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Monday, November 21, 2022

Wisdom from the Early Cynics, Diogenes 14


The word "disabled" (ἀναπήρους), Diogenes held, ought to be applied not to the deaf or blind, but to those who have no wallet (πήρα). 

One day he made his way with head half shaven into a party of young revellers, as Metrocles relates in his Anecdotes, and was roughly handled by them. 

Afterwards he entered on a tablet the names of those who had struck him and went about with the tablet hung round his neck, until he had covered them with ridicule and brought universal blame and discredit upon them. 

He described himself as a hound of the sort which all men praise, but no one, he added, of his admirers dared go out hunting along with him. 

When some one boasted that at the Pythian games he had vanquished men, Diogenes replied, "Nay, I defeat men, you defeat slaves." 

—Diogenes Laërtius, 6.33 



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