![]() ![]() (It should be said that Julian’s Diogenes is a somewhat sanitised version.) In general, it appears that Cynicism enjoyed less popularity among the Romans than the Greeks – perhaps because it offended too much against reverence and custom – and flourished best in the Hellenized cities of the Eastern Provinces. ![]() In it Julian praises Cynicism in general as “a type of philosophy – not the worst or meanest either, but one of the best” and sets Diogenes up as an exemplar of how to live, comparing him with the decadent Cynics of his own times. Cynicism was a serious issue to early Christian apologists, and Diogenes was the subject of a surviving work by Emperor Julian of Rome (332-363 AD, known as ‘the Apostate’ because he tried to reintroduce paganism to the Roman Empire). Saint Augustine in his City of God (426 AD) reports with a certain distaste that “Even today we still see Cynic philosophers” although by then they were beginning to be a diminishing species: the last known Cynic, Sallustius of Emessa, expired at the beginning of the following century. The Cynic, by contrast, has no family, no ties to kith and kin, thumbs his nose at all social conventions, is averse to work except in times of extreme necessity, and revels in his freedom from constraints.ĭiogenes was no isolated eccentric, simply the most famous exponent of a philosophical movement that lasted (with intermissions) close to a thousand years. ![]() Socrates, after all, may have had little taste for material comforts, and may have gone barefoot, but, like most people, he lived in a house not a barrel he had a wife and children: he even had a profession, although he rarely seemed to practise it. Diogenes took over this inheritance and remade it as his own. In general the Socratic inheritance of Cynicism lies in an indifference to wealth, comfort, and convention, and the emphasis on living one’s life in the single-minded pursuit of virtue. That honour belongs to his teacher Antisthenes, who had in turn been influenced by Socrates, whom he knew. Yet if Diogenes remains by far the most famous of the Cynics, he wasn’t the first of his line. No writings of his remain, if there ever were any – only numerous records of his ‘sayings’ and deeds, some in mutually contradictory versions, and many of questionable accuracy. To posterity he seems something of an eccentric, or an exhibitionist, the subject of numerous anecdotes, many of them of highly dubious historical worth. For Plato he was ‘Socrates gone mad’, on account of his having taken Socrates’ simple way of life to extremes. In his own time his fame was such that Aristotle in his work on rhetoric could refer to him simply as ‘the Cynic’ without need of further identification. SUBSCRIBE NOW The Other Greek Philosophers How To Be A Cynic Roger Caldwell contemplates the life and thinking of Diogenes the Dog.ĭiogenes the Cynic (c.412-c.323 BCE) lives on in folk-memory as the ancient Greek philosopher who lived in a barrel (actually a kind of storage-jar), and who supposedly told Alexander the Great to move out of his sun. ![]()
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