![]() ![]() ![]() He used to stroll about in full daylight with a lamp, stopping in front of people on the street, lifting the lamp to their faces and then moving on. It was contrary to Athenian customs to eat within the marketplace, and still he would eat there, for, as he explained when rebuked, it was during the time he was in the marketplace that he felt hungry. After seeing a peasant boy drink water from the hollow of his hands, he destroyed the single wooden bowl that he possessed and then exclaimed: “Fool that I am, I have been carrying superfluous baggage all this time!” He inured himself to the weather by living in a clay wine jar. The stories told of Diogenes illustrate the logical consistency of his character. In his words, “Humans have complicated every simple gift of the gods.” So great was his austerity and simplicity that the Stoics would later claim him to be a wise man or “sophos”. This attitude was grounded in a disdain for what he regarded as the folly, pretence, vanity, self-deception, and artificiality of human conduct.ĭiogenes believed that society was corrupt, and maintained that all the artificial growths of society were incompatible with happiness and that morality implies a return to the simplicity of nature. He considered his avoidance of earthly pleasures a contrast to and commentary on contemporary Athenian behaviors. With characteristic humor, Diogenes dismissed his ill fortune by saying, “If Manes can live without Diogenes, why not Diogenes without Manes?”Īfter losing his wealth, his citizenship and his slave, Diogenes embraced a life of austerity. So he traveled to Athens and made it his life’s goal to challenge established customs and values.ĭiogenes arrived in Athens with a slave named Manes who escaped from him shortly thereafter. Following the debacle in Sinope, Diogenes decided that the oracle meant that he should deface the political currency rather than actual coins. It seems likely that Diogenes was also enrolled into the banking business aiding his father.Īt some point Diogenes and his father became involved in a scandal involving the debasement of the currency, and Diogenes was exiled from the city and lost his citizenship and all his material possessions.Īccording to one story, Diogenes went to the Oracle at Delphi to ask for her advice and was told that he should “deface the currency”. Nothing is known about Diogenes’ early life except that his father was a banker. He was born in Sinope, an Ionian colony on the Black Sea, in 412 or 404 BC and died at Corinth in 323 BC. I think of Diogenes as the original, Original Gangster! I don’t know if there was ever a human being who lived with as much SWAG, as my man D!ĭiogenes was a Greek philosopher and one of the founders of Cynic philosophy.
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