VI. 4-6. ANTISTHENES

Being reproached because his parents were not both free-born, "Nor were they both wrestlers," he said, "but yet I am a wrestler." To the question why he had but few disciples he replied, "Because I use a silver rod to eject them." Likely referring to the strictness of his philosophical demands. When he was asked why he was so bitter in reproving his pupils he replied, "Physicians are just the same with their patients." One day, upon seeing an adulterer running for his life, he exclaimed, "Poor wretch, what peril you might have escaped at the price of an obol!" Obol: a small Greek silver coin of little value. He used to say, as we learn from Hecato in his Anecdotes, that it is better to fall in with crows than with flatterers; for in the one case you are devoured when dead, in the other case while alive.

Being asked what was the height of human bliss, he replied, "To die happy." When a friend complained to him that he had lost his notes, he said, "You should have inscribed them on your mind instead of on paper." As iron is eaten away by rust, so, he said, the envious are consumed by their own passion. Those who would fain be immortal must, he declared, live piously and justly. States, he said, are doomed when they are unable to distinguish good men from bad. Once, when he was applauded by rascals, he remarked, "I am horribly afraid I have done something wrong."

When brothers agree, no fortress is so strong as their common life, he said. The right outfit for a voyage, he said, is such as, even if you are shipwrecked, will go through the water with you. One day when he was censured for keeping company with evil men, the reply he made was, "Well, physicians are in attendance on their patients without getting the fever themselves."