Things' will often be surprised to find here the source of many among
the Roman poet's most striking doctrines and images. The sketch of
Zeno is also an important authority on Stoicism. Instruction in these
particular chapters, then, and rich diversion elsewhere, await the
reader of this most gossipy, formless, and uncritical volume. The
English reader, by the way, ought to be provided with something
better than the "Bohn" version. This adds a goodly harvest of
ludicrous misprints and other errors of every kind to Diogenes's own
mixture of borrowed wisdom and native silliness. The classical student
will prefer the _Didot_ edition by Cobet, with the Latin version in
parallel columns.

It has been thought desirable to offer here a version, slightly
abridged, of Diogenes's chapter on Socrates. The original sources, in
Plato's and Xenophon's extant works, will almost always explain, or
correct, the statements of Diogenes. Such wild shots as the assertion
that the plague repeatedly visited Athens, striking down _every
inhabitant_ save the temperate Socrates, hardly need a serious
rejoinder. Diogenes cannot even speak with approximate accuracy of
Socrates's famous Daemon or Inward Monitor. We know, on the best
authority, that it prophesied nothing, even proposed nothing, but only
vetoed the rasher impulses of its human companion. But to apply the
tests of mere accuracy to Diogenes would be like criticizing Uncle
Remus for his sins against English syntax.

Of the author's life we know nothing. Our assignment of him to the
third century is based merely on the fact that he quotes writers of
the second, and is himself in turn cited by somewhat later authors.

LIFE OF SOCRATES

From the 'Lives and Sayings of the Philosophers'

Socrates was the son of Sophroniscus a sculptor and Phaenarete a
midwife [as Plato also states in the 'Theaetetus'], and an Athenian,
of the deme Alopeke. He was believed to aid Euripides in composing his
dramas. Hence Mnesimachus speaks thus:--

"This is Euripides's new play, the 'Phrygians':
And Socrates has furnished him the sticks."

And again:--

"Euripides, Socratically patched."

Callias also, in his 'Captives,' says:--

_A_--"Why art so solemn, putting on such airs?
_B_--Indeed I may; the cause is Socrates."

Aristophanes, in the 'Clouds,' again, remarks:--

"And this is he who for Euripides
Composed the talkative wise tragedies."

He was a pupil of Anaxagoras,