CHAPTER V Notes

3 Very important for our knowledge of the old philosophy and ethics are the ten books entitled _The Lives and Teaching of Famous Philosophers_, Diogenes Laertius in the third century after Christ. Just because they are purely anecdotal, They have preserved for us much information and many views which otherwise—for the works on the philosophers treated of have all been lost—we should not possess.

4 Xenophon, one of the generals who led the ten thousand back out of Asia, wrote down his recollections of Socrates after the latter’s death. By his report of the simple conversations of the master he seeks to render impotent for all time the accusation that he corrupted the youth and taught atheism, for even after his death teachers of rhetoric did in fact draw up formal complaints against him. Xenophon’s straightforward, realistic portrait of Socrates is extraordinarily valuable.

5 The most important dialogues in this connexion are the _Protagoras_, the _Gorgias_, the _Phædrus_, the _Symposium_, the _Phædo_, and the _Philebus_.

6 Of the writings of the Cyrenaics and the Cynics, of Democritus, Epicurus, Zeno, and the older Stoics hardly anything has come down to us. Our knowledge of them is derived mostly from Diogenes Laertius.

The Cyrenaics were known as the philosophers of pleasure because Aristippus, the first preacher of the world-wisdom of joy, hailed from Cyrene. The Cynics, or dog-philosophers, derived their name from the fact that they despised the amenities of life and often delighted in a coarse naturalness. The best known of them is Diogenes of Sinope (died 323 B.C.).

Zeno’s philosophy was called Stoicism because he taught at Athens in a colonnaded portico called the Stoa Poikile (_i.e._, the painted portico).

7 _Translator’s Note_.—Irony is intentional self-depreciation or disclaiming what one really possesses.

8 Of Seneca quite a series of ethical treatises have come down to us. We mention here: _On Clemency_ (_De Clementia_, addressed to Nero); _On Benefits_ (_De Beneficiis_); _On Tranquillity of Soul_ (_De Tranquillitate Animi_), _On Anger_ (_De Ira_).

Our knowledge of the teachings of Epictetus we owe to his pupil, Flavius Arrianus, the historian. The latter has recorded a number of his master’s lectures in eight books, of which four have survived. In addition to these he collected and published a number of his sayings on morality in the _Enchiridion_.

In the popular philosophizings of Cicero (106-43 B.C.) as well, we can see an attempt to produce a new ethic which is really living.