Book 6
Chapter 1. ANTISTHENES (c. 446-366 B.C.)
1.1
Antisthenes,Cf. Clem. Alex. Strom. i. 66. the son of Antisthenes, was an Athenian. It was said, however, that he was not of pure Attic blood. Hence his reply to one who taunted him with this: The mother of the gods too is a Phrygian.Cf. Plutarch, De exilio, 607 a; Sen. De const. sap. c. 18, 5. For his mother was supposed to have been a Thracian. Hence it was that, when he had distinguished himself in the battle of Tanagra,Probably the battle in 426 b.c. mentioned in Thuc. iii. 91. he gave Socrates occasion to remark that, if both his parents had been Athenians, he would not have turned out so brave. He himself showed his contempt for the airs which the Athenians gave themselves on the strength of being sprung from the soil by the remark that this did not make them any better born than snails or wingless locusts.
1.1
To begin with, he became a pupil of Gorgias the rhetorician, and hence the rhetorical style that he introduces in his dialogues, and especially in his Truth and in his Exhortations.
1.2
According to Hermippus he intended at the public gathering for the Isthmian games to discourse on the faults and merits of Athenians, Thebans and Lacedaemonians, but begged to be excused when he saw throngs arriving from those cities.
1.2
Later on, however, he came into touch with Socrates, and derived so much benefit from him that he used to advise his own disciples to become fellow-pupils with him of Socrates. He lived in the Peiraeus, and every day would tramp the five miles to Athens in order to hear Socrates. From Socrates he learned his hardihood, emulating his disregard of feeling, and thus he inaugurated the Cynic way of life. He demonstrated that pain is a good thing by instancing the great Heracles and Cyrus, drawing the one example from the Greek world and the other from the barbarians.
