The Lives and Opinions of Eminent PhilosophersDiogenes Laertius
Philosophy
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
Diogenes Laertius
Philosophers, Ancient -- Biography; Philosophy, Ancient
Apollodorus, in his Chronicles, says that he was born in the first year
of the ninety-ninth olympiad, and that he attached himself to Plato, and
remained with him for twenty years, having been seventeen years of age
when he originally joined him. And he went to Mitylene in the archonship
of Eubulus, in the fourth year of the hundred and eighth olympiad. But as
Plato had died in the first year of this same olympiad, in the archonship
of Theophilus, he departed for the court of Hermias, and remained there
three years. And in the archonship of Pythodotus he went to the court
of Philip, in the second year of the hundred and ninth olympiad, when
Alexander was fifteen years old; and he came to Athens in the second year
of the hundred and eleventh olympiad, and presided over his school in
the Lyceum for thirteen years; after that he departed to Chalcis, in the
third year of the hundred and fourteenth olympiad, and died, at about the
age of sixty-three years, of disease, the same year that Demosthenes died
in Calauria, in the archonship of Philocles.
VIII. It is said also that he was offended with the king, because of the
result of the conspiracy of Callisthenes against Alexander; and that the
king, for the sake of annoying him, promoted Anaximenes to honour, and
sent presents to Xenocrates. And Theocritus, of Chios, wrote an epigram
upon him to ridicule him, in the following terms, as it is quoted by
Ambryon in his account of Theocritus:—
The empty-headed Aristotle rais’d
This empty tomb to Hermias the Eunuch,
The ancient slave of the ill-us’d Eubulus.
[Who, for his monstrous appetite, preferred
The Bosphorus to Academia’s groves.]
And Timon attacked him too, saying of him:—
Nor the sad chattering of the empty Aristotle.
Such was the life of the philosopher.
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