Book 6
2.23
He did not lean upon a staff until he grew infirm; but afterwards he would carry it everywhere, not indeed in the city, but when walking along the road with it and with his wallet; so say Olympiodorus,An eminent politician. Pausanias, i. cc. 25, 26, describes a statue of Olympiodorus in the Acropolis, and takes occasion to recount his exploits, how (c. 288 b.c.) he delivered Athens from the Macedonians (cf. Plut. Demetr. c. 46). As to the variant Ἀθηνόδωρος, nothing is known of any Athenian politician of that name. once a magistrate at Athens, Polyeuctus the orator, and Lysanias the son of Aeschrio. He had written to some one to try and procure a cottage for him. When this man was a long time about it, he took for his abode the tub in the Metroön, as he himself explains in his letters. And in summer he used to roll in it over hot sand, while in winter he used to embrace statues covered with snow, using every means of inuring himself to hardship.
2.24
He was great at pouring scorn on his contemporaries. The school of Euclides he called bilious, and Plato’s lectures waste of time, the performances at the Dionysia great peep-shows for fools, and the demagogues the mob’s lacqueys. He used also to say that when he saw physicians, philosophers and pilots at their work, he deemed man the most intelligent of all animals; but when again he saw interpreters of dreams and diviners and those who attended to them, or those who were puffed up with conceit of wealth, he thought no animal more silly. He would continually saySome of the stories which follow are so much alike that it is charitable to suppose that Laertius drew from more than one collection of the sayings of Diogenes. that for the conduct of life we need right reason or a halter.
