Kitap 6
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Zeno of Citium in his Anecdotes relates that in a fit of heedlessness he sewed a sheepskin to his cloak. He was ugly to look at, and when performing his gymnastic exercises used to be laughed at. He was accustomed to say, raising his hands, Take heart, Crates, for it is for the good of your eyes and of the rest of your body.
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You will see these men, who are laughing at you, tortured before long by disease, counting you happy, and reproaching themselves for their sluggishness. He used to say that we should study philosophy to the point of seeing in generals nothing but donkey-drivers. Those who live with flatterers he declared to be as defenceless as calves in the midst of wolves; for neither these nor those have any to protect them, but only such as plot against them. Perceiving that he was dying, he would chant over himself this charm, You are going, dear hunchback, you are off to the house of Hades,—bent crooked by old age. For his years had bowed him down.
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When Alexander inquired whether he would like his native city to be rebuilt, his answer was, Why should it be? Perhaps another Alexander will destroy it again. Ignominy and Poverty he declared to be his country, which Fortune could never take captive. He was, he said, a fellow-citizen of Diogenes, who defied all the plots of envy. Menander alludes to him in the Twin Sisters in the following lines: Wearing a cloak you’ll go about with me, As once with Cynic Crates went his wife: His daughter too, as he himself declared, He gave in marriage for a month on trial.
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We come now to his pupils.
Chapter 6. METROCLES (c. 300 B.C.)
