Hegesias of Cyrene

And when a man, who was very superstitious, said to him, With one blow I will break your head, And I, he replied, with one sneeze, will make you tremble.

When Hegesias entreated him to lend him one of his books, he said, You are a silly fellow, Hegesias, for you will not take painted fakes, but real ones, and yet you overlook the genuine practice of virtue and seek for what is merely written.

A man once reproached him with his banishment, and his answer was, You wretched man! That is what made me a philosopher.

And when on another occasion someone said to him, The people of Sinope condemned you to banishment, he replied, And I condemned them to remind where they were.

Chapter 3 Life of Monimus Monimus was a Syracusan and a pupil of Diogenes, but also a slave of some Corinthian money-changer.

As Horsicratus tells us, cineades who bought diogenes used often to come to him extolling the excellency of diogenes both in action and words till he excited a great affection for the man in the mind of monimus for he immediately feigned madness and threw about all the money and all the coins that were on the table until his master discarded him and then he straightway went to diogenes and became his pupil he also followed crates the cynic a good deal and devoted himself to the same study as he did and the sight of this conduct of his made his master all the more think him mad and he was a very eminent man so that even menander the comic poet speaks of him accordingly in one of his plays namely in hippocamus he mentions him thus there is a man o philo named monimus a wise man though but little known and one who bears a wallet at his back and is not content with one but three he never spoke a single sentence by great joe i swear like this one know thyself or any other of the off-quoted proverbs all such sayings he scorned and he did beg his way through dirt teaching that all opinion is but vanity but he was a man of such gravity that he despised glory and sought only for truth he wrote some jests mingled with serious treatises and two essays on appetites and an exhortation chapter four life of onesicritus one is a cretaceous as called by some authors an agenatan but demetrius the magnesian affirms that he was a native of he also was one of the most eminent of the disciples of diogenes and he appears in some points to resemble xenophon for xenophon joined in the expedition of caius anonicicritus in that of alexander and xenophon wrote the creopadia anonicicritus wrote on the account of the education of alexander xenophon too wrote a pan gyric on caius anonicicritus one on alexander They were also both similar to one another in style, except that a copyist is naturally inferior to the original.

Menander II, who was surnamed Rymus, was a pupil of Diogenes and a great admirer of Homer, and so was Hegesias of Sinope, who was nicknamed Clochus, and Philsicus, the Aegeanatan, as we have said before.

Chapter 5 life of cratus cratus was a theban by birth and the son of ascondus he also was one of the eminent disciples of the cynic but hippopotas asserts that he was not a pupil of diogenes but bryson the achaean there are the following sportive lines of his quoted the waves surround vain paris's fruitful soil and fertile acres crown the sea-born isle land which no parasite ever dares invade or loots the seducer of her hapless maid it bears figs bread thyme garlic savoury charms gifts which never tempt man to detest arms they would rather fight for gold than glorious dreams there is also an account-book of his much spoken of which is drawn up in such terms as these put on the cook for minas half a score put on the doctor for drachma more five talents to the flatterer some smoke to the adviser an obol and a cloak for the philosopher for the willing nymph a talent he was also nicknamed door-opener because he used to enter every house and give the inmates advice these lines too are his All this I learned and pondered in my mind, Drawing deep wisdom from the muses' kind, But all the rest is vanity.

How much more incongruous must it seem in sober prose! Hence we laugh at those fine words of Gorgias, of Leontini, such as Xerxes the Persian Zeus, and vultures those living tombs, and at certain conceits of Callisthenes which are high-flown rather than sublime, and at some in Clitarchus, more ludicrous still, a writer whose frothy style tempts us to travesty Sophocles and say, he blows a little pipe and blows it ill.

The same faults may be observed in Amphicrates and Hegesias and Matris, who in their frequent moments, as they think, of inspiration, instead of playing the genius are simply playing the fool.

Speaking generally, it would seem that bombast is one of the hardest things to avoid in writing.

For all those writers who are ambitious of a lofty style, through dread of being convicted of feebleness and poverty of language, slide by a natural gradation into the opposite extreme.

He further declared philosophers to differ markedly from other men in that they alone would not change the order of their lives if all the laws of men were abolished.

Among prominent philosophers influenced by the Cyrenaic doctrines were Hegesias, Anniceris, Theodorus, and Bion.

The sect of the Academic philosophers instituted by Plato, four hundred and twenty-seven to three hundred and forty-seven BC, was divided into three major parts, the Old, the Middle, and the New Academy.

Among the Old Academics were Speusippus, Xenocrates, Polemon, Crates, and Crantor.