e. The men stamped as generals and
kings; the things stamped as honour and wisdom and happiness and riches;
all were base metal with lying superscriptions. All must have the stamp
defaced.[90:1]

This young man was Diogenes, afterwards the most famous of all the
Cynics. He started by rejecting all stamps and superscriptions and
holding that nothing but _Arete_, 'worth' or 'goodness', was good. He
rejected tradition. He rejected the current religion and the rules and
customs of temple worship. True religion was a thing of the spirit, and
needed no forms. He despised divination. He rejected civil life and
marriage. He mocked at the general interest in the public games and the
respect paid to birth, wealth, or reputation. Let man put aside these
delusions and know himself. And for his defences let him arm himself
'against Fortune with courage, against Convention with Nature, against
passion with Reason'. For Reason is 'the god within us'.

The salvation for man was to return to Nature, and Diogenes interpreted
this return in the simplest and crudest way. He should live like the
beasts, like primeval men, like barbarians. Were not the beasts blessed,
+rheia zoontes+ like the Gods in Homer? And so, though in less
perfection, were primitive men, not vexing their hearts with imaginary
sins and conventions. Travellers told of savages who married their
sisters, or ate human flesh, or left their dead unburied. Why should
they not, if they wished to? No wonder Zeus punished Prometheus the
Fire-Bringer, who had brought all this progress upon us and left man
civilized and more unhappy than any beast! He deserved his crag and his
vulture!

Diogenes took his mission with great earnestness. He was leader in a
'great battle against Pleasures and Desires'. He was 'the servant, the
message-bearer, sent by Zeus', 'the Setter-Free of mankind' and the
'Healer of passions'.

The life that he personally meant to live, and which he recommended to
the wise, was what he called +ton kynikon bion+, 'a dog's life', and he
himself wished to be a 'cynic' or 'canine'. A dog was brave and
faithful; it had no bodily shame, no false theories, and few wants. A
dog needed no clothes, no house, no city, no possessions, no titles;
what he did need was 'virtue', Arete, to catch his prey, to fight wild
beasts, and to defend his master; and that he could provide for himself.
Diogenes found, of course, that he needed a little more than an ordinary
dog; a bla