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 are told of him are probably true; in any case, they serve to illustrate the logical consistency of his character. He inured himself to the vicissitudes of weather by living in a tub belonging to the temple of Cybele. The single wooden bowl he possessed he destroyed on seeing a peasant boy drink from the hollow of his hands. On a voyage to Aegina he was captured by pirates and sold as a slave in Crete to a Corinthian named Xeniades. Being asked his trade, he replied that he knew no trade but that of governing men, and that he wished to be sold to a man who needed a master. As tutor to the two sons of Xeniades, he lived in Corinth for the rest of his life, which he devoted entirely to preaching the doctrines of virtuous self-control. At the Isthmian games he lectured to large audiences who turned to him from Antisthenes. It was, probably, at one of these festivals that he craved from Alexander the single boon that he would not stand between him and the sun, to which Alexander replied “If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.” On his death, about which there exist several accounts, the Corinthians erected to his memory a pillar on which there rested a dog of Parian marble. His ethical teaching will be found in the article (q.v.). It may suffice to say here that virtue, for him, consisted in the avoidance of all physical pleasure; that pain and hunger were positively helpful in the pursuit of goodness; that all the artificial growths of society appeared to him incompatible with truth and goodness; that moralization implies a return to nature and simplicity. He has been credited with going to extremes of impropriety in pursuance of these ideas; probably, however, his reputation has suffered from the undoubted immorality of some of his successors. Both in ancient and in modern times, his personality has appealed strongly to sculptors and to painters. Ancient busts exist in the museums of the Vatican, the Louvre and the Capitol. The interview between Diogenes and Alexander is represented in an ancient marble bas-relief found in the Villa Albani. Rubens, Jordaens, Steen, Van der Werff, Jeaurat, Salvator Rosa and Karel Dujardin have painted various episodes in his life.

 DIOGENES APOLLONIATES (c. 460 ), Greek natural philosopher, was a native of Apollonia in Crete. Although of Dorian stock, he wrote in the Ionic dialect, like all the physiologi (physical philosophers). There seems no doubt that he lived some time at Athens, where it is said that he became so unpopular (probably owing to his supposed atheistical opinions) that his life was in danger. The views of Diogenes are transferred in the Clouds (264 ff.) of Aristophanes to Socrates. Like Anaximenes, he believed air to be the one source of all being, and all other substances to be derived from it by condensation and rarefaction. His chief advance upon the doctrines of Anaximenes is that he asserted air, the primal force, to be possessed of intelligence—“the air which stirred within him not only prompted, but instructed. The air as the origin of all things is necessarily an eternal, imperishable substance, but as soul it is also necessarily endowed with consciousness.” In fact, he belonged to the old Ionian school, whose doctrines he modified by the theories of his contemporary Anaxagoras, although he avoided his dualism. His most important work was  (De natura), of which considerable fragments are extant (chiefly in Simplicius); it is possible that he wrote also Against the Sophists and On the Nature of Man, to which the well-known fragment about the veins would belong; possibly these discussions were subdivisions of his great work.

 DIOGENES LAËRTIUS (or ), the biographer of the Greek philosophers, is supposed by some to have received his surname from the town of Laërte in Cilicia, and by others from the Roman family of the Laërtii. Of the circumstances of his life we know nothing. He must have lived after Sextus Empiricus (c. 200), whom he mentions, and before Stephanus of Byzantium (c.  500), who quotes him. It is probable that he flourished during the reign of Alexander Severus ( 222–235) and his successors. His own opinions are equally uncertain. By some he was regarded as a Christian; but it seems more probable that he was an Epicurean. The work by which he is known professes to give an account of the lives and sayings of the Greek philosophers. Although it is at best an uncritical and unphilosophical compilation, its value, as giving us an insight into the private life of the Greek sages, justly led Montaigne to exclaim that he wished that instead of one Laërtius there had been a dozen. He treats his subject in two divisions which he describes as the Ionian and the Italian schools; the division is quite unscientific. The biographies of the former begin with Anaximander, and end with Clitomachus, Theophrastus and Chrysippus; the latter begins with Pythagoras, and ends with Epicurus. The Socratic school, with its various branches, is classed with the Ionic; while the Eleatics and sceptics are treated under the Italic. The whole of the last book is devoted to Epicurus, and contains three most interesting letters addressed to Herodotus, Pythocles and Menoeceus. His chief authorities were Diocles of Magnesia’s Cursory Notice ( ) of Philosophers and Favorinus’s Miscellaneous History and Memoirs. From the statements of Burlaeus (Walter Burley, a 14th-century monk) in his De vita et moribus philosophorum the text of Diogenes seems to have been much fuller than that which we now possess. In addition to the Lives, Diogenes was the author of a work in verse on famous men, in various metres.

 DIOGENIANUS, of Heraclea on the Pontus (or in Caria), Greek grammarian, flourished during the reign of Hadrian. He was the author of an alphabetical lexicon, chiefly of poetical words, abridged from the great lexicon ( ) of Pamphilus of Alexandria (fl. 50) and other similar works. It was also known by the title  (for the use of “industrious poor students”). It formed the basis of the lexicon, or rather glossary, of Hesychius of Alexandria, which is described in the preface as a new edition of the work of Diogenianus. We still possess a collection of proverbs under his name, probably an abridgment of the collection made by himself from his lexicon (ed. by E. Leutsch and F. W. Schneidewin in Paroemiographi Graeci, i. 1839). Diogenianus was also the author of an Anthology of epigrams, of treatises on rivers, lakes, fountains and promontories; and of a list (with map) of all the towns in the world.

 DIOGNETUS, EPISTLE TO, one of the early Christian apologies. Diognetus, of whom nothing is really known, has expressed a desire to know what Christianity really means—“What is this new race” of men who are neither pagans nor Jews? “What is this new interest which has entered into men’s lives now and not before?” The anonymous answer begins with a refutation of the folly of worshipping idols, fashioned by human hands and needing to be guarded if of precious material. The repulsive smell of animal sacrifices is enough to show their monstrous absurdity. Next Judaism is attacked. Jews abstain from idolatry and worship one God, but they fall into the same error of repulsive sacrifice, and have absurd superstitions about meats and sabbaths, circumcision and new moons. So far the task is easy; but the mystery of the Christian religion “think not to learn from man.” A passage of great eloquence follows, showing that Christians have no obvious peculiarities that mark them off as a separate race. In spite of blameless lives they are hated. Their home is in heaven, while they live on earth. “In a word, what the soul is in a body, this the Christians are in the world The soul is enclosed in the body, and yet itself holdeth the body together: so Christians are kept in the world as in a prison-house, and yet they themselves hold the world