Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​Once, while sailing to Corinth and being caught in a storm, it happened that he was terrified. When someone remarked, "We ordinary folk are not afraid, but you philosophers are cowards," he said, "It is because the lives we are each anxious about are not of equal value." To someone who prided himself on his vast learning, he said, "Just as those who eat the most are not healthier than those who take what is necessary, so too not those who read many things, but those who read useful things are the virtuous." To the speechwriter who had pleaded on his behalf in a lawsuit and won, and then said to him, "What did Socrates profit you?" he replied, "This: that the words you spoke on my behalf were true."

​He gave the best counsels to his daughter Arete, training her to be contemptuous of excess. When asked by someone in what respect his son would be better off if educated, he said, "Even if in nothing else, at any rate in the theatre he will not sit as a stone upon a stone." When someone recommended a son to him, he asked for five hundred drachmas; and when the man said, "For that amount I can buy a slave," Aristippus said, "Buy one, and you will have two." He used to say that he took money from his acquaintances not so that he himself might use it, but so that they might know on whom they ought to spend their money. When reproached on one occasion for having hired an orator when he had a lawsuit, he said, "For indeed, whenever I have a banquet, I hire a cook."

​Once, when compelled by Dionysius to say something drawn from philosophy, he said, "It is ridiculous if you learn from me what to say, but you teach me when one ought to say it." At this, Dionysius was indignant and made him recline in the lowest place; whereupon Aristippus said, "You wished to make that place more distinguished." To someone who boasted of his swimming, he said, "Are you not ashamed to boast of the achievements of a dolphin?" When asked on one occasion in what respect the wise man differs from the unwise, he said, "Send the two naked among strangers, and you will know." To someone who boasted of being able to drink much and not get drunk, he said, "A mule can do that too."

​To someone who accused him of living with a courtesan, he said, "Would it make any difference to take a house in which many have lived, or one in which no one has lived?" And when the man said no, "And what about sailing in a ship in which myriad people have sailed, or in one in which no one has sailed?" "Not in the least." "Neither, then," he said, "does it make any difference to live with a woman whom many have enjoyed, or one whom no one has enjoyed." To someone who accused him of taking money although he was a pupil of Socrates, he said, "Very much so; for Socrates too, when people sent him both corn and wine, would take a little and send back the rest; for he had the foremost of the Athenians as his stewards, but I have Eutychides, a slave bought with money." He also associated with the courtesan Lais, as Sotion says in the second book of his Successions.

​Therefore, to those who found fault with him, he said, "I possess Lais, but I am not possessed by her; for to rule over pleasures and not to be overcome by them is best, not abstaining from them." To someone who reproached him for an expensive purchase of food, he said, "Would you not have bought these things for three obols?" When the man agreed, he said, "It is no longer I, then, who am a lover of pleasure, but you who are a lover of money." Once, when Simus, the steward of Dionysius, was showing him houses that were luxurious and paved with stone—now Simus was a Phrygian and a pestilent fellow—Aristippus cleared his throat and spat in his face; and when Simus grew indignant, he said, "I had no place more suitable."

​When Charondas—or, as others say, Phaedo—asked, "Who is it that smells of perfume?" "It is I," he said, "unfortunate man that I am, and more unfortunate than I is the King of the Persians. But consider whether, just as none of the other animals is in any way demeaned on this account, so neither would a human being be. And may those catamites perish miserably, who bring a good ointment into disrepute among us!" When asked how Socrates died, he said, "As I myself would pray to die." Once, when the sophist Polyxenus entered his house and beheld both women and expensive provisions, and then began to reproach him, Aristippus, after pausing a moment, said, "Can you also join us today?"