cannot be genuine Cynics as soon as they are born. If he does not do this, it would be better to expose the children as soon as they are born than to kill them in this way. Consider what we are bringing the Cynic down to, how we are taking his royalty from him.—Yes, but Crates took a wife.—You are speaking of a circumstance which arose from love and of a woman who was another Crates.[1] But we are inquiring about ordinary marriages and those which are free from distractions,[2] and making this inquiry we do not find the affair of marriage in this state of the world a thing which is especially suited to the Cynic.
How then shall a man maintain the existence of society? In the name of God, are those men greater benefactors to society who introduce into the world to occupy their own places two or three grunting children,[3] or those who superintend as far as they can all mankind, and see what they do, how they live, what they attend to, what they neglect contrary to their duty? Did they who left little children to the Thebans do them more good than Epaminondas who died childless? And did Priamus who begat fifty worthless sons or Danaus or Aeolus contribute more to the community than Homer? then shall the duty of a general or the business of a writer exclude a man from marriage or the begetting of children, and such a man shall not be judged to have accepted the condition of childlessness for nothing; and shall not the royalty of a Cynic be considered an equivalent for the want of children? Do we not perceive his grandeur and do we not justly contemplate the character of Diogenes; and do we instead of this turn our eyes to the present Cynics who are dogs that wait at tables, and in no respect imitate the Cynics of old except perchance in breaking wind, but in nothing else? For such matters would not have moved us at all nor should we have wondered if a Cynic should not marry or beget children.
- ↑ The wife of Crates was Hipparchia, who persisted against all advice in marrying Crates and lived with him exactly as he lived. Diogenes Laertius, vi. 96. Upton.
- ↑ There is some difficulty about ἀπερισπάστων here. Upton proposed to write ἀπεριστάτων, which he explains 'that which has nothing peculiar in it.'
- ↑ Sehweig. translates κακορυγχα 'male grunnientes': perhaps it means' ugly-faced.'
