īristippus, in the fourth book of his work On the Luxury of the Ancients, declares that he was enamoured of Clinias, and said in reference to him, “It is sweeter for me to gaze on Clinias than on all the fair sights in the world. He was the first to take notes of, and to give to the world, the conversation of Socrates, under the title of Memorabilia. Upon receiving a reply, he put another question, “And where do men become good and honourable?” Xenophon was fairly puzzled “Then follow me,” said Socrates, “and learn.” From that time onward he was a pupil of Socrates. The story goes that Socrates met him in a narrow passage, and that he stretched out his stick to bar the way, while he inquired where every kind of food was sold.

Diogenes laertius loeb