Of all the Socratics, Antisthenes alone is praised by Theopompus, who says he had consummate skill and could by means of agreeable discourse win over whomsoever he pleased. And this is clear from his writings and from Xenophon's Banquet.
It would seem that the most manly section of the Stoic School owed its origin to him. Hence Athenaeus the epigrammatist writes thus of them:
You experts in Stoic story, you who commit to sacred pages most excellent doctrines—that virtue alone is the good of the soul: for virtue alone saves man's life and cities. But that Muse that is one of the daughters of Memory approves the pampering of the flesh, which other men have chosen for their aim.
—Diogenes Laërtius, 6.14
IMAGE: Simon Vouet, Allegory of Virtue (c. 1634)
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