while in winter he used to embrace statues covered with snow, using every means of inuring himself to hardship. He was great at pouring scorn on his contemporaries. The school of Euclides he called bilious, and Plato's lectures waste of time, the performances at the Dionysia great peep-shows for fools, and the demagogues the mob's lacqueys. He used also to say that when he saw physicians, philosophers and pilots at their work, he deemed man the most intelligent of all animals ; but when again he saw interpreters of dreams and diviners and those who attended to them, or those who were puffed up with conceit of wealth, he thought no animal more silly. He would continually say a that for the conduct of life we need right reason or a halter. Observing Plato one day at a costly banquet taking olives, " How is it," he said, b " that you the philosopher who sailed to Sicily for the sake of these dishes, now when they are before you do not enjoy them ? " " Nay, by the gods, Diogenes," replied Plato, " there also for the most part I lived upon olives and such like." " Why then," said Diogenes, 11 did you need to go to Syracuse ? Was it that Attica at that time did not grow olives ? " But Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History attributes this to Aristippus. Again, another time he was eating dried figs when he encountered Plato and offered him a share of them. When Plato took them and ate them, he said, " I said you might share them, not that you might eat them all up." And one day when Plato had invited to his house 6 Obviously Favorinus was not the author (vide infra) whom Laertius followed here.