Anecdotes of the Cynics Read online

  Selected and translated by

  Robert Dobbin

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  ANECDOTES OF THE CYNICS

  Contents

  Anecdotes of the Cynics

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  THE CYNIC PHILOSOPHERS

  5th century BC–4th century AD

  Selection taken from The Cynic Philosophers: From Diogenes to Julian

  CYNICS IN PENGUIN CLASSICS

  The Cynic Philosophers

  [LUCIAN], ‘THE CYNIC’

  This dialogue was probably not composed by Lucian, but is written in imitation of his style and serves as a useful introduction to our subject. The main speaker is supposed to be a typical Cynic; he is identified simply as ‘the Cynic’ (Kynikos) in fact. Lycinus, the interlocutor, is not otherwise known and is probably invented as well, a mere device to challenge ‘the Cynic’ to prove the value of his vocation.

  LYCINUS: Hey! Who are you with the beard and long hair, but no shirt, no shoes, and practically naked? who prefers a life of wandering more suited to a beast than a human being? who subjects their flesh to pain and hardship, unlike normal people, and who roams from place to place, prepared to sleep on the ground, so that your cloak is covered in filth – not that it was ever soft, fine, or pretty to begin with?

  KYNIKOS: Yes, and I don’t even need the cloak. But it’s the kind that is easiest to get and gives its owner the least trouble to maintain, which is enough for me. I’d like to ask you something, though: don’t you think there’s something wrong about excessive luxury, and something right about thrift and economy?

  L: Of course.

  K: Then why, when you see me living more economically than most, do you criticize me instead of other people?

  L: Because your life does not impress me as more economical than others’, simply as more deficient — as quite empty, in fact, and impoverished. You’re no better off than panhandlers who have to beg for their daily bread.

  K: The question, then, comes to this: what does it mean to have enough or too little? Shall we discuss it?

  L: If you like.

  K: The man whose needs are met can be said to have enough, don’t you think?

  L: I suppose.

  K: And the man who has too little is described that way when his means fall short of his needs and don’t match his requirements?

  L: Yes.

  K: Then nothing is missing from my life, because nothing in it fails to satisfy my needs.

  L: Explain, please.

  K: Consider any of the things that we’ve come to depend on, such as shelter. We need it for protection, correct?

  L: Yes.

  K: All right. And clothes, what are they for? Protection too, I suppose?

  L: Yes.

  K: But what in the world is ‘protection’ for? Presumably this ‘protection’ is meant to improve the quality of life?

  L: I guess so.

  K: Now do my feet look to be in any worse shape than other people’s?

  L: I can’t tell.

  K: Maybe this will help you. What are feet for?

  L: Walking.

  K: And do you think my feet do any worse a job of walking than most people’s?

  L: Well, probably not.

  K: Then if they fill their function as well, it follows that their condition is in no way inferior.

  L: I allow it.

  K: Then as far as feet go, it seems I am no worse off than your average person.

  L: Apparently not.

  K: What about the rest of my body? Is it worse than others’? Because if it’s worse, that means it’s weaker, strength being the measure of a body’s fitness. Is it weaker, then?

  L: It doesn’t seem to be.

  K: Then I don’t believe my body in general, or my feet in particular, come up short in the ‘protection’ department. They would be in poor shape if they were, since deficiency of any kind has a bad effect in any circumstance. Again, my body doesn’t seem to be any less well nourished for depending on whatever fortune provides.

  L: I would agree.

  K: And my body is strong, which proves that the food I’m given is healthy; if the food were unhealthy, my body would be in poor health too.

  L: True enough.

  K: Well, if that’s true, then why fault my lifestyle and call it disgusting?

  L: For heaven’s sake, because nature — which you are always extolling — and the gods have given us the earth and its blessings for everyone to use, and not just use but enjoy. Yet you ignore these advantages — or most of them — and take no more account of them than do beasts. You drink water like beasts, you eat whatever you happen to find, like dogs, and like dogs you sleep just anywhere, as much satisfied as they are with straw for a bed. Add to which your coat is no better than a bum’s. But if it turns out that you are the one justified in needing no more, then God was mistaken to supply sheep with wool, make vines capable of producing sweet wine, and create nature in all its wonderful variety, including different kinds of olive oil, honey and the rest, so that we have a choice of food, of drink that is pleasant, soft beds and other furnishings, fine houses and other cunning inventions. For the products of the arts are gifts of the gods too, which it is a pity to renounce as if we were men condemned to prison and dispossessed. It’s even more deplorable when someone denies himself these benefits willingly; that is sheer madness.

  K: Well, there may be something in what you say. But consider: suppose a rich man in a spirit of warmth and generosity gave a feast and invited many people of different sorts, some healthy, others sick, and put out a large and varied spread. And let’s suppose one of the company grabbed and ate all of it, not just the food put before him, but what was at a distance from him and intended for the less fortunate guests — and this though he was in perfectly good health, and having but the one stomach needed little enough to be satisfied but was apt to burst by devouring so much. What would you think of such a person? Would you consider him reasonable?

