INTRODUCTION Diogenes the Cynic remains a widely familiar fi gure, even if very little is remembered about him among people who have no special interest in the ancient world. He is popularly known for having lived in a barrel or tub and for his barbed utterances. But Diogenes was more than a picturesque eccentric, and it is only when such stories are considered in their wider context, as part of the very full surviv- ing record of what Diogenes was supposed to have said and done, that it becomes apparent that he was trying to convey a serious message through his disconcerting behaviour and caustic wit. Diogenes’ makeshift home was more accurately a very large ceramic jar, of a kind that was used for storing grain or water. Since he had deliberately chosen to live as a beggar in the streets of Athens, he had no house to return to, and would have taken shelter at night wherever he could, in doorways, temples, or public arcades. It need not be thought that he used a particular jar as his regular home, this is merely one form of shelter that was mentioned among others, even if it became especially memorable for its emblematic value. It is not in fact as highly stressed in ancient sources as one might suppose — more emphasis was placed on Diogenes’ Cynic uniform and accou- trements. To be prepared for any kind of weather, he would wear a rough cloak folded double, which would enable him to keep warm in winter and cool in summer; and since he owned no more than what he could lug around with him, he would carry a knapsack ( pera ) for his provisions and scanty possessions. Perhaps there was even room in it for a few books and for writing materials. It was a commonplace of Socratic thought that one can be rich by being satisfi ed with little, and so achieve a measure of invulnerability to fortune. Diogenes radicalized this idea, taking it to the utmost extreme. If one takes into account only one’s most basic needs and desires, putting everything else aside as mere fancy and illusion, and is content to satisfy those needs in the simplest and most direct way possible, one needs hardly anything at all; and if one divests oneself of all that one possesses to live as a vagrant, one can anticipate the very worst and become inured to any hardship, and so achieve complete invulnerability to fortune. Dismissing almost everything that people 000-Diogenes_FM.indd0-Diogenes_FM.indd vviiii 22/23/2012/23/2012 99:02:42:02:42 AMAM viii Introduction value and pursue, not only luxury and pleasure but also civic and cultural endeavour, as being utterly worthless, one can achieve assured contentment, so Diogenes thought, by living like an animal in the streets, without any concern for the future. According to an anec- dote recorded by a younger contemporary of his, he claimed to have drawn this lesson by observing the behaviour of a mouse (see 9a 1 ) . Someone who lives in the open in this way has to do everything in public; Diogenes would eat such food as he could gain out in the streets, and the story even went that he would masturbate in public (for what easier way could there be to satisfy his sexual desires). The Cynic life was thus of necessity a shameful one, and far from playing that down, Diogenes deliberately behaved in a shocking manner to show his contempt for conventional social attitudes. This brings us to the meaning of the Cynic name, which was derived from a nickname bestowed on Diogenes because of the shameless manner of his life. He came to be called the Dog ( Kuōn ; Aristotle could refer to him by that name without need for further specifi cation, see 189 ), and those who followed his example by choosing to live like dogs came to be known accordingly as Cynics ( kunikos being the corresponding adjective). Diogenes is presented in anecdotes as having welcomed the name with glee, putting his own constructions on it to make points of his own. The name could also be interpreted as referring to the way in which he accosted people to force his ideas on them, through cutting wit and acerbic humour. He yapped like a dog and had a biting tongue. In taking his philosophy into the streets, he adopted a very diff erent procedure from that of Socrates, and instead of causing people to refl ect on their moral assumptions by questioning them and engaging in reasoned discussion, he resorted to shock tactics both in the manner of his speech and in his behaviour. It does him no discredit to say that he put on a constant performance, playing his chosen role as dog and mad Socratic. His approach is summed up in two anecdotes in which he provokes a response by assuming a contrary path to the crowd. He walked into a theatre against the fl ow of the emerging crowd, and when asked why, said that he spent his entire life doing that; he walked backwards in a public arcade, and when people laughed at him, retorted that it was they who should be ashamed for taking the wrong direction in life. 1 Bold numbers refer to the numbered anecdotes in the text. 000-Diogenes_FM.indd0-Diogenes_FM.indd vviiiiii 22/23/2012/23/2012 99:02:42:02:42 AMAM Introduction ix To become a true individual and proper human being, so he thought, one must turn aside from conventional society and reject all its values, to live in accordance with nature, and nature at a very basic level; otherwise one will simply remain a member of the crowd. It is this thought that is expressed in what is perhaps his best-known anecdote. He lit a lamp in daylight and walked through the streets of Athens with it; and when asked why, replied that he was looking for a man. Since lighting a lamp in daylight was a proverbial expression for a futile exercise, this was a symbolic action which was designed to suggest that it is pointless to expect to be able to fi nd a man in Athens. An honest man? A good one? No, the thought is more radical than that. The mass of people, who accept conventional social values, not knowing what human nature is and what it means to live in accordance with nature, are not really proper human beings at all, but anonymous members of the crowd, or slaves, or scum (to use the expressions that Diogenes applies to such people in anecdotes in Section IV). A man who could suggest such a thing was not remotely cynical in the modern sense of the word, but in deadly earnest. He was con- vinced that people should utterly change their lives, just as he had done, if they were to fulfi l their nature as human beings and so become fully human. The shift in meaning in the word ‘cynicism’ refl ected the way in which Diogenes came to be perceived after he was rediscovered during the Renaissance, from translations of Diogenes Laertius and other writings. As he became a familiar fi gure in the wider culture, people seem to have been particularly struck by the biting tone of his humour, and thus to have interpreted his sallies as being purely negative in intent. ‘It cannot be helped that dogs bark and vomit their foul stomachs’, wrote William Harvey in the seven- teenth century, ‘and that Cynics should be numbered among phil- osophers.’ If Cynicism could be seen in this way as the expression of a bilious and misanthropic spirit, it is understandable that the term should have come to describe the attitude of those who are disaf- fected with the world, and are thus determined always to put the worst construction on human motives. But one has to put such thoughts aside in approaching Diogenes; he attacked conventional attitudes because he wanted to restamp the currency, replacing false values with those which would (according to his conception) enable human beings to fulfi l their true nature. 000-Diogenes_FM.indd0-Diogenes_FM.indd iixx 22/23/2012/23/2012 99:02:42:02:42 AMAM x Introduction The Socratic Succession Diogenes was, then, a man who took everything to extremes, with regard not only to the arduous and (according to conventional stan- dards) shameful manner of his life, but also to the provocative way in which he set out to advance his ideas. Plato is supposed to have re- marked, when asked about Diogenes, that he was Socrates gone mad. If this saying points to the way in which he fl outed normal rules of behaviour, it acknowledges at the same time that his ideas and mode of action represented an extreme development of certain Socratic ideas, and could be interpreted as meaningful in that light. He was perceived as being something more than a mere eccentric. If the Cynic life was to be practicable, it was in fact necessary that its practitioners should be able to rely on the understanding and complicity of the public. For a paradox lay at the very heart of Diogenes’ enterprise. Although the Cynic may have claimed to achieve complete independence by reducing his needs to a minimum and living in the streets, it was nonetheless true that by dispossessing himself in such a way, he was depriving himself of all means of sup- port in the environment in which he was living. Cynicism was an urban phenomenon. Its practitioners would not withdraw from human society, like some later Christian ascetics, to support them- selves in the countryside or wilderness by their own labour.