The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. Diogenes Laertius
will be your lot in Athens, and all Greece too;
For you’ve a noble memory, and plenty of invention,
And patience dwells within your mind, and you are never tired,
Whether you’re standing still or walking; and you care not for cold,
Nor do you long for breakfast time, nor e’er give in to hunger;
But wine and gluttony you shun, and all such kind of follies.
And Ameipsias introduces him on the stage in a cloak, and speaks thus of him:—
O Socrates, among few men the best,
And among many vainest; here at last
You come to us courageously—but where,
Where did you get that cloak? so strange a garment,
Some leather cutter must have given you
By way of joke: and yet this worthy man,
Though ne’er so hungry, never flatters any one.
Aristophanes too, exposes his contemptuous and arrogant disposition, speaking thus:—
You strut along the streets, and look around you proudly,
And barefoot many ills endure, and hold your head above us.
And yet, sometimes he adapted himself to the occasion and dressed handsomely. As, for instance, in the banquet of Plato, where he is represented as going to find Agathon.
XII. He was a man of great ability, both in exhorting men to, and dissuading them from, any course; as, for instance having discoursed with Theætetus on the subject of knowledge, he sent him away almost inspired, as Plato says. And when Euthyphron had commenced a prosecution against his father for having killed a foreigner, he conversed with him on the subject of piety, and turned him from his purpose: and by his exhortations he made Lysis a most moral man. For he was very ingenious at deriving arguments from existing circumstances. And so he mollified his son Lamprocles when he was very angry with his mother, as Xenophon mentions somewhere in his works; and he wrought upon Glaucon, the brother of Plato, who was desirous to meddle with affairs of state, and induced him to abandon his purpose, because of his want of experience in such matters, as Xenophon relates. And, on the contrary, he persuaded Charmidas to devote himself to politics, because he was a man very well calculated for such business. He also inspired Iphicrates, the general, with courage, by showing him the gamecocks of Midias the barber, pluming themselves against those of Callias; and Glauconides said, that the state ought to keep him carefully, as if he were a pheasant or a peacock. He used also to say, that it was a strange thing that every one could easily tell what property he had, but was not able to name all his friends, or even to tell their number; so careless were men on that subject. Once when he saw Euclid exceedingly anxious about some dialectic arguments, he said to him, “O Euclid, you will acquire a power of managing sophists, but not of governing men.” For he thought that subtle hair-splitting on those subjects was quite useless; as Plato also records in the Euthydemus.
XIII. And when Charmidas offered him some slaves, with the view to his making a profit of them, he would not have them; and, as some people say, he paid no regard to the beauty of Alcibiades.
XIV. He used to praise leisure as the most valuable of possessions, as Xenophon tells us in his Banquet. And it was a saying of his that there was one only good, namely, knowledge; and one only evil, namely, ignorance; that riches and high birth had nothing estimable in them, but that, on the contrary, they were wholly evil. Accordingly, when some one told him that the mother of Antisthenes was a Thracian woman, “Did you suppose,” said he, “that so noble a man must be born of two Athenians?” And when Phædo was reduced to a state of slavery, he ordered Crito to ransom him, and taught him, and made him a philosopher.
XV. And, moreover, he used to learn to play on the lyre when he had time, saying, that it was not absurd to learn anything that one did not know; and further, he used frequently to dance, thinking such an exercise good for the health of the body, as Xenophon relates in his Banquet.
XVI. He used also to say that the dæmon foretold the future to him;[21] and that to begin well was not a trifling thing, but yet not far from a trifling thing; and that he knew nothing, except the fact of his ignorance. Another saying of his was, that those who bought things out of season, at an extravagant price, expected never to live till the proper season for them. Once, when he was asked what was the virtue of a young man, he said, “To avoid excess in everything.” And he used to say, that it was necessary to learn geometry only so far as might enable a man to measure land for the purposes of buying and selling. And when Euripides, in his Auge, had spoken thus of virtue:—
’Tis best to leave these subjects undisturbed;
he rose up and left the theatre, saying that it was an absurdity to think it right to seek for a slave if one could not find him, but to let virtue be altogether disregarded. The question was once put to him by a man whether he would advise him to marry or not? And he replied, “Whichever you do, you will repent it.” He often said, that he wondered at those who made stone statues, when he saw how careful they were that the stone should be like the man it was intended to represent, but how careless they were of themselves, as to guarding against being like the stone. He used also to recommend young men to be constantly looking in the glass, in order that, if they were handsome, they might be worthy of their beauty; and if they were ugly, they might conceal their unsightly appearance by their accomplishments. He once invited some rich men to dinner, and when Xanthippe was ashamed of their insufficient appointments, he said, “Be of good cheer; for if our guests are sensible men, they will bear with us; and if they are not, we need not care about them.” He used to say, “That other men lived to eat, but that he ate to live.” Another saying of his was, “That to have a regard for the worthless multitude, was like the case of a man who refused to take one piece of money of four drachmas as if it were bad, and then took a heap of such coins and admitted them to be good.” When Æschines said, “I am a poor man, and have nothing else, but I give you myself;” “Do you not,” he replied, “perceive that you are giving me what is of the greatest value?” He said to some one, who was expressing indignation at being overlooked when the thirty had seized on the supreme power, “Do you, then, repent of not being a tyrant too?” A man said to him, “The Athenians have condemned you to death.” “And nature,” he replied, “has condemned them.” But some attribute this answer to Anaxagoras. When his wife said to him, “You die undeservedly.” “Would you, then,” he rejoined, “have had me deserve death?” He thought once that some one appeared to him in a dream, and said:—
On the third day you’ll come to lovely Phthia.
And so he said to Æschines, “In three days I shall die.” And when he was about to drink the hemlock, Apollodorus presented him with a handsome robe, that he might expire in it; and he said, “Why was my own dress good enough to live in, and not good enough to die in?” When a person said to him, “Such an one speaks ill of you;” “To be sure,” said he, “for he has never learnt to speak well.” When Antisthenes turned the ragged side of his cloak to the light, he said, “I see your silly vanity through the holes in your cloak.” When some one said to him, “Does not that man abuse you?” “No,” said he, “for that does not apply to me.” It was a saying of his, too, “That it is a good thing for a man to offer himself cheerfully to the attacks of the comic writers; for then, if they say anything worth hearing, one will be able to mend; and if they do not, then all they say is unimportant.”
XVII. He said once to Xanthippe, who first abused him and then threw water at him, “Did I not say that Xanthippe was thundering now, and would soon rain?” When Alcibiades said to him, “The abusive temper of Xanthippe is intolerable;” “But I,” he rejoined, “am used to it, just as I should be if I were always hearing the noise of a pulley; and you yourself endure to hear geese cackling.” To which Alcibiades answered, “Yes, but they bring me eggs and goslings.” “Well,” rejoined Socrates, “and Xanthippe brings me children.”