[81] The story given by Diogenes L. (ii. 31 and 106; compare Aulus Gellius, ii. 18) about Phædon’s adventures antecedent to his friendship with Sokrates, is unintelligible to me. “Phædon was made captive along with his country (Elis), sold at Athens, and employed in a degrading capacity; until Sokrates induced Alkibiades or Kriton to pay his ransom.” Now, no such event as the capture of Elis, and the sale of its Eupatrids as slaves, happened at that time: the war between Sparta and Elis (described by Xenophon, Hell. iii. 2, 21 seq.) led to no such result, and was finished, moreover, after the death of Sokrates. Alkibiades had been long in exile. If, in the text of Diogenes, where we now read Φαίδων, Ἥλειος, τῶν εὐπατριδῶν — we were allowed to substitute Φαίδων, Μήλιος, τῶν εὐπατριδῶν — the narrative would be rendered consistent with known historical facts. The Athenians captured the island of Melos in 415 B.C., put to death the Melians of military age, and sold into slavery the younger males as well as the females (Thucyd. v. 116). If Phædon had been a Melian youth of good family, he would have been sold at Athens, and might have undergone the adventures narrated by Diogenes. We know that Alkibiades purchased a female Melian as slave (Pseudo-Andokides cont. Alkibiad.).
[82] Diog. L. ii. 105, 126 seq. There was a statue of Menedêmus in the ancient stadium of Eretria: Diogenes speaks as if it existed in his time, and as if he himself had seen it (ii. 132).
Open speech and licence of censure assumed by Menedêmus.
But though this was the common character of the two, in a logical point of view, yet in Stilpon, as well as Menedêmus, other elements became blended with the logical. These persons combined, in part at least, the free censorial speech of Antisthenes with the subtlety of Eukleides. What we hear of Menedêmus is chiefly his bitter, stinging sarcasms, and clever repartees. He did not, like the Cynic Diogenes, live in contented poverty, but occupied a prominent place (seemingly under the patronage of Antigonus and Demetrius) in the government of his native city Eretria. Nevertheless he is hardly less celebrated than Diogenes for open speaking of his mind, and carelessness of giving offence to others.[83]
[83] Diog. L. ii. 129-142.
ANTISTHENES.
Antisthenes took up Ethics principally, but with negative Logic intermingled.
Antisthenes, the originator of the Cynic succession of philosophers, was one of those who took up principally the ethical element of the Sokratic discoursing, which the Megarics left out or passed lightly over. He did not indeed altogether leave out the logical element: all his doctrines respecting it, as far as we hear of them, appear to have been on the negative side. But respecting ethics, he laid down affirmative propositions,[84] and delivered peremptory precepts. His aversion to pleasure, by which he chiefly meant sexual pleasure, was declared in the most emphatic language. He had therefore, in the negative logic, a point of community with Eukleides and the Megarics: so that the coalescence of the two successions, in Stilpon and Menedêmus, is a fact not difficult to explain.
[84] Clemens Alexandr. Stromat. ii. 20, p. 485, Potter. ἐγὼ δ’ ἀποδέχομαι τὸν Ἀφροδίτην λέγοντα κᾂν κατατοξεύσαιμι, εἰ λάβοιμι, &c.