.DIO'GENES, the Cynio philosopher, was the son of Hicesius, a money-changer of Sinope. His father and himself were expelled from their native place on a charge of adulterating the coinage, or, according to another account, Hicesius was thrown into prison and died there, while Diogenes escaped to Athens. On his arrival at that city, he betook himself to Antisthenes, the Cynic, who repulsed him rudely according to his custom, and even on one occasion threatened to strike him. "Strike me," said the Sinopian, "for you will never get so hard a stick as to keep me from you while you speak what I think worth hearing." The philosopher was so pleased with this reply that he at once admitted him among his scholars. Diogenes was soon distinguished for his extraordinary neglect of personal con veniences, and by a sarcastic and sneering petulance in all that be said. . He was dressed in a coarse double robe, which served him as a cloak by day and a coverlet by night, and carried a wallet to receive alma of food. His abode was a cask iu the temple of Cybele. In the summer he rolled himself in the burning sand, and in the winter clung to the images in the street covered with snow, in order that ho might accustom himself to endure all varieties of weather. A great number of his witty and biting apophthegms are detailed by his nemesia:1.e and biographer (Diog. Leen., vi, c. 2.) He became acquainted with Alexander the Great, who bade him ask for whatever he wanted. "Do not throw your shadow upon me," was the Cynic's only request. It is reported that Alexander was so struck with his originality that he exclaimed, " Were I not Alexander, I would wish to be Diogenes." Being taken by a piratical captain named Scirpalue, while sailing from Athens to lEgina, he was carried to Crete, and there sold to Xeniades, of Corinth, who took him home to educate his children. He dis
charged the duties of this situation so faithfully and so.successfully, that Xeniades went about saying that a good genius had come into his house; and he was so well treated by his master that he refused an offer on the part of his friends to ransom him from slavery. He spent his time principally in the Cranium, a gymnasium near Corinth, where he died in the same year, and, according to one account, on the same day, with Alexander the Great (n.e. 323), at the advanced age of ninety years. A number of works attributed to him are mentioned by Diogenes La5rtius, but none of them are extant. Generally he adhered to the doctrines of the Cynics, to which sect ho belonged. The following are a few of the particular opinions ascribed to him by his biographer. He thought exercise (ticriourgs) was indis pensable, and able to effect anything; that there were two kinds of exercise, one of the mind and the other of the body, and that one of these was of no value without the other. By the cultivation of the mind he did not mean the prosecution of any science or the acquire ment of any mental accomplishment; all such things he considered as useless; but be intended such a cultivation of the mind as might serve to bring it into a healthy and virtuous state, and produce upon it an effect analogous to that which exercise produces upon the body.
lie adopted Plato's doctrine, that there should be a community of wives and children, and held with the Dorian lawgivers, that order (ekeer) was the basis of civil goverument.