CINICI. – Greek philosophical school, founded by Antisthenes, one of the four that arose from the teaching of Socrates. The name means “followers of the Dog,” and “Dog” was said par excellence and applied to himself by Diogenes of Sinope; but the appellation is already attested for Antisthenes (Diog. Laert., VI, 13), and the fact that he held his lessons in the gymnasium of Cynosarges, reserved for the sons of non-Attic mothers, must also have contributed to II. Particularly flourishing in the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C., Cynicism regained strength in the imperial age. In the 4th and 5th centuries A.D. it also had representatives among Christians.
THE FIRST CYNICISM. — It is represented by Antistene, Diogene and his immediate disciples. Neither the year of Antistene’s birth nor that of his death is known, but he was already old in 366. As a young man he heard Gorgia; later he joined Socrate. He wrote a great deal: Diogene Laerzio’s list contains 62 titles. Only fragments remain to us, most of them preserved at second hand. Socratic in ethics, he remains linked to sophistry in the field of logic. Logical problems, however, have only relative importance: wisdom consists in the practice of virtue, which is indeed teachable and has its foundation in judgment, but requires neither extensive knowledge nor lengthy discourses, asking only for «Socratic strength». The model of the sage is Eracle, whom Prodico had already represented at the crossroads between virtue and pleasure. Hence the denial of all external goods, not only material but also social ones, and the assertion that the sage recognizes no law other than the moral law, and participates in political life only within its limits. He was particularly harsh toward Athenian democracy: «With your votes—you say—make a donkey become a horse» (Diog. Laert., loc. cit.). With regard to the religious question, Antistene placed himself in clear contradiction with the whole of Greek popular tradition. «According to traditional belief there are many gods, but according to nature God is one» (Filodemo, De piet., p. 76 G).
The doctrines of Antistene were developed in an even more radical sense by Diogene of Sinòpe on the Pontus,
who remained the most perfect type of the c. His life was soon enveloped in legend. According to tradition, he was the son of a banker. Having fled or been driven from his city, he came to Athens, where, becoming a follower of Antistene, he put his precepts into practice by reducing his needs to a minimum and living the life of a beggar. After moving to Corinth, he died there in 324. He is responsible for the type of the c. who goes about in a cloak, with staff and wallet, preaching morality and biting human faults with harsh satire. Diogene Laerzio (VI, 80) reports as his the titles of 14 dialogues and 7 tragedies, but adds that Soscate and Satiro disputed their authenticity. Another list, entirely different, was given by Sozione. The question is insoluble, but at least one work may confidently be considered his: the Republic, mentioned by Cleante and Crisippo. Diogene sharpened still further the opposition between nature and convention, denounced by the sophists and continued by Antistene: everything that is according to nature is good; what convention has added to it is bad. All traditional values must therefore be given the opposite sign: this he expressed by saying «to alter the stamp on the coins» (παραγαπέτειν τὸ νόμισμα: Diog. Laert., VI, 20). In this way he overturned the theory of human progress advanced by Anassagora, Democrico and Epicuro. As material for his demonstrations he took barbarian peoples and animals; the latter he called his brothers (Diog. Laert., VI, 79), while he compared himself to a dog, making a title of honor out of what had originally been a term of abuse. Consequently, he opposed the sense of shame, which became one of the principal characteristics (ἀναξέξια) of Cynicism. The two points on which he carried the doctrine of Antistene to its extreme were asceticism, understood not only positively as the pursuit and endurance of pain, and the demand for the greatest possible freedom. If Antistene had retained the necessity of the State, while distinguishing the sage’s morality from it, Diogene denied it: the sage recognizes no laws other than those of nature. He was the first to proclaim himself a citizen of the world (Diog. Laert., VI, 63); and together with the State he also abolished the family, advocating the communality of women.
Diogene’s immediate disciples were: Filisco; Onesicrito, author of a fictionalized history of Alessandro; Metrocle, creator of the genre of «chreiai» (χρεῖαι), brief accounts of noteworthy sayings and deeds; Cratete of Tebe, originally wealthy, who gave all his possessions to the city, donned the beggar’s cloak, and became the teacher of Zenone the Stoic; and Monimo, who spread the genre of the «serious joke» (ἀπουδογέλοισον).
LITERARY CYNICISM OF THE 3rd CENTURY. — With the representatives of the 3rd century, the harshness of Cynicism is softened so as to conform to every condition of life, and it assumes predominantly literary forms. The first whom we encounter, Bione of Borysthenes on the Euxine Pontus, already begins the deviation by initiating the hedonistic current. He was not a very consistent man: at first he listened to Crates the Academic, then he turned to Cynicism, thereafter he followed Theodore the Cyrenaic, and finally Theophrastus. He remains in the history of literature for having created a new literary genre, the diatribe (properly, conversation), the final transformation of the Socratic dialogue, a kind of sermon in a popular tone addressed to a fictitious listener, whose possible objections are anticipated or refuted. The genre had a long life: it served as a model for the satires of Horace, is found in Seneca and Epictetus, and ultimately in Christian homilies. An idea of the content and form of his lost diatribes may be gained from the fragments of Teles of Megara (ca. 240 B.C.) preserved by Stobaeus. More important for the influences found in Roman literature is Menippus of Gadara in Coelesyria, who created a popular type of satire composed of verse and prose. He was imitated by Varro in his Saturae Menippeae and by Seneca in the Apocalyptosis. Verse was employed by Cercidas of Megalopolis (second half of the 3rd century B.C.), a statesman, captain, and legislator of his city. His compositions, in the meters of classical lyric poetry, bore the title Meliambi: a papyrus from Oxyrhynchus has returned extensive fragments of them. Converted to atheism by Theodore, he attacks the concept of divine providence. For him the only divinities are Paian (an epithet of Apollo the healer) and Metados, that is, Liberality, two metaphors indicating what human beings owe to their fellow men.
CYNICISM IN THE IMPERIAL AGE. – During the imperial age, Cynicism, undergoing a revival, returned to the model of Diogenes. The beggar’s cloak once again came into fashion, and the roads of the Empire were traversed by wandering preachers. One of these, the only one whose works have been preserved, and whose retrospective value makes them the principal source for reconstructing Cynic thought, was Dione da Prusa in Bithynia (b. ca. A.D. 40), called Chrysostom, or Golden Mouth, on account of his eloquence. Eighty orations of his have come down to us, customarily divided into sophistic, political, and moral orations. In the political and moral orations, Cynic themes are conjoined and fused with Stoic ones. He is entirely on the side of the Stoics with regard to the religious problem, and with them he affirms not only the existence of God, but also his providential governance of the world and the kinship of human beings with him. Particularly important for the history of Cynicism are Oration XIII, in which an Antisthenic model is reproduced, and the orations concerning Diogenes. In sharp polemic against divination and historical fatalism, and against the forms of traditional religion, stand instead Oenomaus of Gadara and his contemporary Demonax of Cyprus, who lived in the second century. Of the former we possess a series of excerpts in Eusebius; of the latter, an idealized life in Lucian.