CHAP. (a) Of family life. wants by himself alone,' or he will be dependent on others, and nothing which is out of his power ought to influence his happiness. To these matters belongs family life. Not that Antisthenes would do away with marriage, because he thought it useful to keep up the race of men;2 but Diogenes early discovered that this object might be attained by a community of wives. Deeply imbued as these philosophers were with Grecian peculiarities, it never occurred to them to require, in the spirit of a later asceticism, the entire uprooting of all sexual desires. Natural impulses might, however, be satisfied in a far more simple way.1 1 In Diog. 6, Antisthenes in reply to the question, What good philosophy had done him, answers: τὸ δύνασθαι ἑαυτῷ ὁμιλeiv. Out of this came the caricature of later Cynicism, described by Lucian, V. Auct. 10. Yet Diogenes and Crates were anything but haters of their fellow-men. 2 Diog. 11: yaμhσelv TE [Tòv σόφον] τεκνοποιΐας χάριν ταῖς εὐφυεστάταις συνιόντα γυναιξί. The conjecture doveoтárais (Winkelmann, p. 29, according to Hermann) appears mistaken: Antisthenes might well require εὐφυέσταται πρὸς τεκνοToitav, women most suited for child-bearing, whilst considering anyone good enough for a plaything. 3 Diog. 72: λeye dè kal koivàs εἶναι δεῖν τὰς γυναῖκας, γάμον μηδένα νομίζων, ἀλλὰ τὸν πείσαντα tŷ meiodelon ovveîvaι· Kolvoùs dè dià TOUTO Kai Toùs viéas. The correctness of this is supported by the fact that Zeno and Chrysippus, according to Diog.. vii. 33, 131, projected the same state of things for their ideal state. 4 Something of the same kind has been already observed in Socrates, p. 163, 1. With the Cynics this treatment of the relation between the sexes becomes an extravagance and a deformity. In Xen. Symp. 4, 38, Antisthenes boasts of his comforts, since he only associates with those fair dames to whom others would have nothing to say. That he did so on principle is stated in Diog. 3. That he declared adultery permissible, as Clemens. Floril. v. 18 says, is by no means certain. He is even said to have satisfied his lusts in a coarser way, complaining that hunger Icould not be treated in the same way. Brucker, i. 880, Steinhart, p. 305, and Göttling, p. 275, doubt the truth of these and similar stories. Without vouching for their accuracy, it 1 Their mendicant life, moreover, not affording them an opportunity for home pleasures, it is readily understood that they were in general averse to marriage, and to feminine society, or at least treated family life as a thing indifferent. 2 may be enough to say that they are not only quoted by Diog. 46, 49; Dio Chrys. Or. vi. 16, p. 203, R.; Lucian, V. Auct. 10; Galen. Loc. Affect. vi. 5; viii. 419, K.; Athen. iv. 158, f; Dio Chrys. 34 Hom. in Math. p. 398, C.; S. Aug. Civ. Dei, xiv. 20; but also, according to Plut. Stob. Rep. 21, 1, p. 1044, Chrysippus had on this score vindicated the Cynics, and according to Sext. Phyrrh. iii. 206, Zeno appears to have done the same. Dio. probably borrowed his revolting extracts from Chrysippus. The things are, however, not so out of keeping with the ways of Antisthenes, that we could call them impossible; and the very thing which to us appears so unintelligible, this public want of modesty, makes them very likely to be true of Diogenes. If true, they were an attempt on his part to expose the folly of mankind. It is from this point of view rather than on any moral grounds that the Cynics conduct their attacks on adulterers and stupid spendthrifts. To them it seemed foolish in the extreme to incur much toil, danger, and expense for an enjoyment, which might be had much more easily. See Diog.4; 51; 60; 66;89; Plut. Ed. Pu. 7, Schl. p. 5; Stob. Floril. 6; 39; 52. Diogenes Y Diogenes is said is also accused of having publicly practised unchastity, Diog. 69; Theod. Cur. Gr. Aff. xii. 48, p. 172. In Corinth the younger Lais, according to Athen. xiii. 588, b, or Phryne, according to Tertull. Apol. 46, is said to have had a whim to bestow on him her favours gratuitously, whereas the philosopher did not despise others. Clemens (Hom. V. 18) represents him as purchasing them by scandalous conditions. In his tragedies (according to Julian, Or. vii. 210, c) stood things that one might believe ὑπερφολὴν ἀῤῥητουργίας οὐδὲ ταῖς ἑταίραις ἀπολελείφθαι. On the other hand his morality is commended, Demetr. de Eloc. 261. The case of Crates is an exception, and even Crates had not wooed Hipparchia. He only married her, when she would not renounce her affection for him, but was prepared to share his mode of life. He certainly married his children in a peculiar way, according to Diog. 88; 93. 