Book 2
17.135
It is said that he disallowed negative propositions, converting them into affirmatives, and of these he admitted simple propositions only, rejecting those which are not simple, I mean hypothetical and complex propositions. Heraclides declares that, although in his doctrines he was a Platonist, yet he made sport of dialectic. So that, when Alexinus once inquired if he had left off beating his father, his answer was, Why, I was not beating him and have not left off; and upon Alexinus insisting that he ought to have cleared up the ambiguity by a plain Yes or No, It would be absurd, he said, for me to conform to your rules when I can stop you on the threshold. And when Bion persistently ran down the soothsayers, Menedemus said he was slaying the slain.
17.136
On hearing some one say that the greatest good was to get all you want, he rejoined, To want the right things is a far greater good. Antigonus of Carystus asserts that he never wrote or composed anything, and so never held firmly by any doctrine. He adds that in discussing questions he was so pugnacious that he would only retire after he had been badly mauled. And yet, though he was so violent in debate, he was as mild as possible in his conduct. For instance, though he made sport of Alexinus and bantered him cruelly, he was nevertheless very kind to him, for, when his wife was afraid that on her journey she might be set upon and robbed, he gave her an escort from Delphi to Chalcis.
