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 DIOGENES OF APOLLONIA DIOMEDES 121 Corinthian, who carried him home, and after- ward set him at liberty, intrusting to him the education of his children. The rest of his days Diogenes divided between Athens and Corinth, and it was at the latter place that his celebra- ted but apocryphal interview with Alexander the Great is said to have taken place. The king of Macedon, surprised at the indifference with which he was regarded by the ragged philosopher, who was comfortably basking in the sun before his tub, said to him, "I am Alexander." "And I," was the reply, "am Diogenes." Alexander desired him to ask a favor ; but all that the Cynic wished was, that Alexander would not stand between him and the sun. Struck with this extraordinary insensibility to the usual weaknesses of human- ity, the Macedonian remarked, " "Were I not Alexander, I would be Diogenes." Diogenes loved to display his contempt of the common courtesies of life. Plato was giving a magnifi- cent dinner to some friends, and Diogenes en- tered unbidden, and stamping with his dirty feet on the carpets, exclaimed, "Thus I trample on the pride of Plato." " But with greater pride, O Diogenes," replied Plato. Surly, independent, a voluntary outcast, he lived on till his 90th year. According to some authors he wrote several works, but nothing has come down to us except some sayings pre- served by Diogenes Laertius, and it is general- ly believed that he wrote nothing whatever. He did not teach by lectures, but uttered his philosophy in short, pithy sentences, as occa- sion offered. DIOGENES OF APOLLONIA, a Greek philoso- pher, born at Apollonia in Crete, flourished in the 5th century B. C. Very little is known of his life. He was at Athens probably about 460, and became involved in some trouble there. His philosophical speculations were developed in his work Hepl Qvceus, " On Na- ture," which was extant in the 6th century. His great object was to find the first principle of the world, and he came to the conclusion that air of various degrees of condensation formed the atmosphere, fire, water, and earth, and out of these everything else was evolved ; and he endowed this first principle with a cer- tain intelligence, presiding over the arrange- ment of the universe, the marks of which are visible in the order and beauty of creation. The brutes, he says, are inferior to man be- cause they inhale an air less pure, holding their heads near the ground. The world, too, he supposed to be animated, and he imagined the stars to be its organs of respiration. The few fragments of Diogenes which have come down to us (in the works of Aristotle, Dioge- nes Laertius, and Simplicius) were published by Panzerbeiter (Leipsic, 1830). DIOGENES LAERTIUS, an ancient historian of philosophy, who probably lived about the begin- ning of the 3d century, though the dates of his birth and death are unknown, and his life has been placed as early as the time of Augustus, and as late as that of Constantine the Great. He wrote a history of philosophy in Greek, divided into 10 books, and giving an account of the philosophers, anecdotes of their lives, and illustrations of their teachings. He con- siders Grecian philosophy to have been in- digenous, and divides it into two schools: the Ionic, commencing with Anaximander and ending with Clitomachus, Chrysippus, and Theophrastus, and of which the Socratic school forms a part; and the Italian, whose founder is Pythagoras, and whose last master is Epicurus, and which includes Heraclitus, the Eleatics, and the Skeptics. The account of these two schools comprises the whole of the work, with the exception of the first book, which contains the history of the seven wise men of Greece. The work of Diogenes is valu- able for information which we could obtain from no other source; but it is ill digested, without critical judgment, and often inaccu- rate. Diogenes is supposed to have written some other works, among which was a volume of epigrams, but these have been entirely lost. A good edition of his history is that of H. G. Hiibner (2 vols. 8vo, Leipsic, 1828-'31). A translation into English was published in 1868 (2 vols. 8vo, London), and there is one by C. D. Yonge in Bohn's " Classical Library." DIOMEDES. I. One of the most famous of the Grecian heroes at the siege of Troy, and after Achilles considered the bravest of all the Greeks. According to Homer, his father Ty- deus was one of the leaders in the expedition of the seven against Thebes, and was killed be- fore the walls of that city, while Diomedes was still a boy. Having arrived at the age of manhood, he joined the second expedition against Thebes, and avenged his father's death. With 80 ships he sailed in the great Grecian armament to the siege of Troy, where, besides many victories over heroes of less note, he put Hector and ^Eneas to flight, and wounded both Venus and Mars. He was also famed for his wisdom in council, and when Agamemnon proposed to abandon the siege, Diomedes declared that he with his friend Sthenelus would remain until Troy should fall. According to later legends, he carried off with Ulysses the palladium from Troy. Of his his- tory after the fall of the city Homer gives no account, but later writers tell us that having re- turned to Argos and found his wife unfaithful, he abandoned his native country. Traditions differ with regard to his after life. According to some accounts, he went to ^Etolia, and afterward returned and gained possession of Argos. Another relates that, in attempting to return to Argos, he was driven by a storm upon the coast of Italy, where he was kindly received by King Daunus, whom he assisted in a war against a neighboring tribe, and whose daughter Euippe he received in marriage. II. A king of the Bistones in Thrace, son of Mars and Cyrene, celebrated for his mares, which he fed upon human flesh. To obtain possession