THE FIRST CYNICISM. — It is represented by Antisthenes, Diogenes and their immediate disciples. Neither the year of Antisthenes’ birth nor that of his death is known, but he was already an old man in 366 BC. In his youth he heard Gorgias, later he became a follower of Socrates. He wrote extensively: Diogenes Laertius lists 62 titles. Only fragments remain to us, most of them second-hand. In moral matters he was Socratic, yet in logic he remained tied to sophistry. Logical problems, however, were of relative importance: wisdom consists in the exercise of virtue, which is indeed teachable and grounded in judgment, but requires neither much learning nor long discourses, demanding only the “Socratic strength.” The model of the sage was Heracles, already portrayed by Prodicus at the crossroads between virtue and pleasure. Hence came 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 particularly 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 traditional belief there are many gods, but according to nature God is one” (Philodemus, De piet., p. 76 G).
In an even more radical sense, the doctrines of Antisthenes were developed by Diogenes of Sinope in Pontus, who remained the most perfect type of the Cynic. His life soon became legendary. According to tradition, he was the son of a banker. Having fled or been exiled from his city, he came to Athens, where, becoming a follower of Antisthenes, he put the master’s precepts into practice by reducing his needs to a minimum and living the life of a beggar. He later went to Corinth, where he died in 324 BC. To him belongs the type of the Cynic who wanders about in a cloak, carrying a staff and a knapsack, preaching morality and biting men’s faults with sharp satire. Diogenes Laertius (VI, 80) lists 14 dialogues and 7 tragedies attributed to him, but adds that Sosicrates and Satyrus questioned their authenticity. Another entirely different list was given by Sotion. The question is insoluble, but at least one work may be confidently attributed to him, the Republic, mentioned by Cleanthes and Chrysippus. Diogenes sharpened still further the opposition between nature and custom, denounced by the Sophists and continued by Antisthenes: all that accords with nature is good, what custom has added is bad. All traditional values must therefore be reversed; he expressed this by saying that one must “counterfeit the coinage” (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 proof the barbarian peoples and animals, calling the latter his brothers (Diog. Laert., VI, 79), comparing himself to a dog and making a title of honor what had originally been a term of reproach. 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 seeking and enduring of pain, and the demand for the utmost freedom. While Antisthenes had retained the necessity of the state, though distinguishing from it 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 with the state he also abolished the family, advocating the community of women.
Diogenes had as immediate disciples: 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 and donned the beggar’s cloak, becoming the teacher of Zeno the Stoic; and Monimus, who spread the genre of the “serio-scherzoso” (σπουδονέλοιον).
CYNICISM IN THE THIRD CENTURY. — With the representatives of the 3rd century, the harshness of Cynicism softened to conform to all conditions of life, and it assumed predominantly literary forms. The first figure encountered, Bion of Borysthenes on the Euxine Pontus, already begins the deviation by initiating the hedonistic current. He was not a very consistent man: first he listened to Crates the Academic, then passed to Cynicism, then followed Theodorus the Cyrenaic, and finally 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, Epictetus, and finally in Christian homilies. Of the content and form of his diatribes, now lost, an idea may be formed from the fragments of Tetele of Megara (ca. 240 BC) 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. Verse was used by Cercidas of Megalopolis (second half of the 3rd century BC), statesman, captain and lawgiver of his city. His compositions, in the meters of classical lyric, bore the title Melianthi: a papyrus
from Oxyrhynchus has restored extensive fragments to us. Converted to atheism by Theodorus, he attacks the concept of divine providence. The only deities for him are Paian (an epithet of Apollo the healer) and Metados, that is, Liberality, two metaphors for what man owes to his fellows.