Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​For this reason he argued both against common experience and on its behalf, and regarding magnitudes and multitudes he made use of the system of the Academics. Hermippus states that while he was studying in the Odeon, he was invited by his pupils to a sacrifice; there he drank unmixed sweet wine, was seized with dizziness, and passed away on the fifth day, having lived seventy-three years, during the hundred and forty-third Olympiad, as Apollodorus says in his Chronicles. And there is a playful epigram of ours upon him: "Chrysippus grew dizzy after drinking Bacchus deep; neither for the Stoa did he spare, nor for his fatherland, nor for his own soul, but went down to the house of Hades."

​Some, however, say that he died overcome by laughter; for when a donkey ate his figs, he told the old woman to give the donkey unmixed wine to wash them down, and burst into uncontrollable laughter and died. He seems to have been rather arrogant. At any rate, although he wrote so many treatises, he dedicated none of them to any king. He was also content with a single old woman, as Demetrius likewise says in his Men of the Same Name. And when Ptolemy wrote to Cleanthes asking him either to come himself or to send someone, Sphaerus went, while Chrysippus ignored the request. But he sent for his sister's sons, Aristocreon and Philocrates, and gave them an education. He was also the first who had the courage to hold lectures in the open air in the Lyceum, as the aforementioned Demetrius records.

​There was also another Chrysippus, a physician from Cnidus, from whom Erasistratus says he derived the greatest benefit; and another, this man's son, a physician to Ptolemy, who upon being falsely accused was led about and punished by scourging; another was a pupil of Erasistratus, and one wrote on Agriculture. Now the philosopher used to put forward arguments such as these: "Whoever reveals the mysteries to the uninitiated acts impiously; but the hierophant reveals the mysteries to the uninitiated; therefore the hierophant acts impiously." Another: "What is not in the city is not in the house either; but there is no well in the city; therefore there is no well in the house either." Another: "There exists a certain head; you do not have that head; but there exists a certain head which you do not have; therefore you do not have a head."

​Another: "If someone is in Megara, he is not in Athens; but a man is in Megara; therefore no man is in Athens." And again: "If you speak something, this passes through your mouth; but you speak of a wagon; therefore a wagon passes through your mouth." And: "If you did not lose something, you have it; but you did not lose horns; therefore you have horns." Some, however, ascribe this argument to Eubulides. There are also those who attack Chrysippus on the ground that he committed many shameful and unspeakable things to writing. For in his treatise On the Ancient Natural Philosophers he scandalously refashions the story of Hera and Zeus, uttering over the course of some six hundred lines things that no one would speak unless his mouth were unhappily defiled.

​For they say he refashions this story—even if he praises it as physical allegory—as most shameful and more fitting for harlots than for gods, and furthermore as not recorded even by those who wrote about paintings; for it is found neither in Polemo nor in Hypsicrates, nor indeed in Antigonus, but was fabricated by himself. And in his Republic he also says that men should unite with their mothers, daughters, and sons; he says the same things in On Things Not Choiceworthy for Their Own Sake right at the beginning. In the third book of On Justice, around line one thousand, he even bids eating the dead; and in the second book of On Life and Livelihood he discusses how the wise man ought to secure a livelihood.