In the second I shall explore some of the anecdotes specifically about women, and in the third I will look at what Diogenes has to say about the roles women adopted.ĭiogenes often quoted his sources, and consequently we know of the existence of the historian Pamphila, because he used her writings extensively for his descriptions of early philosophers.
This first one presents some general points about Diogenes’ writing.
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We do not know these women’s names, but we know they had a sense of humor, and, perhaps, senses of themselves.Īnecdotes like these led me to read further, and to try to identify all the women Diogenes mentioned, which eventually led to this series of blogposts. Perhaps Thales’ female companion was an astronomer. It is said that once, when he was taken out of doors by an old woman in order that he might observe the stars, he fell into a ditch, and his cry for help drew from the old woman the retort, “How can you expect to know all about the heavens, Thales, when you cannot even see what is just before your feet?” Here is an anecdote about the philosopher Thales: Carlo and Filippo Albacini: Chrysippusįor example, the philosopher Chrysippus appears to have been accompanied constantly by a nameless female slave to whom there are only three references, one of which demonstrates part of her character:Īt wine-parties he used to behave quietly, though he was unsteady on his legs which caused the woman-slave to say, “As for Chrysippus, only his legs get tipsy.” However, these trivia appealed to me because they seemed to convey the humanity of the characters he wrote about.
Wikipedia reports that he has been criticized for focusing on trivia while not fully understanding philosophical principles. He gives us anecdotes, and he wrote his own poetry about his subjects. He described philosophical thought, and gave biographical details, genealogies, and quotes from letters and wills. The piece of writing that has survived to this day is his Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, which is a compilation of biographies. Diogenes Laertius wrote in Greek in Anatolia in the third century CE.
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