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Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

Diogenes Laertius · biographical compendium, c. 3rd century CE·15 hrs in the original·original at Project Gutenberg
The 30‑second version15 hrs → 50 sec
  • The book opens by refusing to credit barbarians with philosophy. Diogenes Laertius dismisses claims that Persian Magi or Egyptian priests invented philosophy, insisting it began with the Greeks Musaeus and Linus, and quotes both men's tomb epitaphs to prove the point.
  • Thales fell into a ditch while stargazing and got mocked for it. An old woman leading him out to watch the stars snapped, "Do you, O Thales, who cannot see what is under your feet, think that you shall understand what is in heaven?" He also proved money was easy to make by buying up every olive press before a bumper harvest.
  • Socrates's own sentencing proposal got him a harsher penalty. Convicted by 281 votes to 275, Socrates told the jury he deserved free meals for life in the Prytaneum instead of punishment. They answered by voting for death by an even wider margin than his guilty verdict.
  • Diogenes told Alexander the Great to get out of his sun. When Alexander offered him any favor he wanted, Diogenes answered only, "Cease to shade me from the sun." He also lit a candle in broad daylight, saying, "I am looking for a man."
  • Sold into slavery, Diogenes told the buyer to obey him. Asked what he could do, he told the slave auctioneer to announce, "Govern men." Xeniades bought him anyway, and Diogenes spent his final years tutoring the man's sons in archery, memory, and plain food.
  • Epicurus died in a hot bath after two weeks of kidney stone pain. Hermippus records that after a fortnight of agony, Epicurus asked for a cup of pure wine, drank it in a warm bath, reminded his friends to keep his doctrines, and died. His letter to Menoeceus calls death "no concern of ours," since it is only "the privation of sensation."
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•Why it earns a slot

Why it earns a slot: it is the single surviving source for most of what we know about the Greek philosophers as people, gossip, quips, and death scenes included, not just their systems.

A gossipy Greek compiler strings together the lives, jokes, and death scenes of every philosopher who mattered, from Thales tumbling into a ditch to Epicurus dying in a warm bath.

This distillation is written from the freely available original, which is always the better read when you have the time: Project Gutenberg.

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