2 See the apophthegms in Diog. 3, and Lucian, V. Auct. 9 : γάμου δὲ ἀμελήσεις καὶ παίδων Kal Taтpidos. Far less objectionable is the maxim of Antisthenes in Diog. 12: Tòv dikalov περὶ πλείονος ποιεῖσθαι τοῦ συγγεvoûs. See pp. 310, 1, and 277. CHAP. XIII. СНАР. XIII. (b) Of civil life to have seen nothing revolting' in marriage between the nearest relations. Another matter which they considered to be equally indifferent with family life for the wise man, was civil life. Indeed the sharp contrast between slavery and freedom does not affect the wise man. The man who is really free can never be a slave— for a slave is one who is afraid-and for the same reason a slave can never be free. The wise man is the natural ruler of others, although he may be called a slave, in the same way that the physician is the ruler of the sick. Accordingly it is said that Diogenes, when about to be sold, had the question asked: Who wants a master? declining the offer of his friends to buy him back. Not that such conduct was a vindication of slavery. On the contrary, the Cynics seem to have been the first among Greeks to declare it an institution opposed to nature,3 quite in Dio Chrys. Or. x. 29, whose statement is confirmed by its agreeing with the universal doctrine of the Stoics. See Zeller's Stoics, &c., p. 4. 2 Diog. 29; 74. Compare pp. 286, 4; 332, 4. According to Diog. 16, Antisthenes wrote περὶ ἐλευθερίας καὶ δουλείας, and perhaps this is the origin of the account in Stob. Flor. 8, 14. 3 For this we have certainly no direct authority. Still (as has been already observed, p. 171, 4), it is probably in reference to the Cynics that Arist. Polit. i. 3; 1253, b, 20, says: τοῖς μὲν δοκεῖ ἐπιστήμη τέ τις εἶναι ἡ δεσποτεία . . Toîs de παρὰ φύσιν τὸ δεσπόζειν · νόμῳ 2 yàp Tov μèv doûλov elvaι TÒV d' ἐλεύθερον, φύσει δ' οὐθὲν διαφέρειν. διόπερ οὐδὲ δίκαιον, βίαιον γάρ. The contrast between νόμῳ and φύσει is not found so strongly drawn at that time except among the Sophists and Cynics. Nor is it only met with in their religious views. On the contrary, their whole politics, and even their practical philosophy, are governed by the effort to bring human society from an artificial state recognised by law and custom to a pure state of nature. We should hardly look in sophistic circles for the opponents of slavery whom Aristotle mentions, where the rule of the conformity with their principle, that every difference between men other than that of virtue and vice is unimportant and has nothing to do with the law of nature and reason. Yet they did not go so far as to attempt even in a small circle (as the Essenes did at a later time) the abolition of slavery, regarding the outward state as something indifferent, the wise man even in slavery being a free man. Nor was it otherwise with civil life. The wise man of the Cynics. feels himself above the restraints which civil life imposes, without therefore feeling any impulse to mix himself up in such matters; for where could be a constitution which would satisfy his requirements? A popular government is severely censured by Antisthenes.1 An absolute monarch only appeared to these freedom-loving philosophers a bad and miser stronger over the weaker was regarded as the most conformable to nature. But the view is all the more in keeping with a school which from no side could allow that one portion of mankind enjoy the right, quite independently of their moral state, to govern the rest, the claim of the wise man to govern the fool resting upon reason, and naturally all men being citizens of one state; between fellow-citizens the relation of master and slave cannot exist. Arist. Pol. iii. 13; 1284, a, 15, tells the fable--the application of which to a democracy is obvious-of the hares suggesting universal equality to the lions. The blame which he attaches to those states, which do not distinguish the CHAP. XIII. CHAP. able man. Aristocratical institutions fell far below their ideal, none being adapted for the rule of wise men: for what law or custom can fetter him, whose life is regulated by the laws of virtue? 2 What country can be large enough for those who regard themselves as citizens of the world?3 Allowing therefore a conditional necessity for a state and laws, the Cynics refused in their homelessness to take any part in civil life. They wished to be citizens of the world, not of any one state; their ideal state, as far as they do sketch it, is a destruction of all civil life. 1 Compare Xen. Symp. 4, 36; 2 Antisthenes, in Diog. 11, πάσης δὲ χέρσου καὶ πόλισμα καὶ ἕτοιμος ἡμῖν ἐνδιαιτᾶσθαι πάρα. given a negative answer to Alexander's question, whether he did not wish to see Thebes rebuilt: exeiv dè taтpída àdoξίαν καὶ πενίαν ἀνάλωτα τῇ τύχῃ kal Aloyévovs elvai noλítns åvetiβουλεύτον φθόνῳ. See also Epict. Diss. iii. 24, 66. Lucian, V. Auct. 8. Also the Stoic doctrine in Zeller's Stoics, &c., chap. on Stoics, and what has been said above, p. 278, 1. 4 The confused remarks of Diogenes in Diog. 72 support this statement. 5 Antisthenes was not without a citizen's rights (see Hermann, Antiquit. 1, § 118), although a proletarian by birth and circumstances. Diogenes was banished from Sinope, and lived at Athens as a foreigner. Crates had chosen this life; after his native town had been destroyed. Monimus was a slave whom his master had driven away. Stob. Floril. 45, 28: 'AVTIσθένης ἐρωτηθεὶς πῶς ἄν τις προσέλθοι πολιτείᾳ, εἶπε καθάπερ πυρὶ, μήτε λίαν ἐγγὺς ἵνα μὴ καῇς, μήτε πόῤῥω ἵνα μὴ ῥιγώσῃς. |