The Lives and Opinions of Eminent PhilosophersDiogenes Laertius
Philosophy
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
Diogenes Laertius
Philosophers, Ancient -- Biography; Philosophy, Ancient
I. Stilpo, a native of Megara in Greece, was a pupil of some of Euclides’
school. But some say that he was a pupil of Euclides himself. And also of
Thrasymachus, the Corinthian, who was a friend of Icthyas, as Heraclides
informs us.
II. And he was so much superior to all his fellows in command of words
and in acuteness, that it may almost be said that all Greece fixed
its eyes upon him, and joined the Megaric school. And concerning him
Philippus of Megara speaks thus, word for word:—“For he carried off from
Theophrastus, Metrodorus the speculative philosopher, and Timagoras of
Gela; and Aristotle the Cyrenaic, he robbed of Clitarchus and Simias;
and from the dialecticians’ school also he won men over, carrying off
Pæoneius from Aristides, and Diphilus of the Bosphorus from Euphantus,
and also Myrmex of the Venetes, who had both come to him to argue against
him, but they became converts and his disciples.” And besides these
men, he attracted to his school Phrasidemus the Peripatetic, a natural
philosopher of great ability; and Alcimus the rhetorician, the most
eminent orator in all Greece at that time; and he won over Crates, and
great numbers of others, and among them Zeno the Phœnician.
III. And he was very fond of the study of politics. And he was married.
But he lived also with a courtesan, named Nicarete, as Onetor tells us
somewhere. And he had a licentious daughter, who was married to a friend
of his named Simias, a citizen of Syracuse. And as she would not live in
an orderly manner, some one told Stilpo that she was a disgrace to him.
But he said, “She is not more a disgrace to me than I am an honour to
her.”
IV. Ptolemy Soter, it is said, received him with great honour; and when
he had made himself master of Megara, he gave him money, and invited
him to sail with him to Egypt. But he accepted only a moderate sum of
money, and declined the journey proposed to him, but went over to Ægina,
until Ptolemy had sailed. Also when Demetrius, the son of Antigonus
had taken Megara, he ordered Stilpo’s house to be saved, and took care
that everything that had been plundered from him should be restored to
him. But when he wished Stilpo to give him in a list of all that he had
lost, he said that he had lost nothing of his own; for that no one had
taken from him his learning, and that he still had his eloquence and his
knowledge. And he conversed with Demetrius on the subject of doing good
to men with such power, that he became a zealous hearer of his.
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