Diogenes Laertius: Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Vol. 2 (Loeb)

himself too was nicknamed a hound pure and simple. And he was the first, Diocles tells us, to double his cloak and be content with that one garment and to take up a staff and a wallet. Neanthes too asserts that he was the first to double his mantle. Sosicrates, however, in the third book of his Successions of Philosophers says this was first done by Diodorus of Aspendus, who also let his beard grow and used a staff and a wallet.

Of all the Socratics Antisthenes alone is praised by Theopompus, who says he had consummate skill and could by means of agreeable discourse win over whomsoever he pleased. And this is clear from his writings and from Xenophon’s Banquet. It would seem that the most manly section of the Stoic School owed its origin to him. Hence Athenaeus the epigrammatist writes thus of them:

Ye experts in Stoic story, ye who commit to sacred pages
most excellent doctrines—that virtue alone is the good of
the soul: for virtue alone saves man’s life and cities. But
that Muse i.e. Erato that is one of the daughters of Memory approves
the pampering of the flesh, which other men have chosen for
their aim.

Antisthenes It seems clear that the passage which begins here is not from the same source as that which precedes the epigram. gave the impulse to the indifference of Diogenes, the continence of Crates, and the hardihood of Zeno, himself laying the foundations of their state. Xenophon calls him the most agreeable of men in conversation and the most temperate in everything else.

His writings are preserved in ten volumes. The first includes: