5. Cynic Pedagogy.
Diogenes Laërtius' account (VI
70f.) of Diogenes' maxims is
a summary of early Cynic
pedagogy. The theme is “the double
training,” the
necessary training of body and soul, and the
passage
is one of the few sources of information about early
Cynic
ideology of Heracles. Both forms of training are
equally necessary for him
who wants to learn how to
act rightly. More explicit information as to the
methods
of this pedagogy is given in Diog. L. VI 30f. Diogenes
Laërtius quotes a certain Eubulus who wrote a book
about how
Diogenes was sold as a slave and became
the teacher of Xeniades' two sons.
These he trained
in various sorts of athletics, not in an exaggerated
way
but only enough to keep them in good physical condi-
tion. The pupils also had to learn by heart
passages
from poets and historians, and the writings of Diogenes
himself. Part of the education also consisted in learning
a simple way of
living as to food, drink, and clothes,
and modest behavior. Thus Diogenes
appears here as
a representative of the traditional type of education,
which reminds one of Xenophon's Cyropaedia and
shows
a certain affinity to Prodicus' allegory on
Heracles. As a youth Heracles
chose the virtuous
woman Aretē instead of the woman of pleasure,
Kakia,
when he was confronted by both where paths crossed.
The
passages in Diog. L. VI 30 and 70 correspond to
each other. Diogenes
proclaimed a pedagogical doc-
trine which has
left traces in early Cynic literature.
The story of the sale of Diogenes
into slavery has been
treated by several Cynic writers in the next
generation.
The quotation from Eubulus (Diog. L. VI 30) represents
a
serious variant of the story. In this variant Diogenes
appears outwardly as
a slave but inwardly as free and
a master. Whether and how far the version
of the sale
into slavery given by Lucian, where Diogenes appears
in a
caricatured form, goes back to an early burlesque
variant (Menippus?) is
doubtful. The pedagogy of the
Eubulus version is of an idyllic character
which has
its counterpart in a hedonistic theme in the doxography
Diog. L. VI 71: the despising of pleasure is the greatest
pleasure. In
Lucian we meet a Cynic pedagogy of quite
another character in line with the
many Diogenes
anecdotes representing traits of rigorous asceticism and
abstruse shamelessness.
It is easy to relate the varying motifs in the Eubulus
pedagogy to ideas
generally known in the fourth cen-
tury B.C.:
the ruler-teacher motif, the slave-ruler motif,
the idyllic training in
hunting, archery, riding, and
other forms of athletics as a complement to
reading
and learning by heart select passages from the works
of poets
and other writers. Even the framework itself,
the sale of Diogenes into
slavery, had its model in
Euripides' play Syleus,
where Heracles is sold as a
slave. But while Eubulus' pedagogy with its
archaic,
Spartan education (paideia) was
disappearing from the
Cynic tradition, a burlesque variant was being
created
which left its most important traces in Lucian several
centuries later. Instead of Eubulus' mild, hedonistically
tinged asceticism
we find a coarse and vulgar asceticism
which was self-contained and was the
form of Cynicism
that Lucian criticized, and which furnished the mate-
rial for countless popular anecdotes.
The idyllic existence which Eubulus' pedagogy de-
scribes has to a certain extent its counterpart in some
fragments of an early Cynic poem (Crates' poem, Pera)
which describes in allegorical form an ideal society.
Crates' social background was different from that
of Antisthenes and
Diogenes. He was a full citizen of
Thebes but distributed his wealth, which
was consid-
erable, among his fellow
citizens. Teles describes him
as a sort of pre-Christian Saint Francis, who
derived
the highest ethical values from his voluntary poverty.
Apuleius provides an interesting example of Heracles
as an ethical model in
his description of Crates. Here
we find a picture of the Cynic saint,
reconciler and
adviser of men, punisher of all evil. In Crates we find
the dream of the far-off state, which no evil men or
evil conditions can
reach. Pera—the type of wallet
associated with the
Cynics—stands as name and symbol
of this state. Crates praises
self-sufficing simplicity,
isolation, and freedom. A simple way of life
brings
contentedness. The inhabitants of Pera are men who
are not the
slaves of pleasure, but who love freedom,
the eternal queen.
In Crates' new kingdom there is no war. Men do
not fight with each other for
food since where frugality
reigns there is enough for all. Crates embraces
Cynic
pacifism, which may well have been introduced by
Antisthenes. The poem is a mixture of fun and serious-
ness. What Crates describes in the
Pera is a never-never
land. There is no question
of a state in the usual sense:
Pera is a dream, which the Christian Fathers
compared
with the heavenly Jerusalem. It is the Cynic ideal
community,
without the difficulties of sustaining itself,
of war or wickedness, a
society in which dwell such
men as the Cynics endeavor to fashion by
education.
The doxography Diog. L. VI 70ff. contains in section
72 an account of
Diogenes' political views. It is possible
that the passage is a summary of
the content of
Diogenes' book, Politeia, which
described a philosopher
state and contained principles that were later
adopted
by the Stoa. The elements of this account can in any
case
easily be related to the political debate of the
fifth and fourth
centuries: the wise are god's friends,
hence everything belongs to them;
noble birth and
fame are valueless things; common possession of wives
and children should take the place of marriage; the
purpose of the state is
to afford its citizens protection
and help; this the state cannot do
without law, conse-
quently, law is
necessary for the state. Then the ques-
tion
arises, which state is the right one. The Sophist
Antiphon had shown in his
book Truth that the histori-
cal state was unable to provide the legal protection
that men
needed. The answer to the question about
the right state is also given: the
only right state is the
world state. The expression “the right
state” was a term
accepted in the political writings of the
fourth century.
What is new in the Diogenes doxography is that it is
applied to a “cosmos-state.”
