Book 9
5.27
Demetrius in his work on Men of the Same Name says that he bit off, not the ear, but the nose. According to Antisthenes in his Successions of Philosophers, after informing against the tyrant’s friends, he was asked by the tyrant whether there was anyone else in the plot; whereupon he replied, Yes, you, the curse of the city!; and to the bystanders he said, I marvel at your cowardice, that, for fear of any of those things which I am now enduring, you should be the tyrant’s slaves. And at last he bit off his tongue and spat it at him; and his fellow-citizens were so worked upon that they forthwith stoned the tyrant to death.The heroic death of Zeno and his defiance of the tyrant furnished a theme for various writers; cf. Plutarch, Adv. Col. p. 1126 d; De garrulitate, p. 505 d; De Stoicorum repugn. p. 1051 c, where he is ranked with Socrates, Pythagoras and Antiphon. Cf. also Clem. Alex. Strom. iv. 57, citing Eratosthenes. In this version of the story most authors nearly agree, but Hermippus says he was cast into a mortar and beaten to death.
5.28
Of him also I have written as followsAnth. Pal. vii. 129.: You wished, Zeno, and noble was your wish, to slay the tyrant and set Elea free from bondage. But you were crushed; for, as all know, the tyrant caught you and beat you in a mortar. But what is this that I say? It was your body that he beat, and not you.
5.28
In all other respects Zeno was a gallant man; and in particular he despised the great no less than Heraclitus. For example, his native place, the Phocaean colony, once known as Hyele and afterwards as Elea, a city of moderate size, skilled in nothing but to rear brave men, he preferred before all the splendour of Athens, hardly paying the Athenians a visit, but living all his life at home.
