.
I just finished reading a book that I started browsing
randomly over 40 years ago. Diogenes
Laertius lived in the early 3rd century AD and wrote in Greek,
drawing his biographies of the Greek philosophers from an immense number of
sources available to him but of which a vast amount are no longer extant. He is one of the few sources we have about
many of these thinkers.
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Reading Diogenes Laertius, I get the sense of the huge irreplaceable
loss of most of the writings of the ancient Greeks. He catalogues extensive lists of the books
that they wrote and that we will never see, and he also quotes or makes
reference to numerous other (lost) ancient biographies of these philosophers. But what really knocked me over was that,
while we see him as a rare ancient voice from the distant ages, he looked at
many of his own biographical subjects as ancients, with many of their works
lost to his own times! Apparently, even
parts of this very book of Diogenes Laertius are lost, as evidence suggests
that he wrote about many more thinkers not included in the received book. How fragile the transmission of human knowledge is.
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Diogenes Laertius may not have been the greatest biographer
or philosopher. He often seems gossipy
and a recorder of trivialities. He also
provides little verses of his own about several of these thinkers, often
dealing with their tragic-comic moments of death. These ditties are a bit trite, but they
reinforce in me the sense that he wrote as much for entertainment as for
philosophic enlightenment.
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But I really like his treatment of the philosopher’s life in
its full biographical sweep, recording them as mortal men, through their lives
and including their troubles, illnesses, and last days. He gives us the texts of many of the wills and
letters of the old philosophers. He provides three long important letters of Epicurus, of which the third is my favorite. I often
see – especially in his accounts of the Epicurean predecessors and then
Epicurus and his later school, and of the Stoics, the Cynics, and Skeptics – a familiar
primacy of achieving “tranquility” that reminds me of the Buddha’s early
teachings.
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Montaigne (1533-1592) said it well for me: “I am very sorry we have not a dozen Diogenes
Laertius, or that he was not further extended; for I am equally curious to know
the lives and fortunes of these great instructors of the world, as to know the
diversities of their doctrines and opinions” (Essays, book
X, “On Books”).
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I read this work in a textually corrupted eBook version of the
1853 translation by Charles Duke Yonge. I’m
not sure where I downloaded it from, but I will look for another eBook version
that is formatted better for my Kindle.
.
I will look for the classic 1925 translation by Robert Drew
Hicks (Loeb Classical Library, with the slightly shorter title, Lives
of the Eminent Philosophers), originally in a two-volume bound
edition (with English and Greek texts), which is said to be now in the public
domain. I will look for the Hicks
version because it was one of my favorite books to browse in the old Warren
Public Library when I was a young crazed Dionysian recently dumped from war
into civilian life. It eased my sorry soul.
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-Zenwind.
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