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СНАР.
XII.

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Socrates.1 On the death of his teacher, Phædo collected a circle of disciples in his native town, who thence received the name of the Elean philosophers.2 Plistanus is named as his successor, and Archipylus and Moschus as his pupils. Beyond the names we, however, know nothing of any one of them. By Menedemus and Asclepiades,5 the school was removed to Eretria, and it was then called the Eretrian.“

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126. Perhaps these men were not immediate pupils of his. Since nothing is said of Menedemus' studying under Plistanus, the latter, we may suppose, was no longer alive.

The account given by Diog. ii. 125 of these philosophers in his life of Menedemus (probably taken from Antigonus of Carystus and Heraclides Lembus) is as follows: Menedemus of Eretria, originally a tradesman, had been sent as a soldier to Megara. There he became acquainted with the school of Plato (so Diog. says with Plato; but this is chronologically impossible) and joined it together with his friend Asclepiades, both cf them (according to Athen. iv. 168, a) earning a living by working at night. Soon, how

ever, they joined Stilpo at Megara, and thence went to Moschus and Archipylus at Elis, by whom they were introduced to the Elean doctrines. Returning to their native city and becoming connected by marriage, they continued together in faithful friendship until the death of Asclepiades, even after Menedemus had risen to highest rank in the state, and had attained wealth and influence with the Macedonian princes. The sympathetic, noble and firm character of Menedemus, his pungent wit (on which Plut. Prof. in Virt. 10, p. 81 ; Vit. Pud. 18, p. 536), his moderation (Diog. ii. 129; Athen. x. 419, e), his liberality and his merits towards his country, are a subject of frequent panegyric. Soon after the battle of Lysimachia, which took place 278 B.C., he died, possibly by suicide-the result of a grief which is differently stated-at the age of seventyfour. According to Antigonus in Diog. ii. 136, he left no writings.

Strabo, ix. 1, 8; Diog. ii. 105, 126; Cic. Acad. iv. 42, 129.

Flourishing as was its condition here for a time, it

appears soon to have died out.1

СНАР.

XII.

their

Among its adherents 2 Phædo and Menedemus are B. Rethe only two respecting whose opinions any informa- mains of tion is to be had, and that information is little teaching. enough. By Timon3 Phædo is classed with Euclid

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as a babbler, which points to an argumentative tendency. Perhaps, however, he devoted himself to Ethics more than Euclid did. Menedemus, at least, appears to have been distinguished from his cotemporary quibblers by having directed his attention to life and to moral questions. He is, however, spoken of as a sharp and skilful disputant. If he hardly went the length of Antisthenes in declaring every combination of subject and predicate impossible, it still sounds captious enough to hear that he only allowed affirmative judgments to be valid, but rejected nega

472.

Plut. Tranqu. An. 13, p. of morals, which Sen. Ep. 94,
41, quotes from Phædo.

2 Athen. iv. 162, e, mentions a certain Ctesibius as a pupil of Menedemus, but what he says of him has nothing to do with philosophy. A treatise of the Stoic Sphærus against the Eretrian School in 260 B.C. is the last trace of the existence of the Eretrian school. Diog. vii. 178.

3 Diog. ii. 107.

4 The Platonic Phædo does not give the slightest ground for thinking, as Steinhart, Plat. W. iv. 397, does, that Phædo was inclined to a sceptical withholding of judgment.

5 Compare the short but clever fragment on the subject

* Diog. ii. 134: ἦν δὲ δυσκα τανοήτος ὁ Μ. καὶ ἐν τῷ συνθέσθαι δυσανταγώνιστος. ἐστρέφετό τε πρὸς πάντα καὶ εὑρεσιλόγει· ἐριστικώτατός τε, καθά φησιν 'Αντισθένης ἐν διαδοχαῖς, ἦν. The verses of Epicrates in Athen. ii. 59, cannot well refer to this Menedemus, since they are also directed against Plato, who was then still living.

7 Even this is asserted. According to Phys. 20, a (Schol. in Arist. 330, a, 3), the Eretrians asserted undèv KаTÀ μEδενὸς κατηγορεῖσθαι. They appear in this passage to be confounded with the Cynics and the later Megarians.

CHAP.
XII

tive and hypothetical ones.' Chrysippus 2 blames him as well as Stilpo, for their obsolete fallacies.3 It may also be true that he disputed the view that properties exist apart from particular objects, in the spirit of Cynic nominalism. On the other hand, it is asserted that in positive opinions he was a Platonist, and only employed argument for amusement. From what has been already stated, this seems incredible, nor can it be deduced from his disputes with Alexinus. Indeed, it is in itself most improbable.

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Still

so much seems to be ascertained, that, together with Stilpo, he attributed to ethical doctrines a value above criticism. For we not only hear that he admired Stilpo, who was his teacher, more than any other philosopher, and that he was himself often

1 Diog. ii. 135.

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2 Plut. Sto. Rep. 10, 11, p. 1036.

