1. Donald R. Dudley (A History of Cynicism from Diogenes to the Sixth Century A.D.[London: Methuen, 1937], p. 20) still found it possible to discuss Diogenes as a historical figure whose actions had specific content, although he realized that anecdotes and teachings attributed to Diogenes by Epictetus, Dio Chrysostom, and Julian were of little value in the attempt to reconstruct the origins of Cynicism.

2. Eating in public: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers (hereafter D. L.) 6.57, 58, 61. Farting: D. L. 6.48; cf. D. L. 6.94; Julian, Or. 6.202b; cf. Epictetus, Disc. 3.22.80. Urinating: D. L. 6.46. Masturbating: D. L. 6.46, 69; Epp. Diog. 35, 42, 44; Dio Chrys., Disc. 6.16–20; Athenaeus, Deip. 4.145ff. Defecating: Dio Chrys., Disc. 8.36; Julian, Or. 6.202b, c.

3. On the history of Cynicism in general see Dudley, History of Cynicism. Léonce Paquet, Les Cyniques grecs (Ottawa: Ëditions de l’Université d’Ottawa, 1975) collects anecdotes relating to each major Cynic. An overview of Cynic thought and ways of life can be found in Ferrand Sayre, Greek Cynicism and Sources of Cynicism (Baltimore: Furst, 1948); and Heinrich Niehues-Pröbsting, Der Kynismus des Diogenes und der Begriff des Zynismus (Munich: Funk, 1979). Studies of individual topics include Ragnar Hoïstad, Cynic Hero and Cynic King (Uppsala: Gleerup, 1948); Harold W. Attridge, First Century Cynicism in the Epistles of Heraclitus (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars, 1976); I. Nachov, “Der Mensch in der Philosophie der Kyniker,” in Der Mensch als Mass der Dinge, ed. R. Müller (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1976), pp. 361–98; Abraham J. Malherbe, “Self-Definition among Epicureans and Cynics,” in Jewish and Christian Self-Definition in the Greco-Roman World, vol. 3, ed. B. F. Meyer and E. P. Sanders (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), pp. 46–59; Jean-Marie Meillard, “L’Anti-intellectuelisme de Diogène le Cynique,” RevThPh 115 (1983): 233–46; Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé, L’Ascèse cynique: Un commentaire de Diogène Laërce VI:70–71 (Paris: Vrin, 1986); Margarethe Billerbeck, Epiktet, Vom Kynismus: Herausgegeben und Übersetzung mit einem Kommentar (Leiden: Brill, 1978); and Rudolf Asmus, “Der Kyniker Sallustius bei Damascius,” Neue Jarbücher für das klassisch altertum Geschichte und deutsche Literatur 25 (1910): 504–22. For students of the history of Christianity, the study of Cynicism has contributed to an understanding of the reception of pagan literary genres such as the diatribe and the chreia by the authors of various writings in the New Testament. The classic study is Rudolf Bultmann, Der Stil der paulinischen Predigt und die kynisch-stoische Diatribe (Göttingen: Vanderhoeck und Ruprecht, 1910). Abraham Malherbe’s writings on Paul and the Cynics are now collected in Paul and the Thessalonians (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), and in Paul and the Popular Philosophers (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989). F. Gerald Downing, Cynics and Christian Origins (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1992), collects many of his earlier articles. See also J. S. Kloppenborg, The Formation of Q (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), pp. 306–25, and Burton Mack, The Myth of Innocence (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), pp. 67–69. For a consideration of post–New Testament Christian attitudes toward Cynicism, see my “Diogenes the Cynic among the Fourth-Century Fathers,” VC 47 (1993): 29–49; and my “The Bawdy and Society: The Shamelessness of Diogenes in Roman Imperial Culture,” in The Cynics: The Movement in Antiquity and Its Legacy for Europe, ed. R. Bracht Branham and Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé, forthcoming.

4. We also find him earlier in the writings of Cicero and elsewhere. Dio Chrysostom, Epictetus, Plutarch, and Cicero are available in the Loeb Classical Library. The corpus of pseudepigraphic letters is available with translation in Abraham J. Malherbe, The Cynic Epistles: A Study Edition (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars, 1977).