  L: No.

  K: Well mannered?

  L: No.

  K: Now imagine that someone at the same table, ignoring the range of dishes, settled instead on the one closest to him which is sufficient for his needs, and ate it politely without even a glance at the other provisions. Wouldn’t you think him better bred and better mannered than the other person?

  L: Of course.

  K: Well, do you get my point or must I spell it out?

  L: Tell me.

  K: God is that gracious host who provides many dishes of various kinds, so that his guests can have whatever suits them — the healthy, the sick, the strong and the infirm. We are not supposed to eat all of them indiscriminately; each should take what is set in front of him and of that only as much as he really needs. You resemble the guest who, in his greed and gluttony, helps himself to everything — and not just what’s easy of access from local land and water. You import your pleasures from the ends of the earth, always prizing what’s exotic over what’s regional, what’s expensive over what’s cheap, what’s hard to get over what’s near to hand. In short, instead of a simple life you choose to fill it with unnecessary complication. Because all this expensive stuff which is supposedly so conducive to happiness and which you hold so dear costs a lot in terms of pain and aggravation. Just look at gold, which is so sought after, or silver, or expensive houses, fancy clothes, and all that goes with them.

  Then consider at what price they’re acquired in terms of trouble, pain and danger — or rather in terms of blood, death and shattered lives, not just because many people die at sea searching for these luxury goods or ruin their health manufacturing them, but
because they are the source of so much intrigue and conflict among you, setting friend against friend, child against parent, even wife against husband.

  And these calamities all occur despite the fact that bright colours do nothing to make clothes warmer, gilded roofs afford no better shelter, drink tastes no more appetizing for being served in gold or silver cups, nor is sleep sweeter when taken in ivory beds. In fact, you will often find that people of status cannot get any rest in their ivory beds, wrapped in their expensive blankets. I need hardly tell you that rich and spicy foods are no more nourishing but can actually harm our bodies and induce disease. Why add the things we do and suffer for the sake of sex? Yet how easy it is to allay this passion, unless we are addicted to perversions. Nor is it enough for us to show ourselves mad and dissolute in the pursuit of sex, nowadays we twist everything from its natural use, like people who would treat a coach not as a coach but a carriage.

  L: And who does that?

  K: Why, you do — when you order men about like beasts of burden, making them carry you on their shoulders in sedan chairs as if you were travelling by carriage, while you recline in state above, yelling directions down at them as though they were donkeys, ‘Not this way, fool, that!’ And the more often you indulge in such behaviour the greater the world regards you. What about those who use edible things not just for food but for dyes, like the manufacturers of purple dye — aren’t they also making an unnatural use of God’s creatures?

  L: I cannot agree with you there, the cuttlefish is just as suited to provide dye as food.

  K: But that’s not what it’s for. In the same way you could make a punch bowl serve as a teacup if you had to; but that is not its purpose. In the end, though, no one can give a complete account of the misery such people create for themselves, it’s too much. Yet you blame me for wanting no part of it when I live like that well-bred guest whom I described. I enjoy what’s easily available, preferring what costs least to get, and don’t hanker after delicacies imported from the ends of the earth.

  And there’s this to consider: if my life reminds you of a beast’s because my needs are few and meagre, then by the same argument the gods would be even worse off than animals since they have no needs at all. But to really appreciate what it means to have few wants as opposed to many, consider that children require more than adults, women more than men, the sick more than the healthy — wherever you look, in fact, you’ll find that the needs of the inferior amount to more. It follows that the gods stand in need of nothing; and those who most resemble the gods need hardly anything at all.

  Take Heracles, the best man that ever lived, practically a god and rightly honoured as one. Do you imagine that it was ill fortune that made him go about dressed in a lionskin, forgoing the things that you consider essential? No, Heracles could hardly be called unfortunate, he saved others from bad fortune, nor could poverty be the cause of his austere habits when he could go anywhere he wanted on land or sea. In all his labours he got the better of everyone, everywhere, and in his time among men he never met his match. Or is it your view that he could not afford shoes or a bed, which is why he travelled so light? No, the idea is absurd; the fact is he had strength and willpower; he chose to control, not indulge, his desires.

  Theseus, too, the son of Poseidon, according to legend, the king of Athens, and the best man of his day — didn’t he take after Hercules? He chose to go about shoeless and barely clothed too, and let his hair and beard grow out. In this he was like all the men of ancient times. They were better men than you, and not one of them would have shaved any more than a lion would submit to having its mane cut off. Smooth, soft flesh becomes a woman; but as they were men, they chose to look like men. They believed that a beard enhanced a man’s appearance like a horse’s or a lion’s mane, which God gave these animals for no other reason than to enhance their majesty. In the same way God has given men the complement of a beard; and so it’s the men of old that I admire and choose to imitate. I disdain the rich food and fancy clothes of the man of today, not to mention the unnatural fashion for smoothing and shaving every part of the body, the private parts not excepted.

