Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living From Zeno to Marcus Aurelius

This Diogenes, unlike the famous Diogenes the Cynic, some two centuries before, did not sleep in a barrel. He did not masturbate in public. As far as we know, he wore perfectly reasonable clothes and was capable of civil debate and discussion. He was not a challenger like Aristo or a fighter like Chrysippus. He wasn’t notably funny or clever, but he was a brilliant thinker able to communicate his ideas credibly as a normal functioning citizen of Athens, a respectable leader and not just some clever mind. Diogenes was a rising star in philosophy, making important contributions in the early days of Stoic thinking, including in areas as diverse as linguistics, music, psychology, rhetoric, ethics, and political philosophy.

What brought Diogenes to Stoic philosophy? Plutarch tells us he was inspired by what he’d read of the founder Zeno’s character. It’s a reminder all these years later for everyone considering their legacy. It’s not what you say that lives on after your time; it’s not what you write or even what you build. It’s the example that you set. It’s the things that you live by.

We don’t know when Zeno of Tarsus died and Diogenes succeeded him, but we know that Diogenes was an able teacher who attracted many students. One of them, an abrasive contrarian named Carneades, would go on to lead the skeptical Academy. He had been drawn to Diogenes through the study of the works of Chrysippus, and ended up serving as one of his counterparts in Athens’s diplomatic embassy to Rome.

Again, it says something about the power of philosophy—or at least how far it has fallen since—that these thinkers would be entrusted with such an important mission. But in the ancient world, philosophers occupied a different place than do our professors today.

The diplomatic mission began in a series of public lectures, followed by addresses to the Senate itself, all intended to show off the extreme culture and learning of these heads of the great schools of Athens, thereby softening the sentiment surrounding Rome’s indictment and sentence.

The mission did not begin well. Carneades spoke first, arguing eloquently on the theme of justice to a large, spellbound audience. But the next day he returned, and to a now larger crowd began to argue against justice just as vehemently as he had spoken hours before. One witness, Cato the Elder, one of Rome’s most sober and politically influential citizens, was horrified. What kind of nonsense was this? Where men argue one point and then refute it? He demanded that the brash Carneades be sent home before he could corrupt any more of Rome’s youth.

We don’t know exactly what Diogenes said to the Senate, but it was clearly a calming message, one that presented Athens as a better ally than enemy. Each of the speakers had likely been assigned to talk about the power of justice, to show the Romans that the Greeks were deserving of it. Carneades, in his ego, had threatened to undermine this message, but thankfully Diogenes and Critolaus, the third speaker, were polished and persuasive enough. A gifted and strategic thinker, Diogenes might have argued that harsh punishments would have been less beneficial to Rome than mercy. We are told that the Romans were awed by Diogenes’s “restraint and sobriety,” which was likely heightened by the contrast of his showboating and tone-deaf compatriot.

This was part of Diogenes’s brilliance, and what made him such a great real-world philosopher. Carneades had referred to Rome in one of his speeches as “a city of fools”—not exactly a prudent remark from a man sent to plead for leniency. Worse still, when the insult offended his hosts, he blamed Diogenes, as the Stoics since Zeno believed only a sage was fit to rule. Instead of being abrasive, Diogenes was diplomatic in every sense of the word. He did not rise to provocations or get sucked into conflict.

We can imagine him responding to Carneades’s self-destructive antics and the jeers or criticism of his Roman audience with the same aplomb that he had once dealt with being spit on and heckled by a teenager in Rome. “I’m not angry,” he had replied with a twinkle, “but I’m not sure whether I should be.” So too did he shrug off everything that distracted from this mission from Athens. Too much was at stake.