Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​And it is said that he himself (the father) came a third time, but no less consorted with Diogenes together with his sons, practicing philosophy with him; so great a spell of enchantment was attached to the words of Diogenes. Phocion, surnamed the Good, and Stilpo the Megarian, along with many other public men, also became his listeners. He is said to have died having lived to nearly ninety years of age. Different accounts are given concerning his death: some say that he ate a raw octopus, was seized with cholera, and died in this way; others say that he held his breath, among whom is Cercidas of Megalopolis [or Crete], who says in his meliambics as follows: "Not so indeed was that Sinopian of old, he who bore the staff, double-cloaked, feeding on the open air;

​but he ascended pressing his lip against his teeth [and biting off his breath]. For truly Diogenes was Zeus’s offspring and a hound of heaven." Others say that, wishing to divide an octopus among dogs, he was thus bitten on the tendon of his foot and met his end. His acquaintances, however, as Antisthenes says in the *Successions*, surmised that he held his breath. For he happened to be staying in the Craneum, the gymnasium before Corinth; and according to custom the acquaintances came and found him covered up, and they surmised that he was asleep, for he was not at all drowsy or given to sleep. Then, uncovering his cloak, they found him expired, and conjectured that he had done this from a desire at last to depart from life.

​Thereupon, as they say, a strife also arose among his acquaintances as to which of them should bury him, and they even came to blows. But when the fathers and men of distinction arrived, the man was buried by their hands near the gate leading to the Isthmus. They set up over him a pillar, and upon it a dog of Parian marble. Later, his fellow citizens also honored him with bronze statues and inscribed the following epigram: "Even bronze grows old under time, but your glory, Diogenes, all eternity shall never tear down; since you alone showed to mortals the self-sufficient rule of life, and the lightest path of living."

​There is also a poem of our own in the proceleusmatic meter: "A. Come, tell me, Diogenes, what fate took you to Hades? D. The savage bite of a dog took me." Some say that when dying he ordered them to cast him out unburied so that every wild beast might partake of him, or to thrust him into a pit and scrape a little dust over him; others say that he ordered them to throw him into the Ilissus, so that he might become useful to his brethren. Demetrius says in his *Homonyms* that Alexander died in Babylon and Diogenes in Corinth on the very same day. He was an old man in the hundred and thirteenth Olympiad.

​And the following books of his are in circulation: dialogues; *Cephalion*, *Ichthyas*, *The Jackdaw*, *Pordalus*, *The People of Athens*, *Republic*, *The Art of Ethics*, *On Wealth*, *The Art of Love*, *Theodorus*, *Hypsias*, *Aristarchus*, *On Death*, *Letters*. Seven tragedies: *Helen*, *Thyestes*, *Heracles*, *Achilles*, *Medea*, *Chrysippus*, *Oedipus*. Sosicrates in the first book of his *Succession* and Satyrus in the fourth book of his *Lives* say that none of these is by Diogenes; and Satyrus says the short tragedies are by Philiscus of Aegina, the acquaintance of Diogenes. Sotion, however, in the seventh book says that these alone are by Diogenes: *On Virtue*, *On the Good*, *The Art of Love*, *The Beggar*, *The Bold Man*, *Pordalus*, *Casander*, *Cephalion*, *Philiscus*, *Aristarchus*, *Sisyphus*, *Ganymede*, *Anecdotes*, *Letters*.

​There have been five men named Diogenes: the first from Apollonia, a natural philosopher, and the beginning of his treatise is as follows: "It seems to me that one who begins any discourse must present his starting point beyond dispute." The second was from Sicyon, who wrote about the Peloponnese; the third was this man himself; the fourth was a Stoic, by birth of Seleucia, who was also called the Babylonian because of proximity; the fifth was of Tarsus, who wrote on poetic problems which he attempts to solve. Athenodorus says in the eighth book of his *Walks* that this philosopher always appeared sleek because of rubbing himself.