7. Cynic Asceticism.
Lucian's version of Cynicism
represents the aspect of Cynicism that
has become best
known thanks to a profusion of anecdotes. The most
varied anecdotes, some strictly rigorous and coarsely
hedonistic, some
serious and burlesque, and both sym-
pathetic and hostile to civilization, have attached
themselves to
Diogenes of Sinope. Various scholars
have maintained that the rigorous type
of anecdotes
is primary and genuinely Diogenic, whereas the
hedonistic
type of anecdotes was introduced in the
Diogenes tradition by Crates and
especially his disci-
ples Bion and Menippus,
as a more human reaction.
A strict and rigorous movement also continued,
which
actually even attempted to outdo Diogenes himself.
Diogenes
appears as a misanthrope in the pessimistic
28th letter. Most words of
rebuke occur in the Cynic
texts of Roman imperial times. The creation of
the
legend began immediately after Diogenes' death and
took place
simultaneously along two lines—the strict
and rigorous, and the
hedonistic.
At a definite point we can see how a rigorous type
of asceticism evidently
influenced the Diogenes legend.
Onesicritus, Alexander's admiral, tells, in
Strabo, the
story of his encounter with an Indian ascetic sect, the
so-called Gymnosophists. Naked and motionless, in
various positions on the
rocks, they endured the heat
of the equatorial sun until the evening. The
motive
for their harsh asceticism is conveyed in the following
words:
Man trains the body for toil in order that his opinions may
be
strengthened, whereby he may put a stop to dissensions
and be ready to
give good advice to all, both in public and
in private.
Onesicritus is comparing oriental asceticism with the
form of asceticism he
had come to know at home in
Greece in the Cynicism of Diogenes. The
comparison
is to the disadvantage of Cynicism. In the Gymnosoph-
ists he found ascetics of a far
more radical type than
he had previously encountered. In this respect he puts
Pythagoras, Socrates, and Diogenes on the same plane:
they failed because
they put law before nature. This
rigorous type of asceticism is reflected
in the anecdotes
about Diogenes rolling in the hot sand or embracing
in winter statues covered with snow, and others.
Within the Cynic movement itself the increasing
oriental influence on Greek
religion, following the time
of Alexander, created a necessity to maintain
the
school's saint Diogenes as a thoroughgoing, rigorous
ascetic.
Onesicritus' comparison between Indian and
Greek ascetic philosophy was no
isolated phenomenon.
The story recurs as one of the sources in a
papyrus
from the second century B.C.
It remains an open question how much of the harsh,
rigorous asceticism goes
back as far as the historical
Diogenes. It may be assumed that it does, to
a certain
extent. The history of ideas shows clearly that the
eudaemonistic, Socratic asceticism, which is pedagog-
ically motivated and has its background in the peda-
gogical debate of the fifth and fourth
centuries, belongs
to Cynic philosophy from its beginning.
