Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​Aristippus then said, "Remember, then, that although I was the elder, I was the first to approach you." And Aeschines replied, "Well said, by Hera! You speak with good reason, since you are far better than I; for I began the enmity, but you began the friendship." These anecdotes, then, are related of him. There have been four men named Aristippus: the first, the one concerning whom our account is; the second, the author of the history of Arcadia; the third, called the mother-taught, grandson of the first by his daughter; and the fourth, a member of the New Academy. Of the Cyrenaic philosopher there are extant three books of history concerning Libyan affairs, sent to Dionysius; and one volume containing twenty-five dialogues, written some in the Attic and some in the Doric dialect, which are as follows:

​Artabazus. To the Shipwrecked. To the Exiles. To a Beggar. To Lais. To Porus. To Lais: On the Mirror. Hermeias. The Dream. To the Cupbearer. Philomelus. To his Relatives. To those who Censure Him for Possessing Old Wine and Courtesans. To those who Censure Him for Buying Luxuries. Letter to Arete his Daughter. To the Man Training Himself for Olympia. A Question. Another Question. An Anecdote concerning Dionysius. Another on the Statue. Another on the Daughter of Dionysius. To the Man who Thought He was Disgraced. To the Man Trying to Give Advice. Some say he also wrote six books of Diatribes, while others say he wrote nothing at all, among whom is Sosicrates of Rhodes.

​According to Sotion in his second book and Panaetius, the following works are his: On Education. On Virtue. Protrepticus. Artabazus. The Shipwrecked. The Exiles. Six books of Diatribes. Three books of Anecdotes. To Lais. To Porus. To Socrates. On Fortune. He declared the end to be the smooth motion transmitted to sensation. Now that we have recorded his life, come, let us go through the Cyrenaics who sprang from him, who called themselves some Hegesiacs, some Annicereans, and some Theodoreans; and furthermore, those who sprang from Phaedo, the most eminent of whom were the Eretrians.

​The succession stands thus: Aristippus was heard by his daughter Arete, by the Ethiopian Ptolemy, and by Antipater of Cyrene; from Arete came Aristippus, surnamed the mother-taught, whose pupil was Theodorus the Atheist, later called God; from Antipater came Epitimides of Cyrene, whose pupil was Paraebates, whose pupils were Hegesias the counselor of death and Anniceris [who ransomed Plato]. Those, then, who remained in the discipline of Aristippus and were called Cyrenaics maintained the following doctrines: they posited two affections, pain and pleasure, the smooth motion being pleasure and the rough motion being pain.

​They held that one pleasure does not differ from another pleasure, nor is one pleasure sweeter than another; and that the one is acceptable to all animals, while the other is repellent. They meant, however, bodily pleasure, which they also held to be the end—just as Panaetius says in his On the Sects—not the static pleasure consisting in the removal of pains and a sort of untroubledness, which Epicurus accepts and declares to be the end. They also think that the end differs from happiness; for the end is particular pleasure, whereas happiness is the composite system of particular pleasures, among which both past and future pleasures are enumerated.

​They held that particular pleasure is desirable for its own sake, but happiness not for its own sake, but for the sake of the particular pleasures. And a proof that pleasure is the end is that from childhood we are adapted to it without deliberation, and that having attained it we seek nothing further, nor do we flee anything so much as its contrary, pain. Furthermore, pleasure is a good even if it arises from the most disgraceful deeds, as Hippobotus says in his On Sects; for even if the action is unseemly, nevertheless the pleasure is desirable for its own sake and is a good.