The uppermost row contains his account of his purpose and something upon old age—very fragmentary. There follow a letter of Epicurus to his mother, and another letter from some one unidentified to one Menneas, and then a series of apophthegms and sentences. Thus fragment 27 is a column of ten lines to this effect: "Nothing is so contributive to good spirits, as not to do many things, nor take in hand tiresome matters, nor force oneself in any way beyond one's own strength, for all these things perturb nature." Another column proclaims: "Acute pains cannot be long; for either they quickly destroy life and are themselves destroyed with it, or they receive some abatement of their acuteness." These platitudes are, as we may guess, an afterthought.
The middle row, the first to be inscribed, deals with the Epicurean theory of atoms—not by apophthegm or aphorism, but with something of the fulness and technicality of a treatise. "Herakleitos of Ephesus, then, said fire was the element; Thales of Miletus water; Diogenes of Apollonia and Anaximenes air; Empedocles of Agrigentum both fire and air and water and earth; Anaxagoras of Clazomenæ the homoeomeries of each thing in particular; those of the Stoa matter and God. But Democritus of Abdera said atomic natures—and he did well; but since he made some mistakes about them, these will be set right in our opinions. So now we will accuse the persons mentioned, not from any feeling of illwill against them, but wishing the truth to be saved (sôthênai)." So he takes them in turn and argues at leisure. The large fragment 45 discusses astronomy in its four columns—in particular, the sun and its apparent distance and its nature. Fr. 48 (four columns) goes on to treat of civilization,—of the development of dress from leaves to skins and woven garments, without the intervention "of any other god or of Athena either." Need and time did all. Hermes did not invent language. In fr. 50, we read that Protagoras "said he did not know if there are gods. That is the same thing as saying he knew there are not." Fr. 51 deals with death—"thou hast even persuaded me to laugh at it. For I am not a whit afraid because of the Tityos-es and Tantalus-es, whom some people paint in Hades, nor do I dread decay, reflecting that the [something] of the body ... [three broken lines] ... nor anything else." At the end of the row another letter begins (fr. 56) "[Diogen]es to Anti[pater] greeting." He writes from Rhodes, he says, just before winter begins, to friends in Athens and elsewhere, whom he would like to see. Though away from his country, he knows he can do more for it in this way than by taking part in political life. He wishes to show that "that which is convenient to Nature, viz. Ataraxia is the same for all." He is now "at the sunset of life," and all but departing; so, since most men, as in a pestilence, are diseased with false opinion, which is very infectious, he wishes "to help those that shall be after us; for they too are ours, even if they are not yet born"; and strangers too. "I wished to make use of this colonnade and to set forth in public the medicine of salvation" (tà tês sôtêrías protheînai pharmaka, fr. 58). The idle fears that oppressed him, he has shaken off; as to pains—empty ones he has abolished utterly, and the rest are reduced to the smallest compass. He bewails the life of men, wasted as it is, and weeps for it; and he has "counted it a good man's part" to help men as far as he can. That is why he has thought of this inscription which may enable men to obtain "joy with good spirits" (tê[s met' euthu]mías charâ[s]), rather than of a theatre or a bath or anything else of the kind, such as rich men would often build for their fellow-citizens (fr. 59).
The discussion which follows in the third series of columns need not here detain us. Diogenes appeals for its consideration—that it may not merely be glanced at in passing (fr. 61, col. 3); but it will suffice us at present to note his statement that his object is "that life may become pleasant to us" (fr. 63, col. 1), and his protest—"I will swear, both now and always, crying aloud to all, Greeks and barbarians, that pleasure is the objective of the best mode of life, while the virtues, which these people now unseasonably meddle with (for they shift them from the region of the contributive to that of the objective) are by no means an objective, but contributive to the objective" (fr. 67, col. 2, 3). Lastly we may notice his reference to the improvement made in the theory of Democritus by the discovery of Epicurus of the swerve inherent in the atoms (fr. 81).
Altogether the inscription is as singular a monument of antiquity as we are likely to find. What the fellow-citizens of Diogenes thought of it, we do not know. Perhaps they might have preferred the bath or other commonplace gift of the ordinary rich man. It is a pity that Lucian did not see the colonnade.
Side by side with Lucian, Sextus and Diogenes it is interesting to consider their contemporaries who were not of their opinion.
Perhaps, while the stone-masons were day by day carving up the long inscription at Oinoanda, others of their trade were busy across the Ægæan with one of another character. At any rate, the inscription which M. Julius Apellas set up in the temple of Asklepios in Epidauros, belongs to this period. Like Diogenes, he is not afraid of detail.
Marcus Julius Apellas
"In the priesthood of Poplius Ælius Antiochus.
"I, Marcus Julius Apellas of Idrias and Mylasa, was sent for by the God, for I was a chronic invalid and suffered from dyspepsia. In the course of my journey the God told me in Ægina not to be so irritable. When I reached the Temple, he directed me to keep my head covered for two days; and for these two days it rained. I was to eat bread and cheese, parsley with lettuce, to wash myself without help, to practise running, to drink citron-lemonade, to rub my body on the sides of the bath in the bath-room, to take walks in the upper portico, to use the trapeze, to rub myself over with sand, to go with bare feet in the bath-room, to pour wine into the hot water before I got in, to wash myself without help, and to give an Attic drachma to the bath-attendant, to offer in public sacrifices to Asklepios, Epione and the Eleusinian goddesses, and to take milk with honey. When for one day I had drunk milk alone, the god said to put honey in the milk to make it digestible.
"When I called upon the god to cure me more quickly, I thought it was as if I had anointed my whole body with mustard and salt, and had come out of the sacred hall and gone in the direction of the bath-house, while a small child was going before holding a smoking censer. The priest said to me: 'Now you are cured, but you must pay up the fees for your treatment.' I acted according to the vision, and when I rubbed myself with salt and moistened mustard, I felt the pain still, but when I had bathed, I suffered no longer. These events took place in the first nine days after I had come to the Temple. The god also touched my right hand and my breast.