5. Gunnar Rudberg, “Zur Diogenes Tradition” and “Zum Diogenes Typus,” Symbolae Osloenses 14 (1935): 22–43; 15 (1936): 1–18. Using methods parallel to those developed by Rudolf Bultmann, Rudberg tried to describe the development of the Cynic tradition through the history of these formal units. For a more specialized discussion of gnomic anthologies which include Diogenes traditions, see J. Barns, “A New Gnomologium,” Classical Quarterly, 44 (1950): 127–37; 45 (1951): 1–19.

6. M. Luz, “A Description of the Greek Cynic in the Jerusalem Talmud,” JSJ 20 (1989): 49–60, has recently shown that the rabbis were familiar with traditions about the Cynics.

7. Ronald F. Hock and Edward N. O’Neil, The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric, vol. 1, The Progymnasmata (Atlanta: Scholars, 1986), contains all the chapters on the chreia found in ancient textbooks, with English translations. According to a textbook on rhetoric written by Theon of Alexandria in the second half of the first century, the chreia is “a concise statement or action which is attributed with aptness [εὐστοχία] to some specified character [πρόσωπον] or to something analogous to a character” (Hock and O’Neil, The Chreia, pp. 82–83, text and translation). See also Krueger, “Diogenes the Cynic,” pp. 31–32.

8. Henry A. Fischel, “Studies in Cynicism and the Ancient Near East: The Transformation of a Chria” [sic], in Religions in Antiquity: Essays in Memory of Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough, ed. J. Neusner (Leiden: Brill, 1968), p. 374. In Theon’s discussion of the chreia, seven of the twenty-nine chreiai which he uses as examples are attributed to Diogenes. Diogenes is also well represented in later textbooks. Hermogenes, writing in the second century, has one chreia attributed to Diogenes out of three examples; Aphthonius of Antioch (late fourth, early fifth century), who appears to be dependent on Hermogenes for his selection, has one Diogenes chreia of four; Nicholas of Myra, writing in the sixth century, uses one of eight. Although Aphthonius became the standard rhetorical textbook sometime after the first half of the sixth century, Theon continued to be read (cf. Hock and O’Neil, The Chreia, p. 212).

9. Diogenes Laertius cites a certain “Sale of Diogenes” by Menippus (6.29) and a book of the same title by Eubulus (6.31), as well as books of chreiai by Hecato (6.32) and Metrocles (6.33) as his sources. On Diogenes Laertius’s sources for Diogenes of Sinope see K. von Fritz, Quellenuntersuchung zu Leben und Philosophie des Diogenes von Sinope (Leipzig: Dietrich, 1926); Hoïstad, Cynic Hero, p. 116; Richard Hope, The Book of Diogenes Laertius (New York: Columbia University Press, 1930). See also Rudberg, “Zum Diogenes Tradition” and “Zum Diogenes Typus.”

10. Studies attempting to assess the authenticity of these and other sayings and deeds attributed to Diogenes are ultimately futile, since the whole point of the school exercises was to manipulate these statements and thus change them.

11. The full range of such details can be found in Diogenes Laertius’s life of Diogenes, Lives of the Philosophers 6.20–81.

12. The edition cited here is John of Stobi, Anthologium, 5 vols., 2nd. ed., ed. C. Wachsmuth and O. Hense (Berlin: Weidmann, 1958). Of continuing usefulness is John of Stobi, Florilegium, 4 vols., ed. Augustus Meineke (Leipzig: Taubner, 1855–57); this edition uses a different numbering system from Wachsmuth and Hense.

13. Photius, Bibl. cod. 167.

14. For an index of these citations, see Wachsmuth and Hense. Most of the Diogenes material has been translated into French by Léonce Paquet and appears interspersed throughout his own Diogenes anthology in Les Cyniques grecs, pp. 59–108.

