Diogenes Laërtius · fl. 3rd century CE
Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.181 — Diogenes Laërtius on Chrysippus
Translation by R. D. Hicks (1925)
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.181
Reported speech · Diogenes Laërtius on Chrysippus
Apollodorus of Athens in his Collection of Doctrines, wishing to show that what Epicurus wrote with force and originality unaided by quotations was far greater in amount than the books of Chrysippus, says, to quote his exact words, “If one were to strip the books of Chrysippus of all extraneous quotations, his pages would be left bare.” So much for Apollodorus. Of Chrysippus the old woman who sat beside him used to say, according to Diocles, that he wrote 500 lines a day. Hecato says that he came to the study of philosophy, because the property which he had inherited from his father had been confiscated to the king’s treasury.
Cite this passage
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.181 (on Chrysippus), tr. R. D. Hicks (1925)
https://whatwouldstoicsdo.com/passage/lives-of-the-stoics/7.181
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book VII, tr. R. D. Hicks (Loeb, 1925). Text: Perseus Digital Library (CC BY-SA 4.0). Sources and licences
In plain English
AI-written notesA rival school mocks Chrysippus by saying that without his borrowed quotations his pages would be blank. A story has him producing five hundred lines a day, and another that he turned to philosophy because his inheritance was seized by the royal treasury.
Older wording
- “confiscated”
- — seized by the authorities
- “extraneous”
- — from outside, not original
Themes and situations
- Wealth and poverty
- Learning and progress
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