Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​When the man nodded in assent, Aristippus said, "Why, then, did you complain? For you seem to find fault not with the purchase of food, but with the expense." When his servant was carrying money on the road and grew burdened by it—as the followers of Bion relate in their Diatribes—he said, "Pour away the excess, and carry as much as you can." Once, while sailing, when he recognized that the vessel was a pirate ship, he took out his gold and began counting it; then he let it slip into the sea as if by accident, and made a show of lamenting. Others say he added that it was better for these things to perish on account of Aristippus than for Aristippus to perish on account of these things. When Dionysius once asked him for what purpose he had come, he said it was to impart what he had and to receive what he did not have.

​Some, however, say that he replied thus: "When I was in need of wisdom, I went to Socrates; but now that I am in need of money, I have come to you." He used to censure people on the ground that they made their crockery ring when buying it in the market, but examined their lives haphazardly—though some attribute this saying to Diogenes. And once, when Dionysius commanded each person at a drinking party to dance in a purple garment, Plato refused, saying: "I could not put on a woman's dress;" but Aristippus took it, and when on the point of dancing, aptly remarked: "For even in bacchic revels the chaste woman at least will not be corrupted."

​Once, when begging Dionysius on behalf of a friend and meeting with no success, he fell at his feet. When someone scoffed at him, he said, "It is not I who am to blame, but Dionysius, who has his ears in his feet." While staying in Asia and being arrested by the satrap Artaphernes, when someone asked, "Are you confident even here?" he replied, "Foolish man, when would I be more confident than now, when I am about to converse with Artaphernes?" He used to say that those who took part in the encyclical studies but fell short of philosophy were like the suitors of Penelope; for they could enjoy Melantho and Polydora and the other handmaidens, but were by no means able to marry the mistress herself.

​Ariston says something similar: that Odysseus, having descended to Hades, saw and met with almost all the dead, but did not behold the queen herself. Aristippus, at any rate, when asked what things noble boys ought to learn, said, "Those things which they will use when they have become men." To someone who spoke accusingly of his having gone from Socrates to Dionysius, he said, "Well, I went to Socrates for the sake of education, but to Dionysius for the sake of amusement." When Socrates saw that he had made money from his teaching and said, "Where did you get so much?" he replied, "From where you got your little."

​When a courtesan said to him, "I am pregnant by you," he said, "You know that no more than if, walking through a rush-bed, you were to say that you had been pricked by this particular rush." Someone reproached him for casting off his son as if he had not been born of him; Aristippus said, "We know that phlegm and lice too are produced from us, yet because they are useless we cast them as far away as possible." When Aristippus received money from Dionysius while Plato took a book, to someone who found fault with this, he said, "For I am in need of money, but Plato is in need of books." To someone who asked why he was being refuted and censured by Dionysius, he said, "For the same reason that the others censure."

​He asked Dionysius for money, and Dionysius said, "Yet surely you claimed that the wise man would not be in want;" whereupon Aristippus rejoined, "Give it, and let us investigate this matter." And when Dionysius gave it, he said, "Do you see that I have not been in want?" When Dionysius said to him: "For whoever enters the doors of a tyrant is his slave, even if he arrives a free man;" Aristippus rejoined: "He is not a slave, if he arrives a free man." Diocles says this in his On the Lives of Philosophers; for others attribute the remark to Plato. When Aristippus became angry with Aeschines not long afterward, he said, "Shall we not make up, and shall we not stop playing the fool, or will you wait until someone reconciles us over the wine cup?" And Aeschines said, "Gladly;"