BOOK III. XXII. 89-94
everybody turns away from him, everybody takes offence at him. No, and he ought not to look dirty either, so as not to scare men away in this respect also; but even his squalor ought to be cleanly and attractive.
90Furthermore, the Cynic ought to possess great natural charm and readiness of wit—otherwise he becomes mere snivel, and nothing else—so as to be able to meet readily and aptly whatever befalls; as Diogenes answered the man who said: "Are you the Diogenes who does not believe in the existence of the gods?" by saying, "And how can that be? You I regard as hated by the gods!"[1] Or again, when Alexander[2] stood over him as he was sleeping and said,
Sleeping the whole night through beseems not the giver of counsel,
he replied, still half asleep,
Who hath charge of the folk, and for many a thing must be watchful.[3]
But above all, the Cynic's governing principle should be purer than the sun; if not, he must needs be a gambler and a man of no principle, because he will be censuring the rest of mankind, while he himself is involved in some vice. For see what this means. To the kings and tyrants of this world their bodyguards and their arms used to
- ↑ See Diogenes Laertius, 6, 42; the same joke appears already in Aristophanes (Eq. 32–4), as Capps remarks.
- ↑ The same account in Theon, Progymn. 5 (Stengel, II. p. 98). The famous meeting of these two men is pretty clearly apocryphal, at least in certain details. See Natorp in the Real-Encylopädie², V. 767.
- ↑ Homer, Iliad, II. 24 and 25. The only point in the anecdote seems to be that Diogenes could say something more or less apposite even when only half awake; for the completion of the quotation is in no sense a real answer to the reproach.