3 Hermann, Ges. Abh. 253, refers to Menedemus the verses of John Salisbury (Enthet. ed. Peters, p. 41), in which a certain Endymion is mentioned, who called fides, opinio vera, and error, opinio fallax, and who denied that you could know what was false, for no knowledge could be deceptive. The allusion does not, however, appear probable. The continuation, that the sun corresponds to truth, and the moon to falsehood, that error and change bear rule under the moon, but truth and immutability in the domain of the sun, certainly does not come from Menedemus.

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Simpl. Categ. Schol. in
Arist. 68, a, 24: οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς
Ερετρίας ἀνῇρουν τὰς ποιότητας

ὡς οὐδαμῶς ἐχούσας τι κοινὸν οὐσιῶδες ἐν δὲ τοῖς καθέκαστα καὶ συνθέτοις ὑπαρχούσας.

5 Heraclides in Diog. ii. 135. Ritter's conjecture, Gesch. d. Phil. ii. 155, that this Menedemus is confounded with Menedemus the Pyrrhæan, whom we know from Plut. adv. Col. 32, p. 1126, 8, and Athen., is hardly to be trusted. For Heraclides Lembus had treated the Eretrians in detail, as we learn from Diog., so that it is difficult to imagine such a confusion. The context also tells against that view.

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Diog. 135, 136, says that he was constantly attacking Alexinus with violent derision, but yet did him some service.

* Diog. 134 : τῶν δὲ διδασκάλων τῶν περὶ Πλάτωνα καὶ Ξενοκράτην . κατεφρόνει. 8 Diog. 134.

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derided for being a Cynic,' but we know that he busied himself with enquiring as to the chief good in a practical way. He affirmed that there was only one good-intelligence, which, to his mind, was identical with a rational direction of the will.3 What are commonly spoken of as distinct virtues, are, he maintained, only different names of this one virtue ;* and, by his activity as a statesman," he proved that he did not aim at dead knowledge. In his free views of religion he likewise reminds us of Stilpo and the Cynics.6 Zeno, however, having about this time united the most valuable and lasting parts of the Megarian and Cynic teaching in the more comprehensive system of the Stoics, stragglers, such as the Eretrians, soon found themselves unable to exercise any important influence.

1 Diog. 140: τὰ μὲν οὖν πρῶτα καπεφρονεῖτο, κύων καὶ λῆρος ὑπὸ τῶν Ἐρετρείων ἀκούων.

2 Cic. Acad. ii. 42: Diog. 123: πρὸς δὲ τὸν εἰπόντα πολλά τὰ ἀγαθὰ ἐπύθετο πόσα τὸν ἀριθμὸν καὶ εἰ νομίζοι πλείω τῶν ἑκατόν· and in 134 are some questions to prove that the useful is not the good.

3 Diog. 136: καί ποτέ τινος ἀκούσας, ὡς μέγιστον ἀγαθὸν εἴη τὸ πάντων ἐπιτυγχάνειν ὧν τις ἐπιθυμεῖ, εἶπε· πολὺ δὲ μεῖζον· τὸ ἐπιθυμεῖν ὧν δεῖ.

4 Plut. Virt. Mor. 2: Μενέ δημος μὲν ὁ ἐξ Ερετρίας ἀνῄρει τῶν ἀρετῶν καὶ τὸ πλῆθος καὶ τὰς διαφορὰς, ὡς μιᾶς οὔσης καὶ χρωμένης πολλοῖς, ὀνόμασι· τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ σωφροσύνην καὶ ἀνδρείαν καὶ

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CHAP.

XII.

CHAP.
XIII.

A. History

of the Cynics.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE CYNICS.

THE Cynic, like the Megarian School, arose from a fusion of the teaching of Socrates with the doctrines of the Eleatics and Sophists. Both schools, as has been already remarked, were united by Stilpo, and passed over into the Stoa in Zeno.1 The founder of Cynicism, Antisthenes, a native of Athens,2 appears

It is accordingly not compatible with an insight into the historical connection of these schools to insert the Cyrenaics between the Cynics and the Megarians, as Tennemann, Hegel, Marbach, Braniss, Brandis, and Strümpell have done. Otherwise it is of no moment whether we advance from the Megarians to Antisthenes and thence to Aristippus, or vice versa; for these three schools were not being developed from one another, but grew up side by side from the same origin. The order followed above appears, however, to be the more natural one; the Megarians confining themselves more closely to the fundamental position of Socrates; Antisthenes considering its practical consequences :

on

and Aristippus its effects happiness, according to his own imperfect conception of it.

2 Antisthenes was the son of an Athenian and a Thracian slave (Diog. vi. 1; ii. 31; Sen. De Const. 18, 5; Plut. De Exil. 17, p. 607, calling his mother; and Clemens, Strom. i. 302, C. in calling himself a Phyrgian, are confounding him with Diogenes, or else must have been thinking of the anecdote in Diog. vi. 1; Sen. and Plut., 1. c.; for further particulars consult Winkelmann, Antisth. Fr. p. 7; Müller, De Antisth. vita et scriptis Marb. 1860, p. 3). He lived, according to Xen. Mem. ii. 5; Sym. 3, 8; 4, 34, in extreme poverty. The time of his birth and death is not further known to us. Diodor. xv. 76, mentions him as one of

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