Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​When Crates asked him whether the gods take pleasure in prostrations and prayers, they say that he replied: "Do not ask about such matters in the road, you foolish man, but only when we are alone." It is reported that Bion too, on being asked whether gods exist, gave a similar reply: "Will you not scatter the crowd away from me, long-suffering old man?" Stilpo was unaffected, unpretentious, and well-adapted to the common person. At any rate, when Crates the Cynic once, instead of answering what was asked of him, broke wind, Stilpo said: "I knew you would utter anything rather than what is proper."

​Moreover, when Crates once held out a dried fig to him and posed a question, Stilpo took it and ate it up. And upon Crates saying: "By Heracles, I have lost my fig!" Stilpo replied: "Not only that, but also the question, for which the fig was the pledge." Again, seeing Crates shriveled up with cold in winter, he said: "O Crates, you seem to me to have need of a new cloak." [Which was a pun on 'sense and a cloak.'] And Crates, taking offense, parodied him as follows: "And indeed I saw Stilpo enduring grievous pains in Megara, where they say the beds of Typhoeus lie. There he used to dispute, and many companions were about him; but pursuing virtue to the letter, they wasted their time."

​It is said that he attracted the people at Athens so much that they ran together from their workshops in order to see him. And when someone said: "Stilpo, they wonder at you as at a wild beast," he replied: "Not at all, but rather as at a true man." Being exceedingly clever in eristic debate, he even did away with the forms (ideas). He used to say that whoever says "man" speaks of no one; for he is neither this man nor that man. For why should he be this one rather than that one? Therefore, he is not this one either. And again: "The vegetable shown is not a vegetable; for a vegetable existed ten thousand years ago; therefore this is not a vegetable." And they say that while conversing with Crates he hastened away in the midst of it to buy some fish; and when Crates tried to hold him back and said: "Are you abandoning the argument?" he said: "Not I; rather, I keep the argument, but it is you I am leaving behind. For the argument will wait, but the fish will be sold."

​Nine frigid dialogues of his are in circulation: *Moschus*, *Aristippus or Callias*, *Ptolemy*, *Chaerecrates*, *Metrocles*, *Anaximenes*, *Epigenes*, *To His Own Daughter*, and *Aristotle*. Heraclides says that Zeno, the founder of the Stoa, also attended his lectures. Hermippus says that he died in old age, having drunk wine so that he might die more quickly. There is also an epigram of ours on him: "Megarian Stilpo, whom you likely know, old age, and then disease, brought down—an unconquerable pair; but he found in wine a driver stronger than that evil team; for drinking it deep, he drove away." He was also ridiculed by Sophilus the comic poet in the play *The Marriage*: "Charinus' speech is Stilpo's stuffing."