ἱστορίαι Historiai
D.L. 9.4-6 Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Volume II (Books VI-X), Diogenes Laertius; served verbatim
impossible, he put himself in the sun and bade his servants plaster him over with cow-dung. Being thus stretched and prone, he died the next day and was buried in the market-place. Neanthes of Cyzicus states that, being unable to tear off the dung, he remained as he was and, being unrecognizable when so transformed, he was devoured by dogs. He was exceptional from his boyhood ; for when a youth he used to say that he knew nothing, although when lie was grown up he claimed that he knew everything. He was nobody's pupil, but he declared that he " inquired of himself," a and learned everything from himself. Some, however, had said that he had been a pupil of Xenophanes, as we learn from Sotion, who also tells us that Ariston in his book On Heraclitus declares that he was cured of the dropsy and died of another disease. And Hippobotus has the same story. As to the work which passes as his, it is a continuous treatise On Nature, but is divided into three discourses, one on the universe, another on politics, and a third on theology. This book he deposited in the temple of Artemis and, according to some, he deliberately made it the more obscure in order that none but adepts should approach it, and lest familiarity should breed contempt. Of our philosopher Timon b gives a sketch in these words c : In their midst uprose shrill, cuckoo-like, a mob-reviler, riddling Heraclitus. Theophrastus puts it down to melancholy that some parts of his work are half-finished, while other parts make a strange medley. As a proof of his magnanimity Antisthenes in his Successions of

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

← D.L. 9.2-4 contents D.L. 9.6-8 →

Filed here — the addresses this episode attests; counted by the house’s first pass
Antisthenes — a candidate entry Ariston — a candidate entry Heraclitus — a candidate entry Timon — a candidate entry

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)