Diogenes Laertius compiled “Lives of the Eminent Philosophers” sometime early in the 3rd century. Virtually nothing is known about him, but his book enjoyed centuries of esteem as a richly anecdotal introduction to the major and minor figures of ancient Greek philosophy. If you were setting up a country-house library in the 18th century, you’d probably shelve Diogenes’s work near Suetonius’s “Lives of the Caesars” and Plutarch’s “Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans.”
“Lives of the Eminent Philosophers,” by Diogenes Laertius; translated by Pamela Mensch (Oxford University Press)
These days, however, “Lives of the Eminent Philosophers” is regarded as factually dubious, as much hearsay as history. No matter. Its stories and quips, its quotations and insights are central to European literature. Thus a modern reader can — like Montaigne, who loved the book — still read Diogenes for intellectual entertainment, especially in this magnificent new edition packed with illustrations and notes. Its extensive appendix, moreover, adds learned background essays — by Anthony Grafton, Ingrid D. Rowland and others just as distinguished — as well as a detailed guide to further reading. For $45, one certainly receives good value for the money.
Above all else, Diogenes humanizes otherwise Olympian thinkers. Did you know that Aristotle spoke with a lisp? Socrates not only enjoyed dancing — arguing that it was good exercise — but was also reputed to have edited and “patched up” some of the plays of his friend Euripides. When the hedonistic Aristippus was unexpectedly observed entering the house of a courtesan, he commented, “It’s not hard to go in; what’s hard is not being able to leave.” After the god Hermes offered Pythagoras any gift except immortality, the philosopher and mathematician decided “to retain, both living and dead, the memory of what he had experienced.” Thus through incarnation after incarnation Pythagoras could remember all his past lives. He is also reported “to have been the first to put athletes on a meat diet.” Phryne and Lais — the most celebrated beauties of their time — both tried, unsuccessfully, to seduce the austere Xenocrates.
