Dio Chrysostom, On Tyranny 2

In such language Diogenes at times used to ridicule the victims of conceit and folly, though it was against the sophists, who wanted to be looked up to and thought they knew more than other men, that he railed in particular. 

He used to say that men, owing to their softness, lived more wretched lives than the beasts. For these took water for their drink and grass for their food, were most of them naked from one end of the year to the other, never entered a house nor made any use of fire, and yet they lived as long as nature had ordained for each, if no one destroyed them, and all alike remained strong and healthy, and had no need of doctors or of drugs.⁠ 

Men, however, who are so very fond of life and devise so many ways to postpone death, generally did not even reach old age, but lived infested by a host of maladies which it were no easy task even to name, and the earth did not supply them with drugs enough, but they required the knife and cautery as well. 

Nor were Cheiron⁠ and Asclepius' sons,⁠ with all their healing power, nor prophetic seers nor priestly exorcists of any use to them at all because of their excesses and wickedness. Men crowded into the cities to escape wrong from those outside, only to wrong one another and commit all sorts of the most dreadful misdeeds as though that had been the object of their coming together. 

And the reason, in his opinion, why the myth says that Zeus punished Prometheus for his discovery and bestowal of fire was that therein lay the origin and beginning of man's softness and love of luxury; for Zeus surely did not hate men or grudge them any good thing.

When some people urged that it is impossible for man to live like the animals owing to the tenderness of his flesh and because he is naked and unprotected either by hair, as the majority of beasts are, or by feathers and has no covering of tough skin, he would say in reply that men are so very tender because of their mode of life, since, as a rule, they avoid the sun and also avoid the cold. It is not the nakedness of the body that causes the trouble. 

He would then call attention to the frogs and numerous other animals much more delicate than man and much less protected, and yet some of them not only withstand the cold air but are even able to live in the coldest water during the winter. 

He also pointed out that the eyes and the face of man himself have no need of protection. And, in general, no creature is born in any region that cannot live in it. Else how could the first human beings to be born have survived, there being no fire, or houses, or clothing, or any other food than that which grew wild? 

Nay, man's ingenuity and his discovering and contriving so many helps to life had not been altogether advantageous to later generations, since men do not employ their cleverness to promote courage or justice, but to procure pleasure. And so, as they pursue the agreeable at any cost, their life becomes constantly less agreeable and more burdensome; and while they appear to be attending to their own needs, they perish most miserably, just because of excessive care and attention. And for these reasons Prometheus was justly said to have been bound to the rock and to have had his liver plucked by the eagle.

Things, therefore, that were costly or demanded constant attention and worry he rejected and showed to be injurious to those who used them; but whatever could readily and without effort help the body to withstand the winter's cold or hunger or to satisfy some other appetite of the body, he would never forgo; nay, he would choose localities that were healthful in preference to the unhealthy, and those that were adapted to the different seasons, and he took care to have a sufficient supply of food and moderate clothing, but from public affairs, lawsuits, rivalries, wars, and factions he kept himself clear. 

He tried especially to imitate the life of the gods, for they alone, as Homer asserts,⁠ live at ease, implying that the life of man is full of labor and hardship. Even the lower animals, he claimed, understand this sort of thing clearly. 

The storks, for example, leave the heat of the summer and migrate to a temperate climate, and after spending as long a time there as is most congenial to them, depart in flocks, retreating before the winter; while cranes, which stand the winter fairly well, come at seeding time and for the food they pick up. Deer and hares come down from the mountains into the plains and valleys in the cold weather and find shelter there in comfortable nooks away from the wind, but in the hot season withdraw into the woods and the most northerly regions. 

When, therefore, he observed how other men were harassed throughout their whole lives, ever plotting against one another, ever encompassed by a thousand ills and never able to enjoy a moment's rest, nay, not even during the great festivals nor when they proclaimed a truce; and when he beheld that they did or suffered all this simply in order to keep themselves alive, and that their greatest fear was lest their so‑called necessities should fail them, and how, furthermore, they planned and strove to leave great riches to their children, he marveled that he too did not do the like, but was the only independent man in the world, and that nobody else had any comprehension of his own highest happiness. 

For these reasons he refused to compare himself any farther⁠ with the king of the Persians, since there was a great difference between them. In fact, the king was, he said, the most miserable man alive, fearing poverty in spite of all his gold, fearing sickness and yet unable to keep away from the things that cause it, in great dread of death and imagining that everybody was plotting against him,⁠ even his own sons and his brothers. 

So the despot could neither eat with pleasure, though the most tempting dishes were placed before him, nor drown his troubles in wine. Not a day did he pass "at ease" in which he looked about without suffering torments. When sober, he longed for intoxication in the belief that he would then have relief from his misfortunes, and when drunk, he imagined himself to be ruined just because he was unable to help himself. And further, when awake, he prayed for sleep that he might forget his fears, but when asleep he would immediately leap up, imagining that his very dreams were killing him; and neither the golden plane-tree,⁠ nor the mansions of Semiramis, nor the walls of Babylon were of any help to him. 

The most absurd thing of all, however, was that, though he feared unarmed persons, yet he entrusted himself to his armed guards, that though he searched those who approached him to see if any had a weapon, yet he lived surrounded by men who carried weapons. He was forever fleeing from the unarmed to the armed and from the armed to the unarmed; from the people he protected himself by means of his bodyguard and from his bodyguard by means of his eunuchs. 

He had no one that he could trust, nor refuge to which he could turn so that he might live a single day without fear. He suspected everything he ate or drank, and had men to sample things for him like so many scouts on a road beset by the enemy. Nay, he could not place confidence in his nearest and dearest, whether children or wife. Yet, difficult and grievous as the position of monarch was, he never wanted to get rid of it, nor could be.