Diogenes Laertius

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Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laërtius (Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
: , Diogénes Laértios), the biographer of the Greek

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkans. It has borders with Albania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the north, and Turkey to the east....
philosophers, is supposed by some to have received his surname from the town of Laerte in Cilicia

Cilicia

In antiquity, Cilicia now known as ?ukurova, was a commonly used name of the south coastal region of the Anatolian peninsula, and a political entity in Roman times....
, Asia Minor, and by others from the Roman

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the Roman Republic phase of the Ancient Rome, characterised by an autocracy form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
family of the Laërtii.

ing is known of the circumstances of his life. He must have lived after Sextus Empiricus

Sextus Empiricus

Sextus Empiricus , was a physician and philosopher, and has been variously reported to have lived in Alexandria, Rome, or Athens. His philosophical work is the most complete surviving account of ancient Greek and Roman skepticism....
(c. 200 AD), whom he mentions, and before Stephanus of Byzantium

Stephanus of Byzantium

Stephanus of Byzantium, also known as Stephanus Byzantinus was the author of an important Gazetteer entitled Ethnica . Of the dictionary itself only meagre fragments survive, but we possess an epitome compiled by one Hermolaus....
(c. 500 AD), who quotes him.

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Quotations

Ignorance plays the chief part mong men, and the multitude of words.

Cleobulus, 4

Time is the image of eternity.

Plato, 41

There is a written and an unwritten law. The one by which we regulate our constitutions in our cities is the written law; that which arises from customs is the unwritten law.

Plato, 51

Encyclopedia

Diogenes Laërtius (Greek

Greek language

Greece

Cilicia

Roman Empire

Life

Nothing is known of the circumstances of his life. He must have lived after Sextus Empiricus

Sextus Empiricus

Stephanus of Byzantium

Alexander Severus

Marcus Aurelius Severus Alexander, commonly called Alexander Severus, was the last Roman Emperors of the Severan dynasty, having succeeded, as heir apparent, his despised cousin, the eighteen year old Elagabalus who had been murdered along with his mother by his own guards—and as a mark of contempt, had their remains cast into...
(222–235) and his successors.

Writings

His own opinions are equally uncertain. By some he was regarded as a Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism#Christian view religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus and interpreted by Christians to have been prophesied in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament....
; but it seems more probable that he was either a sceptic

Pyrrhonism

Pyrrhonism, or Pyrrhonian skepticism, was a school of skepticism founded by Aenesidemus in the first century BC and recorded by Sextus Empiricus in the late 2nd century or early 3rd century AD....
or, more likely, an Epicurean. The work by which he is known, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is a biography of the Greek philosophers by Diogenes La?rtius, written in Ancient Greek, perhaps in the first half of the third century AD....
, was written in Greek and professes to give an account of the lives and sayings of the Greek philosophers. Although it is at best an uncritical and unphilosophical compilation, its value, as giving us an insight into the private lives of the Greek sages, justly led Montaigne

Michel de Montaigne

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance. Montaigne is known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre....
to exclaim that he wished that instead of one Laërtius there had been a dozen. On the other hand, modern scholars have advised that we take Diogenes' testimonia with a grain of salt, especially when he fails to cite his sources; for instance, an editor of a modern, scholarly edition of Lives says, "Diogenes has acquired an importance out of all proportion to his merits because the loss of many primary sources and of the earlier secondary compilations has accidentally left him the chief continuous source for the history of Greek philosophy."

