2. Early Authors.
First we present a short survey
of persons and authors in the Cynic
tradition during
the fourth and third centuries B.C.
Antisthenes—dates unknown, but still living at an
advanced age in
Athens in 366—came from the
Sophists as a disciple of Gorgias.
According to the
practice of the Sophists he gave instruction for a
fee
in the gymnasium of Cynosarges outside the city-wall
of Athens,
offering lessons intended for the education
of young Athenians without full
citizenship. Antis-
thenes himself was not a
full citizen of Athens, his
mother being a Thracian woman. The
Cynosarges
contained a famous shrine of Heracles; the name
“Cynic,” it is usually believed was derived from
Cynosarges. Heracles as Cynic hero has his origin here.
Antisthenes was a
prolific writer. Diogenes Laërtius,
in his Lives
of Eminent Philosophers, gives us under
Antisthenes' name one of
the longest lists of books, 66
titles in all, divided into ten sections.
His literary out-
put belongs within the scope of
the problems which
were of interest to the Sophists. Of this immense liter-
ary output nothing remains except two
declamations
about Ajax and Odysseus, which betray the influence
of
Gorgias' rhetorical style but show manifest traces
of Cynic
“king-ideology” (which is discussed below).
Besides
the life in Diogenes Laërtius there are only
a few scattered
quotations, mostly in the writings of
late authors.
Diogenes of Sinope probably came to Athens as a
political exile in
connection with the Persian satrap
Datames' capture of the Athenian colony
of Sinope
on the south coast of the Black Sea in 370. He possibly
taught in Athens after the decade of 360-50. Among
his better known pupils
were Onesicritus, Alexander's
admiral, who took part in the expedition to
India and
wrote a novel on Alexander and descriptions of India;
furthermore, Anaximenes of Lampsacus, who carried
on an extensive literary activity, was the instructor of
Alexander and wrote a history of him. He is said to
have lived ca. 380-20.
The ancient testimonies are
unanimous in placing Diogenes' death towards
320.
There are no reasons for doubting the existence of
personal
contact between Antisthenes and Diogenes.
Besides direct teaching, Diogenes
also carried on a
rather extensive literary activity. Diogenes
Laërtius
gives a list of writings attributed to him that
comprises
thirteen dialogues, seven tragedies, and letters; in a
second, shorter list, with mostly other titles, Diogenes
Laërtius
enumerates thirteen works, besides letters.
With the letters are probably
those spurious letters that
under the names of various philosophers were
current
in the first centuries B.C. and A.D. No tragedies are
mentioned in this second list. That the teaching activity
presupposes some
kind of literary activity and literary
reputation can hardly be doubted,
but nothing remains.
Among Diogenes' personal pupils, besides the
above-mentioned Onesicritus and
Anaximenes, were a
number of Cynic authors, among others Monimus of
Syracuse, who wrote jocular poems with a serious
intent; Philiscus of
Aegina, who besides dialogues
wrote tragedies intended for reading, in
which Cynic
paradoxes were paraded; also, Crates of Thebes, who
likewise wrote jocular poems of which we get a fairly
good idea from
fragments that have been preserved.
Metrocles of Maroneia, Crates'
brother-in-law, origi-
nally a Peripatetic
but later a pupil of Crates, played
an important role, in the generation
immediately after
Diogenes, through his writings containing helpful
words for everyday use intended to strengthen the
philosophical attitude
towards life. He had a decisive
influence on the creation of the type of
Cynic philoso-
pher, and of the Diogenes
legend.
In the generation after Metrocles we find a number
of important writers.
Diogenes Laërtius mentions as
a pupil of Metrocles among others
Menippus of
Gadara, originally a slave at Sinope, who continued
in the
way which Monimus made vivid by putting forth
philosophical maxims in a
jocular form. His style, a
mixture of prose and poetry, was imitated by
Varro
in the latter's Saturae Menippeae, of
which about 600
fragments have been preserved. In addition, to this
generation of authors belongs Bion the Borysthenite,
also a freedman, and a
pupil of Theophrastus and
Xenocrates, but above all of Crates, the Cynic.
Bion
was already considered in antiquity to be the originator
of the
so-called diatribe style. Then we have Teles of
Megara, diatribist after
the manner of Bion (of whom
a considerable number of extracts have been
preserved
by Stobaeus), and Cercidas of Megalopolis. Cercidas
does not
at all conform to the vulgar conception of
a Cynic. He served his native
city as general, diplomat,
and lawgiver, but attained his greatest fame as Cynic
philosopher and poet. He was strongly influenced by
Diogenes as well as by
Bion, whose diatribic style he
developed.
In the latter half of the third century Menedemus
from Asia Minor was active
as a writer in a sternly
moralizing, polemical style. Finally, mention must
be
made of the satirist Meleager of Gadara, poet and
Cynic philosopher
in the Menippean style, who lived
at the end of the second century B.C.
