Diogenes Laërtius · fl. 3rd century CE
Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.184 — Diogenes Laërtius on Chrysippus
Translation by R. D. Hicks (1925)
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.184
Reported speech · Diogenes Laërtius on Chrysippus
And this explains his arguing at one time against, and at another in support of, ordinary experience, and his use of the method of the Academy when treating of magnitudes and numbers. On one occasion, as Hermippus relates, when he had his school in the Odeum, he was invited by his pupils to a sacrificial feast. There after he had taken a draught of sweet wine unmixed with water, he was seized with dizziness and departed this life five days afterwards, having reached the age of seventy-three years, in the 143rd Olympiad. This is the date given by Apollodorus in his Chronology. I have toyed with the subject in the following verses: Chrysippus turned giddy after gulping down a draught of Bacchus; he spared not the Porch nor his country nor his own life, but fared straight to the house of Hades.
Cite this passage
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.184 (on Chrysippus), tr. R. D. Hicks (1925)
https://whatwouldstoicsdo.com/passage/lives-of-the-stoics/7.184
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 notesThe opening line explains why Chrysippus sometimes argued against and sometimes for ordinary experience, and why he used the sceptical Academy's method on measurements and numbers. He died at seventy-three, five days after being seized with dizziness following a drink of unmixed sweet wine at a feast, and a joking verse mocks him for abandoning the Porch, his country and his life.
Older wording
- “Olympiad”
- — a four-year period used by the Greeks to date events
- “draught”
- — a drink, a gulp
- “Porch”
- — the Stoa, the colonnade in Athens that gave Stoicism its name
Themes and situations
- Death and mortality
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