Book 7
7.181
Apollodorus of Athens in his Collection of Doctrines, wishing to show that what Epicurus wrote with force and originality unaided by quotations was far greater in amount than the books of Chrysippus, says, to quote his exact words, If one were to strip the books of Chrysippus of all extraneous quotations, his pages would be left bare. So much for Apollodorus. Of Chrysippus the old woman who sat beside him used to say, according to Diocles, that he wrote 500 lines a day. Hecato says that he came to the study of philosophy, because the property which he had inherited from his father had been confiscated to the king’s treasury.
7.182
In person he was insignificant, as is shown by the statue in the Ceramicus, which is almost hidden by an equestrian statue hard by; and this is why Carneades called him Crypsippus or Horse-hidden. Once when somebody reproached him for not going with the multitude to hear Ariston, he rejoined, If I had followed the multitude, I should not have studied philosophy. When some dialectician got up and attacked Cleanthes, proposing sophistical fallacies to him, Chrysippus called to him, Cease to distract your elder from matters of importance; propound such quibbles to us juniors. Again, when somebody who had a question to ask was steadily conversing with him in private, and then upon seeing a crowd approaching began to be more contentious, he said: Ah! brother mine, thine eye is growing wild: To madness fast thou’rt changing, sane but now.Eur. Or. 253.
