Have you not often said this yourself to your companions? have you not read much of this kind, and written much? and how often have you boasted that you were easy as to death? Wretch, are you so blind, and don't you see the road to which the want of necessaries leads?-Well, where does it lead?-To the same place to which a fever leads, or a stone that falls on you, to death. Not a cynic philosopher, though related, Epictetus had this to say:ĪRE you not ashamed at being more cowardly and more mean than fugitive slaves? How do they when they run away leave their masters? on what estates do they depend, and what domestics do they rely on? Do they not after stealing a little which is enough for the first days, then afterwards move on through land or through sea, contriving one method after another for maintaining their lives? And what fugitive slave ever died of hunger?2 But you are afraid lest necessary things should fail you, and are sleepless by night. His status may not have been too dissimilar from a rock star: someone who was still sufficiently acknowledged by the elites of the times to have his excentricities tolerated. He had a large following and notoriety in philosophical circles and beyond.
He came from a wealthy background, a family of bankers (although most of this wealth was probably lost when it was discovered that his father had coined fake currencies).
Yet, Diogenes was not an ordinary homeless person. The more obscure anecdotes (like eating in the market place) are arguably more likely to be true, as they are perhaps a bit too topical to have been extensively re-elaborated. What remains nevertheless, is that Diogenes certainly attempted to subvert cultural conventions of the time in one way of another and had deeply shocked his contemporaries in doing so. The anecdotes around Diogenes (the "chreia") are simply unverifiable, as most of them have only been collected by Diogene Laerce at least half-millenium after Diogenes's life. So while Diogenes being considered godtouched isn't mentioned explicitly its certainly a "most likely" given the lack of censure, even if we only attribute to him statements and acts that were written down in his own lifetime. On top of that he had a prophecy from the oracle of delphi (which is also mentioned in contemporary sources) that, if interpreted in a certain way, basically gave him divine mandate to challenge the conventional order. The greeks were desperately afraid of insulting the gods, and Diogenes meets all the criteria for being considered godtouched (with unconventional and/or offensive behavior, but without physical deformities and with a razorsharp wit, and his words often have several layers to them). This is mentioned in later sources (like Plutarch and Diogenes Laertius) and contemporary sources (Xenophanes and Plato among others).Īs for godtouched. Ordinary citizens did have the right to beat someone who was accosting them (and Diogenes was both beaten, by for example his unwilling teacher Antisthenes, and beat others who tried to accost him). If he went to an athenian court this was infront of a dikasteria (or at least part of a dikasteria for stuff equivalent of a small claims court today).
So he could not be banished, fined, arrested, sold into slavery or anything unless either a citizen or the state litigated against him in the athenian courts. And all civil litigation went through the courts.
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So it is perfectly normally for your post to not show up in the new listing.
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