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Brief Lives

Diogenes the Cynic (c.404-323 BC)

Martin Jenkins recalls what we know for sure about the philosopher in the barrel.

Socrates notoriously never wrote anything down, but we at least have dialogues written by his contemporaries Plato and Xenophon claiming to record what he said. Diogenes may or may not have written something: later sources quote the titles of lost works attributed to him. We also have letters alleged to be by him, although these are generally agreed to be fakes. But he had no contemporary recorder of his thoughts. We have to reconstruct his life and ideas from quotations and anecdotes in sources long after his lifetime.

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