15. During the eighth century John of Damascus, often regarded as the last writer of the Patristic period, compiled an anthology in much the same style as John of Stobi’s anthology, grouping quotations under various headings. John of Damascus, however, drew his material primarily from Christian authors, mostly theologians. Materials from “profane” and non-Christian sources make up a small part of the Sacred Parallels, but among these pieces of the pagan world are twelve sayings attributed to Diogenes. Selections from the “profane” authors are included in the fourth volume of Meineke’s edition of John of Stobi. See John of Damascus, Sacra Parallela, PG 95–96. Karl Holl (“Die Sacra Parallela des Johannes Damascenus,” Texte und Untersuchungen 16 [1897]: 1–392) argued convincingly for the authenticity of the work. Also worthy of mention are the few sayings of Diogenes in the so-called Florilegium Monacense once attributed to a seventh-century writer named Maximus—most likely not Maximus the Confessor—for which a date as late as the late ninth through early eleventh century has also been suggested. The text is included in Meineke’s edition of John of Stobi’s Anthology, 4:267–90. On the date see A. Ehrhard, “Zu den ‘Sacra Parallela’ des Johannes Damascenus und dem Florilegium des ‘Maximus,’ ” BZ 10 (1901): 394–415. On further discussion of this question and on Patristic florilegia in general see Marcel Richard, “Florilèges spirituels grecs,” DS.

16. I do not mean to suggest that the transmission of traditions about Diogenes in Late Antiquity was limited to his survival among educated elites. We must imagine that oral traditions contributed to the preservation and dissemination of anecdotes about Diogenes.

17. Although Dudley’s History of Cynicism (pp. 202–8) devotes only seven pages to the period from the third to the sixth centuries, the evidence suggests that practicing Cynics continued to be a feature of urban life until the decades immediately preceding the reign of Justinian.

18. Julian, Or. 7. For Julian, the speech against Heraclius was an occasion to praise the value of mythology—a mythology which had been rejected by the growing number of Christians around him. Julian advocates a purer Cynicism which could be part of a pagan front against the Christians. Cf. Johannes Geffcken, The Last Days of Greco-Roman Paganism, trans. Sabine MacCormack (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1978), p. 151.

19. On Gregory and Maximus, see below.

20. Damascius’s Life of Isidorus has been reconstructed from fragments appearing in Photius and in the Suda. Damascii vitae Isidori reliquiae, ed. Clemens Zintzen (Hildesheim: Olms, 1967).

21. Julian, Or. 6.

22. Augustine, Civ. Dei 14.20.

23. Origen, Contra Celsum 3.50.

24. Basil, Ep. 4. Variants of this chreia include Plutarch, Mor. 79e; D. L. 6.37; Ep. Diog. 6.

25. Cf. H. I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, trans. George Lamb (1956; rpt., Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), pp. 321–22, 340–42. While Marrou is right to observe that Basil is warning against the dangers inherent in reading pagan literature, he underestimates the degree to which Basil is presenting a defense of the extant canon. The letter was addressed to Basil’s nephews, and it is unclear whether Basil intended it for wide circulation. Numerous manuscripts survive from the late ninth century on, by which time it had become widely used as a school text. The existence of Syriac translations of the text, the first from the fifth century and the second from the seventh, suggests that Basil’s letter was widely read. On the history of the text and translations, see N. G. Wilson, Saint Basil on the Value of Greek Literature (London: Duckworth, 1975), pp. 72–73.

26. Cf. D. L. 6.54 and Stobaeus, 3.6.38.

27. Basil, Leg. lib. gent. 9.3, 4. Text and English translation, Letters, vol. 4, ed. and trans. Roy J. Deferrari and Martin R. P. McGuire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), pp. 415–17.

28. Basil, Leg. lib. gent. 9.20; trans. Deferrari and McGuire, pp. 425–27. Dio Chrys. Or. 6.6 ff. is an expansion of the chreia which stands behind this statement. See also Plutarch, Mor. 499b and 604c.

29. Julian, Or. 6. The date is suggested by Julian’s reference to the summer solstice in the opening of the speech (181a). Cf. G. W. Bowersock, Julian the Apostate (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 71.

30. On the terms δόξα and άδοξος in Cynicism see Malherbe, “Ps-Heraclitus, Ep. 4: The Divinization of the Wise Man,” JAC 21 (1978): 60.