Diogenes treats his subject in two divisions which he describes as the Ionian and the Italian schools; the division is somewhat dubious and appears to be drawn from the lost doxography

Doxography

Doxography is a term used for the works especially of classical antiquity historians, which describe the points of view of past philosophers and scientists concerning philosophy, science, etc....
of Sotion

Sotion

Sotion of Alexandria was a Greek doxographer and biographer, and an important source for Diogenes Laertius. None of his works survive; they are known only indirectly....
. The biographies of the former begin with Anaximander

Anaximander

Anaximander was a pre-Socratic Ancient Greece philosopher who lived in Miletus, a city of Ionia. He belonged to the Milesian school and learned the teachings of his master Thales....
, and end with Clitomachus, Theophrastus

Theophrastus

Theophrastus , a Greek native of Eressos in Lesbos Island, was the successor of Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. His interests were wide-ranging, extending from biology and physics to ethics and metaphysics....
and Chrysippus

Chrysippus

Chrysippus of Soli was Cleanthes' pupil and his successor, in 232 BC, as third head of the Stoa . A prolific writer, Chrysippus expanded the fundamental doctrines of Zeno of Citium , which earned him the title of Second Founder of Stoicism....
; the latter begins with Pythagoras

Pythagoras

Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionians Ancient Greeks mathematician and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. He is often revered as a great mathematician, mysticism and scientist; however some have questioned the scope of his contributions to mathematics and natural philosophy....
, and ends with Epicurus

Epicurus

Epicurus was an Greek philosophy and the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism.Only a few fragments and letters remain of Epicurus's 300 written works....
. The Socratic

Socrates

Socrates was a Classical Greece Philosophy. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known only through the classical accounts of his students....
school, with its various branches, is classed with the Ionic; while the Eleatics

Eleatics

The Eleatics were a school of Pre-Socratic philosophy philosophy at Elea, a Greek colony in Campania, Italy. The group was founded in the early fifth century BCE by Parmenides....
and sceptics are treated under the Italic.

The whole of the last book is devoted to Epicurus, and contains three most interesting letters addressed to Herodotus, Pythocles and Menoeceus. His chief authorities were Diocles of Magnesia

Diocles of Magnesia

Diocles of Magnesia was an ancient Greek writer from Magnesia, who probably lived in the 2nd or 1st century BC. The claim that he is the Diocles to whom Meleager of Gadara dedicated his anthology is questionable....
's Cursory Notice of Philosophers and Favorinus

Favorinus

Favorinus of Arelata was a Hellenistic sophist and philosopher who flourished during the reign of Hadrian.He was of Gauls ancestry, born in Arelate ....
's Miscellaneous History and Memoirs. From the statements of Burlaeus (Walter Burley, a 14th-century monk) in his De vita et moribus philosophorum the text of Diogenes seems to have been much fuller than that which we now possess. In addition to the Lives, Diogenes was the author of a work in verse on famous men, in various metres.

Quotation

The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.

The reason we have two ears and one mouth is to listen more and speak less.

Bibliography

Diogenes Laertius: Lives of Eminent Philosophers ISBN 0-674-99204-0
Trans. R. D. Hicks, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, I, 1925. Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press

Harvard University Press is a publishing house, a division of Harvard University, that is highly respected in academic publishing. It was established on January 13, 1913....
, Loeb Classical Library, ISBN 978-0-674-99203-0
Trans. R. D. Hicks, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, II, 1925. Harvard University Press, Loeb Classical Library, ISBN 978-0-674-99204-7
Barnes, Jonathan
Jonathan Barnes

Jonathan Barnes is a United Kingdom philosopher, translator and historian of ancient philosophy. He taught for 25 years at Oxford University before moving to the University of Geneva....
, "Diogenes Laertius IX 61-116: the philosophy of Pyrrhonism" in W. Haase and H. Temporini (ed.) Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, II 36.6 (de Gruyter: Berlin/New York, 1992): pp. 4241-4301.
Karel Janácek, Studien zu Sextus Empiricus, Diogenes Laertius und zur pyrrhonischen Skepsis. Hrsg. v. Jan Janda / Filip Karfík (= Beiträge zur Altertumskunde; Bd. 249), Berlin: de Gruyter 2008, XXI + 386 S.

External links

. (Note that this version's method of enumerating the sections of Diogenes' Lives differs from the currently standard method.)
(notes on the publication history of Diogenes Laertius, from R.D. Hicks' edition of the "Lives", 1925)