  My prayer is that my feet be just like hooves, as Chiron’s were said to be; that I need bedclothes no more than do lions, expensive food no more than dogs. Let the whole world be bed large enough for me, let me call the universe my home; and may I always prefer the food that’s easiest to acquire. May I never need gold or silver; and I wish the same for my friends, since greed for money is the source of society’s wars, plots, murders and divisions. And behind it is the unceasing lust for more. So let such desires keep their distance. I hope never to hanker after more than others, but instead be granted the capacity to do with less.

  There you have an outline of our ambitions, ambitions, to be sure, different from those of the masses. And since we differ from them so much in character it isn’t surprising that we should differ in appearance. What is surprising, rather, is how you appreciate that actors and musicians should have a characteristic dress and uniform, but don’t afford philosophers the same privilege. You believe instead that they should look the way most people do, though most people are hardly worth emulating. But if a philosopher be allowed his own uniform, what better one to have than one that shocks people who have no principles, a uniform that is about the last style of dress they would choose for themselves?

  So naturally my appearance tends towards the rough and shaggy, with a worn cloak, long hair and bare feet. Yours, on the other hand, is indistinguishable from that of catamites, with the same colour and softness of coat, having the same large wardrobe, same hair, same shoes, same perfume. Yes, you even smell like them now, the richest among you the most, and yet what, in that case, can people like you really be worth? You are no more capable of work than they are, no less addicted to pleasure. You eat like them, you sleep like them, you walk like them — or, rather, don’t walk like them, but prefer to be carried around like baggage on litters or in coaches. My feet take me wherever I have to go. And I can put up with any amount of cold or heat and not complain about the gods and their works because I am poor, whereas you, because of your wealth, are never happy about anything but always dissatisfied. You cannot put up with what you have, but must have whatever is lacking. In winter you want summer, in summer, winter, when it’s hot you want cold, when it’s cold you want hot — like people who are sick and never content but always complaining. But if in their case their sickness is to blame, in yours it is you who are responsible.

  Next, you try to reform us and get us to change because we often are ill-advised in what we do. But you give no thought to your own actions, basing none of them on rational judgement, only on impulse and habit. You are just like people caught in a flood, carried along wherever the current takes them. You go wherever your desires lead. Your situation is like that of the man in the parable who mounted a wild horse who bolted, and with the horse in full career he couldn’t dismount. Then they passed someone who asked where in the world they were headed. ‘Ask the horse,’ the man managed to answer. Now if someone asks you where you’re off to, if you’re honest you will simply say that your desires will decide — the desires of pleasure, greed and ambition, to be precise. Then it’s anger, or some other emotion like fear, that seems to direct you. For you are on the back of not one but many horses, and different ones at different times, but all of them out of control, which is why you end up in ditches or falling off cliffs. And you have no presentiment that any such disaster awaits you.

  This worn cloak, however, which you make fun of, my long hair and this style of dress are so effective that they afford me a life of quiet, doing whatever I like, with whomever I like. No ignorant or uneducated person will come near me because of how I dress, and the fops turn around after spying me a long way off. Men of real refinement and intelligence seek me out, and those who aspire to virtue — the latter especially, since their company affords me the greatest pleasure. I don’t hang about the doors of men that society con
siders happy. Their gold crowns and purple robes are absurdities to me which I can only deride.

  I would have you know that my appearance is suited, not just to men of virtue but to the gods, for all the fun you make of it. Examine the statues of the gods and see whether they resemble more you or me. And not just the Greeks’, go and inspect images of foreign gods as well and see whether they are depicted in paint or marble with long hair and a beard like me, or close-shaven like you. Most of them, too, you will find are shirtless. So how dare you describe my appearance as shabby when it even suits the gods?

  DIOGENES

  Diogenes of Sinope established Cynicism as a practical philosophy. Throughout its long history he remained the model by whom all later Cynics defined themselves. Anecdotes of widely varying credibility dominate the tradition about the man, but their cumulative effect in the intellectual history of the movement is reason enough to offer translations of even some of the more dubiously authentic ones.

  DL 6. 64

  A man once said to him, ‘You know nothing, and yet profess to be a philosopher.’ ‘Aspiring after knowledge,’ he said, ‘already amounts to practising philosophy.’

  DL 6. 60

  One day he was asked what he did to deserve the epithet ‘the dog’. ‘I fawn on people who give me alms, I bark at them if they refuse me, and I snap at scoundrels.’

  DL 6. 49

  He once begged money from a statue. Asked what he thought he was doing, he answered, ‘Getting used to being refused.’ When he begged — a practice he began owing to his poverty — he used to say, ‘If you’ve given to others, then give to me too; if you haven’t, now’s a good a time to start.’

  THEMISTIUS, ON VIRTUE, P. 44 SACHAU