Diogenes Laërtius · fl. 3rd century CE
Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.188 — Diogenes Laërtius on Chrysippus
Translation by R. D. Hicks (1925)
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.188
Reported speech · Diogenes Laërtius on Chrysippus
Indeed, his interpretation of the story is condemned as most indecent. He may be commending physical doctrine; but the language used is more appropriate to street-walkers than to deities; and it is moreover not even mentioned by bibliographers, who wrote on the titles of books. What Chrysippus makes of it is not to be found in Polemo nor Hypsicrates, no, nor even in Antigonus. It is his own invention. Again, in his Republic he permits marriage with mothers and daughters and sons. He says the same in his work On Things for their own Sake not Desirable, right at the outset. In the third book of his treatise On Justice, at about line 1000, he permits eating of the corpses of the dead. And in the second book of his On the Means of Livelihood, where he professes to be considering a priori how the wise man is to get his living, occur the words:
Cite this passage
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.188 (on Chrysippus), tr. R. D. Hicks (1925)
https://whatwouldstoicsdo.com/passage/lives-of-the-stoics/7.188
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 notesCritics condemn Chrysippus for a crude reading of a myth that no standard source supports, and for permitting incest and the eating of dead bodies in some of his works. The passage ends by introducing an argument from his book on how the wise man earns a living.
Older wording
- “bibliographers”
- — scholars who catalogued book titles
- “a priori”
- — reasoning from first principles, before looking at experience
Themes and situations
- Virtue and character
- Justice and fairness
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