31. P. R. Coleman-Norton, “St. Chrysostom and the Greek Philosophers,” Classical Philology 25 (1930): 305. On Diogenes and other Cynics, see pp. 307–9.

32. John Chrysostom, Adversus oppugnatores vitae monasticae 2.4, PG 47.337.

33. John Chrysostom, Ad. op. vit. monast. 2.5, PG 47.339.

34. Furthermore, Chrysostom, ever suspicious of pretension, praised Diogenes and Crates, as well as Socrates, for not having mastered the art of eloquence—an ironic point perhaps in light of Chrysostom’s rhetorical skill. John Chrysostom, Ad. op. vit. monast. 3.11, PG 47.367. Socrates, of course, was remembered as an opponent of the Sophists.

35. Chrysostom’s invocation of Diogenes in defense of monasticism needs to be considered in light of the considerable suspicion against asceticism among Christian elites. The decision to adopt the monastic life was seen as a radical break with the privileges and duties of the life of the upper classes throughout the Mediterranean world. Parents in particular resisted their children’s impulses to retire from the world. (Cf. the Life of Melania the Younger and the remarks of Elizabeth A. Clark in “Ascetic Renunciation and Feminine Advancement: A Paradox of Late Ancient Christianity,” Anglican Theological Review 63 [1981]: 240–57. The subject of parental resistance to the ascetic life deserves further study.)

36. John Chrysostom, De sanctum Babyla contra Julianum et contra Gentiles 8, PG 50.545; English trans. by Margaret A. Shatkin in Saint John Chrysostom, Apologist (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1985), pp. 100–1. On the date of the text, see Shatkin’s introduction, pp. 15–16.

37. John Chrysostom, De s. Babyla 9, PG 50.545; trans. Shatkin, pp. 102–3.

38. Cf. D. L. 6.46, 69.

39. Julian, Or. 6.193d, 202c. Cf. Epp. Diog. 6, 42.

40. Cf. Lampe, s.v. This meaning can be found in Christian liturgical texts.

41. John Chrysostom, Ad viduam juniorem 6, PG 48.607; cf. NPNF (first series) IX, p. 126. On the question of how widespread familiarity with Diogenes was in Late Antiquity, we note that Chrysostom writes to this widow that she did not need to learn who the pagan philosophers he was referring to were from him, since “you know Epaminondas, Socrates, Aristeides, Diogenes, and Crates . . . better than I do.”

42. John Chrysostom, Homiliae in 1 Cor 35.4, PG 61.302; English trans. NPNF (first series) XII, p. 212.

43. Gregory of Nazianzus (hereafter Greg. Naz.), Ep. 98; Briefe, ed. Paul Gallay (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1969), pp. 80–81.

44. Greg. Naz., De vita sua, ed. Christoph Junck (Heidelberg: Winter, 1974), ll. 767–68; English trans. Denis Molaise Meehan, Three Poems (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1987), p. 99.

45. Greg. Naz., Orations 25, 26. The identification of the Maximus of De vita sua with the hero of Orations 25 and 26 is certain. On the Maximus affair see the excellent discussion by Justin Mossay in his edition, Discours (Paris: Cerf, 1978), pp. 120–41.

46. One thinks, of course, of Socrates. On Christian attitudes toward Socrates, see J. Geffcken, Sokrates und das alte Christentum (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1908).

47. Greg. Naz., Or. 25.2, ed. Mossay, p. 158.

48. Greg. Naz., Or. 25.3.

49. On Cynics as dogs, see Ferrand Sayre, Greek Cynicism, pp. 4–5. Serious doubts concerning the etymology of the term “Cynic” and a discussion of the ancient (non-Christian) interpretations of the title can be found in Heinz Schulz-Falkenthal, “Kyniker—Zur inhaltlichen Deutung des Namens,” Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift Martin-Luther Universität, Halle-Wittenberg (Gesellschaftsreihe) 26.2 (1977): 41–49. For dog Cynic in collections of Cynic chreiai, see D. L. 6.33, 40, 61, 77; Gnomologium Vaticanum 175, 194; Athenaeus, Deip. 5.216b; Florilegium Monacense 155 = Meinecke 4:278; Stobaeus, 4.55.11; Anth. Pal. 7.63–68.

