Let this post complement the last.
Private teachings and efforts to avoid crowds
Stilpo
When Crates asked him whether the gods take delight in prayers and adorations, he is said to have replied, “Don’t put such a question in the street, simpleton, but when we are alone!” It is said that Bion, when he was asked the same question whether there are gods, replied: Will you not scatter the crowd from me, O much-enduring elder?
Plato
Plato has employed a variety of terms in order to make his system less intelligible to the ignorant
Chrysippus
Again, when somebody who had a question to ask was steadily conversing with him in private, and then upon seeing a crowd approaching began to be more contentious
Pyrrho
He would withdraw from the world and live in solitude,
he would leave his home and, telling no one, would go roaming about with whomsoever he chanced to meet.
Staff, cloak and wallet
Bion
Then he adopted the Cynic discipline, donning cloak and wallet
Antisthenes
And he was the first, Diocles tells us, to double his cloak and be content with that one garment and to take up a staff and a wallet. Neanthes too asserts that he was the first to double his mantle. Sosicrates, however, in the third book of his Successions of Philosophers says this was first done by Diodorus of Aspendus, who also let his beard grow and used a staff and a wallet.
Diogenes (also one of several who “had nowhere to lay his head”)
He was the first, say some, to fold his cloak because he was obliged to sleep in it as well, and he carried a wallet to hold his victuals, and he used any place for any purpose, for breakfasting, sleeping, or conversing. And then he would say, pointing to the portico of Zeus and the Hall of Processions, that the Athenians had provided him with places to live in. He did not lean upon a staff until he grew infirm; but afterwards he would carry it everywhere, not indeed in the city, but when walking along the road with it and with his wallet; so say Olympiodorus,13 once a magistrate at Athens, Polyeuctus the orator, and Lysanias the son of Aeschrio. He
That famous one who carried a staff, doubled his cloak, and lived in the open air.
Menedemus
and he wore a very long beard and carried an ashen staff in his hand.
The Magi
Their dress is white, they make their bed on the ground, and their food is vegetables, cheese, and coarse bread; their staff is a reed
Many called but few chosen
Bion
And hence it came about that he is not credited with a single disciple, out of all the crowds who attended his lectures.
Diogenes
He was returning from Olympia, and when somebody inquired whether there was a great crowd, “Yes,” he said, “a great crowd, but few who could be called men.”
Despised
Zeno
And he had about him certain ragged dirty fellows, as Timon says in these lines: The while he got together a crowd of ignorant serfs, who surpassed all men in beggary and were the emptiest of townsfolk.
Crates
Zeno of Citium in his Anecdotes relates that in a fit of heedlessness he sewed a sheepskin to his cloak. He was ugly to look at, and when performing his gymnastic exercises used to be laughed at. He was accustomed to say, raising his hands, “Take heart, Crates, for it is for the good of your eyes and of the rest of your body. You will see these men, who are laughing at you, tortured before long by disease, counting you happy, and reproaching themselves for their sluggishness.”
All things in common
Bion
He was extremely selfish and insisted strongly on the maxim that “friends share in common.”
Diogenes
The wise are friends of the gods, and friends hold things in common. Therefore all things belong to the wise.”
He maintained that all things are the property of the wise, and employed such arguments as those cited above. All things belong to the gods. The gods are friends to the wise, and friends share all property in common; therefore all things are the property of the wise
Zeno
Friendship, they declare, exists only between the wise and good, by reason of their likeness to one another. And by friendship they mean a common use of all that has to do with life, wherein we treat our friends as we should ourselves.
Pythagoras
According to Timaeus, he was the first to say, “Friends have all things in common” and “Friendship is equality”; indeed, his disciples did put all their possessions into one common stock.
Epicurus
He further says that Epicurus did not think it right that their property should be held in common, as required by the maxim of Pythagoras about the goods of friends; such a practice in his opinion implied mistrust, and without confidence there is no friendship.
Some went further and taught that wives and children should also be “in common”.
Criticizes a host at dinner
Menedemus
Not being able to curb the extravagance of someone who had invited him to dinner, he said nothing when he was invited, but rebuked his host tacitly by confining himself to olives.
Empedocles
With this Timaeus agrees, at the same time giving the reason why Empedocles favoured democracy, namely, that, having been invited to dine with one of the magistrates, when the dinner had gone on some time and no wine was put on the table, though the other guests kept quiet, he, becoming indignant, ordered wine to be brought.
Wrote Letters that were preserved by disciples
Not all, but some “wrote a few letters”. Example: Continue reading “Ancient Philosopher Traditions Pave the Way for Jesus and Paul”