Cynics. – A Greek philosophical sect founded by Antisthenes, one of the four schools that arose from the teaching of Socrates. The name means “followers of the Dog,” and “Dog” was the epithet par excellence given to Diogenes of Sinope, who adopted it himself; yet the appellation is already attested for Antisthenes (Diog. Laert., VI, 13), and it may also have been influenced by the fact that Antisthenes held his lectures in the gymnasium of Cynosarges, reserved for sons of non-Athenian mothers. Particularly flourishing in the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C., Cynicism revived again in the imperial age. In the 4th and 5th centuries A.D. it also had adherents among Christians.
THE EARLY CYNICISM. – Represented by Antisthenes, Diogenes, and their immediate pupils. Nothing is known of Antisthenes’ birth or death, though he was already an old man in 436 B.C. In his youth he heard Gorgias, and later attached himself to Socrates. He wrote prolifically: Diogenes Laertius lists 62 titles, but only fragments survive, most of them second-hand. Morally Socratic, he remained tied to Sophistic logic. Yet logical problems were relatively unimportant: wisdom consists in the exercise of virtue, which is indeed teachable and grounded in judgment, but needs neither much learning nor long discourses; it demands only the “Socratic strength.” The sage’s model is Heracles, who had already been portrayed by Prodicus at the crossroads between virtue and pleasure. Hence the rejection of all external goods, not only material but also social, and the dictum that the sage knows no law but the moral one, and participates in political life only within its limits. He was especially harsh toward Athenian democracy: “With your votes,” he said, “you make an ass a general” (Diog. Laert., loc. cit.). On the religious question, Antisthenes stood in clear contradiction to all Greek popular tradition. “According to common belief there are many gods, but by nature God is one” (Philodemus, De piet., p. 76 G).
In a still more radical direction, Antisthenes’ doctrines were developed by Diogenes of Sinope on the Black Sea, who became the perfect type of the Cynic. His life soon became legendary. Tradition says he was the son of a banker. Exiled or driven from his city, he went to Athens, where he became a follower of Antisthenes and put his precepts into practice by reducing his needs to a minimum and living the life of a beggar. He later moved to Corinth, where he died in 324. To him is owed the type of the Cynic who goes about in a cloak, staff, and wallet, preaching morality and lashing human failings with bitter satire. Diogenes Laertius (VI, 80) lists fourteen dialogues and seven tragedies attributed to him, but adds that Sosicrates and Satyrus questioned their authenticity. Another, quite different list was given by Sotion. The issue is insoluble, but at least one work can be confidently ascribed to him, the Republic, cited by Cleanthes and Chrysippus. Diogenes sharpened still further the opposition between nature and custom, already denounced by the Sophists and continued by Antisthenes: whatever accords with nature is good, whatever custom has added is bad. All traditional values must therefore be inverted; he expressed this by saying that one must “counterfeit the currency” (παραχαράττειν τὸ νόμισμα: Diog. Laert., VI, 20). In this way he overturned the theory of human progress held by Anaxagoras, Democritus, and Epicurus. He took as evidence the barbarian peoples and animals, calling the latter his brothers (Diog. Laert., VI, 79), comparing himself to a dog, and turning what had originally been a term of reproach into a title of honor. Consequently he rejected the sense of shame, which became one of the chief characteristics (ἀνάξεια) of Cynicism. The two points on which he carried Antisthenes’ doctrine to its extreme were asceticism, understood not only positively as the search for and endurance of pain, and the demand for the utmost freedom. Whereas Antisthenes had retained the necessity of the state, though distinguishing it from the morality of the sage, Diogenes denied it: the sage knows no laws but those of nature. He was the first to proclaim himself a citizen of the world (Diog. Laert., VI, 63); and along with the state he also rejected the family, advocating the community of women.