50. Greg. Naz., Or. 25.2, ed. Mossay, pp. 158–60.

51. Greg. Naz., Or. 25.7.

52. Greg. Naz., De vita sua, ll. 750–1043.

53. Greg. Naz., De vita sua, ll. 974–75. Herakles was a hero for the Cynics. See Dio Chrys., Disc. 1.59–84; Malherbe, “Ps.-Heraclitus Ep. 4,” passim.

54. Greg. Naz., De vita sua, ll. 1030–33.

55. Greg. Naz., Poems 1.2.10, ll. 215–16, PG 37.696.

56. Greg. Naz., Poems 1.2.10, ll. 218–27.

57. For a general treatment of Gregory’s attitudes toward wealth and poverty, see Bernard Coulie, Les Richesses dans l’oeuvre de Saint Grégoire de Nazianze (Louvain: Institut Orientaliste, 1985).

58. Thdt., Graecarum affectionum curatio, 2 vols., ed. and French trans. Pierre Canivet (Paris: Cerf, 1958). Canivet dates the work from the early 420s; however, this may be too early. Cf. Canivet, Histoire d’une enterprise apologétique au v^r siècle (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1957), p. v. Canivet has shown that Theodoret is greatly dependent on Clement of Alexandria’s Stromata and Eusebius’s Preparatio Evangelica.

59. Thdt., Affect. 1.24, 50; 3.53; 6.20; 12.32, 48–49.

60. Thdt., Affect. 12.48. Theodoret (Affect. 12.49; cf. Clem., Strom. 4.19.121) remembers that Crates had surrendered to passion and “consummated his dog’s marriage [κυνογαμία] in public.” The Cynics were examples who prove the rule that “the road to virtue is rough, steep, and difficult” (Affect. 12.46).

61. Thdt., Affect. 12.32.

62. In fact, in his Discourse on Providence, written for an Antiochene audience sometime after 435, Theodoret lists Socrates, Diogenes, and Anaxarchus as examples of people who renounced wealth in favor of poverty. Thdt., Provid. 6, PG 83.649; French trans. Yvan Azéma, Discours sur la providence (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1954), p. 207.

63. Augustine, Civ. Dei 14.20; trans. John O’Meara, City of God (London: Penguin, 1984), pp. 581–82.

64. Trans. O’Meara, p. 582.

65. Concerning Cynics in his own time, Augustine writes, “Even now we see that there are still Cynic philosophers about. . . . [N]one of them dares to act like Diogenes. If any of them were to venture to do so they would be overwhelmed, if not with a hail of stones, at any rate with a shower of spittle from the disgusted public.” Trans. O’Meara, p. 582.

66. On this question, see Asmus, “Der Kyniker Sallustius.” Moreover, earlier Platonists were neither ignorant nor universally condemning of the Cynics. Cf. Eunapius, Lives of the Sophists, ed. and trans. W. C. Wright (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), pp. 346–49.

67. Simplicius, Commentary on the Enchiridion of Epictetus, in Theophrasti Charactares, Marci Antonii Commentarii Epicteti . . . et Enchiridion cum Commentario Simplicii, ed. F. Dübner (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1872), pp. 40, 45, 49.

68. Theophylact Simocatta, Epistulae, ed. Joseph Zanetto (Leipzig: Teubner, 1985). A very brief description of the work appears in Michael and Mary Whitby, The History of Theophylact Simocatta (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), p. xv.

69. Diogenes “wrote” epp. 19, 43, 46, 76, and is mentioned in ep. 60. He “writes” against wealth and effeminacy.

70. The continued relevance of Diogenes in later Byzantine intellectual culture is attested by Michael Psellus’s references to Diogenes in his praise of Symeon Metaphrastes written during the eleventh century. Michael Psellus, “Encomium on Symeon Metaphrastes,” Scripta minora, vol. 1, ed. Edward Kurtz (Milan: Società editrice “vita e pensiero,” 1936), p. 97.