For he said that that man who had the capacity to give a proper hearing to what was said, and to avail himself of it, was superior to him who comprehended everything by his own intellect; for that the one had only comprehension, but the one who took good advice had action also. XXII. When he was asked why he, who was generally austere, relaxed at a dinner party, he said, “Lupins too are bitter, but when they are soaked they become sweet.” And Hecaton, in the second book of his Apophthegms, says, that in entertainments of that kind, he used to indulge himself freely. And he used to say that it was better to trip with the feet, than with the tongue. And that goodness was attained by little and little, but was not itself a small thing. Some authors, however, attribute this saying to Socrates. XXIII. He was a person of great powers of abstinence and endurance; and of very simple habits, living on food which required no fire to dress it, and wearing a thin cloak, so that it was said of him:— The cold of winter, and the ceaseless rain, Come powerless against him; weak is the dart Of the fierce summer sun, or fell disease, To bend that iron frame. He stands apart, In nought resembling the vast common crowd; But, patient and unwearied, night and day, Clings to his studies and philosophy. XXIV. And the comic poets, without intending it, praise him in their very attempts to turn him into ridicule. Philemon speaks thus of him in his play entitled the Philosophers:— This man adopts a new philosophy, He teaches to be hungry; nevertheless, He gets disciples. Bread his only food, His best desert dried figs; water his drink. But some attribute these lines to Posidippus. And they have become almost a proverb. Accordingly it used to be said of him, “More temperate than Zeno the philosopher.” Posidippus also writes thus in his Men Transported:— So that for ten whole days he did appear More temperate than Zeno’s self. XXV. For in reality he did surpass all men in this description of virtue, and in dignity of demeanour, and, by Jove, in happiness. For he lived ninety-eight years, and then died, without any disease, and continuing in good health to the last. But Persæus, in his Ethical School, states that he died at the age of seventy-two, and that he came to Athens when he was twenty-two years old. But Apollonius says that he presided over his school for forty-eight years. XXVI. And he died in the following manner. When he was going out of his school, he tripped, and broke one of his toes; and striking the ground with his hand, he repeated the line out of the Niobe:— I come: why call me so? And immediately he strangled himself, and so he died. But the Athenians buried him in the Ceramicus, and honoured him with the decrees which I have mentioned before, bearing witness to his virtue. And Antipater, the Sidonian, wrote an inscription for him, which runs thus:—