Diogenes’ immediate disciples included Philiscus, Onesicritus, author of a romanticized history of Alexander; Metrocles, creator of the genre of “chreiai,” short narratives of notable sayings and deeds; Crates of Thebes, originally wealthy, who gave all his goods to the city, donned the beggar’s cloak, and became the teacher of Zeno the Stoic; and Monimus, who spread the “serio-jocose” genre (σπουδονέλοιον).
THE LITERARY CYNICISM OF THE 3RD CENTURY. – With the representatives of the 3rd century, the harshness of Cynicism softened to adapt to all conditions of life, and it assumed predominantly literary forms. The first figure in whom we encounter this trend, Bion of Borysthenes on the Euxine, already initiates the deviation by beginning the hedonistic current. He was not a very consistent man: he first heard the Academic Crates, then passed to Cynicism, then followed the Cyrenaic Theodorus, and ended with Theophrastus. He remains in literary history for creating a new literary genre, the diatribe (properly “conversation”), the final transformation of the Socratic dialogue, a kind of popular sermon addressed to a fictive listener whose possible objections are anticipated or rebutted. The genre had a long life: it served as a model for Horace’s satires, is found in Seneca and Epictetus, and ultimately in Christian homilies. Of the content and form of his diatribes, now lost, an idea can be formed from the fragments of Tetele of Megara (ca. 240 B.C.) preserved by Stobaeus. More important for its reflections in Roman literature is Menippus of Gadara in Coele Syria, who created a popular type of satire mixing verse and prose. He was imitated by Varro in his Saturae Menippeae and by Seneca in the Apocolocyntosis. In verse, Cercidas of Megalopolis (second half of the 3rd century B.C.), statesman, captain, and lawgiver of his city, composed works in the meters of classical lyric under the title Melianthi; a papyrus
Diogenes of Oinoanda has handed down extensive fragments of him. Converted to atheism by Theodoros, he attacks the concept of divine providence. The only deities for him are Paian (an epithet of the healing Apollo) and Metados, that is, Liberality, two metaphors to denote what man owes to his fellow men.
CYNICISM IN THE IMPERIAL AGE. — During the imperial age, Cynicism, in revival, harks back to the Diogenic model. The beggar’s cloak comes back into fashion, and the roads of the Empire are traversed by wandering preachers. One of these, the only one whose works have been preserved, and which, for their retrospective value, constitute the chief source for reconstructing Cynic thought, is Dio of Prusa in Bithynia (b. c. 40 A.D.), surnamed for his eloquence Chrysostom or Golden-Mouth. Of him 80 orations have come down to us, which are usually divided into sophistic, political, and moral. In the political and moral orations the Cynic motifs are contemporary and fused with Stoic ones. Entirely on the side of the Stoics he is as regards the religious problem, and with them he affirms not only the existence of God but His providential governance of the world and the kinship of men with Him. Particularly important for the history of Cynicism are Oration XIII, in which a modern anti-Semite is reproduced, and the orations relating to Diogenes. In sharp polemic against divination and historical fatalism and against the forms of traditional religion are instead Ennomos of Gadara and his contemporary Demonax of Cyprus, who lived in the 2nd century. Of the former we possess a series of extracts in Eusebius, of the latter an idealized life in Lucian.
CHRISTIAN AND NEOPYTHAGOREAN CYNICISM. — Of the existence of Christian Cynics we have testimony from Julian the Apostate (Or., VI and VII), who combats them, St. Augustine (De civ. Dei, XIX, 19), and St. Gregory of Nazianzus, who had bitter experience of them in the person of Maximus of Alexandria. According to a report of St. Jerome (De vir. illustr., 127), it was none other than this Maximus who is the Heron of Alexandria whom Oration XXV of St. Gregory sings the praises of, but the name was changed by another hand so as not to put the Saint in contradiction with what he had narrated of his false friend in the Contra Maximum and in the De vita sua. Neoplatonic Cynic is instead Sallustius (5th century) in whom we recognize all the most characteristic traits of early Cynicism.