Diogenes Laërtius: 7 books

"I would rather go mad than feel pleasure." - Antisthenes. For Cynics the secret to happiness was living a life of virtue in harmony with Nature with only the bare essentials necessary for survival. They rejected materialism and were free of belongings. Many were homeless and proud...

“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.” - Socrates. Aristippus of Cyrene, Epitimedes, Hegesias the Death Persuader, Dionysius the Renegade and Theodorus the Atheist were the leading lights of The Cyrenaics, an early Socratic school active between the fourth and third centuries BCE....

In **The Stoics **Diogenes Laërtius details the lives and philosophical opinions of the first Greek Stoic philosophers: Zeno of Citium Ariston of Chios Herillus of Carthage Dionysius the Renegade Cleanthes of Assos Sphaerus of Bosphorus Chrysippus of Soli    Laërtius’ main sources...

“The truth is hypothetical.” Scepticism (or skepticism), the belief that requires all information to be well supported by evidence, originated in the Skeptikoi, a first century BC Greek school who “asserted nothing.” The school was founded by Aenesidemus; our main source of the school’s...

In The Stoic Philosophers, Diogenes Laërtius details the lives and philosophical opinions of the first Greek Stoic philosophers: Zeno of Citium, Ariston of Chios, Herillus of Carthage, Dionysius the Renegade, Cleanthes of Assos, Sphaerus of Bosphorus and Chrysippus of Soli.

In The Stoics, Diogenes Laërtius details the lives and philosophical opinions of the first Greek Stoic philosophers: Zeno of Citium, Ariston of Chios, Herillus of Carthage, Dionysius the Renegade, Cleanthes of Assos, Sphaerus of Bosphorus and Chrysippus of Soli.

Accordingly Clitarchus, in his twelfth book, says that the Gymnosophists despise death, and that the Chaldæans study astronomy and the science of soothsaying—that the Magi occupy themselves about the service to be paid to the gods, and about sacrifices and prayers, as if they were the only people...