ἱστορίαι Historiai
D.L. 6.56-58 Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Volume II (Books VI-X), Diogenes Laertius; served verbatim
said, " My friend, it's for food that I'm asking, not for funeral expenses." Being reproached one day for having falsified the currency, he said, " That was the time when I was such as you are now ; but such as I am now, you will never be." To another who reproached him for the same offence he made a more scurrilous repartee. On coming to Myndus and finding the gates large, though the city itself was very small, he cried, Men of Myndus, bar your gates, lest the city should run away." Seeing a man who had been caught stealing purple, he said Fast gripped by purple death and forceful fate. a When Craterus wanted him to come and visit him, ' No," he replied, " I would rather live on a few grains of salt at Athens than enjoy sumptuous fare at Craterus's table." He went up to Anaximenes the rhetorician, who was fat, and said, " Let us beggars have something of your paunch ; it will be a relief to you, and we shall get advantage." And when the same man was discoursing, Diogenes distracted his audience by producing some salt fish. This annoyed the lecturer, and Diogenes said, " An obol's worth of salt fish has broken up Anaximenes' lecture-class." Being reproached for eating in the market-place, " Well, it was in the market-place," he said, " that I felt hungry." Some authors affirm that the following also belongs to him : that Plato saw him washing lettuces, came up to him and quietly said to him, " Had you paid court to Dionysius, you wouldn't now be washing lettuces," and that he with equal calmness made answer, " If you had washed lettuces,

The Greek stands ready in the workroom; the English is served. Both faces will read together.

← D.L. 6.54-56 contents D.L. 6.58-62 →

Filed here — the addresses this episode attests; counted by the house’s first pass
Diogenes — a candidate entry Plato — a life

Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Volume II (Books VI-X), Diogenes Laertius — translated by R. D. Hicks, 1925
Apparatus shelf — Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, vol. II (R. D. Hicks translation, Loeb L185) · R. D. Hicks, Loeb Classical Library, London: William Heinemann / New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, MCMXXV (1925)
license: public-domain (US: published 1925, pre-1930 — the MCMXXV title page verified from the scan itself; only the English rectos are served, Hicks's translation)