Diogenes the Stoic

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Diogenes the Stoic, also known as Diogenes of Babylon or Diogenes the Babylonian, was a Stoic philosopher.

Born in Seleucia on the Tigris in Babylonia, Diogenes was educated at Athens under the auspices of Chrysippus and succeeded Zeno of Tarsus as head of the Stoic school there in the 2nd century BC. Among his pupils was Panaetius. He seems to have closely followed the views of Chrysippus, especially on dialectic, in which he is said to have instructed Carneades (Cicero, Acad. ii. 30, De Oratore ii. 38).

Together with Carneades and Critolaus, he was sent to Rome to appeal a fine of hundred talents imposed on Athens in 155 BC for the sack of Oropus. They delivered their epideictic speeches first in numerous private assemblies, then in the Senate. Diogenes pleased his audience chiefly by his sober and tem­perate mode of speaking (Gellius, vii. 14; Cicero, Acad. ii. 45).

Cicero calls Diogenes "a great and important Stoic" (De Officiis iii. 12). In the works of the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus found in carbonized papyrus rolls recovered from the ruins of the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, Diogenes is discussed more frequently than any philosopher besides Epicurus himself.^[1]

He was the author of several works, of which, however, little more than the titles is known:

1. Διαλεκτικὴ τέχνη (Art of Dialectic; Diogenes Laertius, vii. 51)
2. On Divination (Cicero, De Divinatione i. 3, ii. 43)
3. On the Goddess Athena, whose birth he, like Chrysippus, explained by physiological principles (Cicero, De Natura Deorum i. 15)
4. Περὶ τοῦ τῆς ψυχῆς ἡγεμονικοῦ (On the Ruling Faculty of the Soul; Galen)
5. Περὶ φωνῆς (On Language; Diogenes Laertius vii. 55), which seems to have been about the philo­sophy of language
6. Περὶ εὐγενείας (Οn Αris­tocracy of Βirth), in several books (Athenaeus iv. p. 168)
7. Περὶ νόμων (On Laws), likewise in several books, the first of which is quoted in Athenaeus (xii. p. 526; cf. Cicero, De Legibus iii. 5, where "Dio" is a false reading for "Diogenes")

There are several passages in Cicero from which we may infer that Diogenes wrote on other subjects also, such as duty, the highest good, and the like (De Officiis iii. 12, 13, 23; De Finibus iii. 10, 15; cf. C.F. Thiery, Dissertatio de Diogene Babylonio, (Louvain, 1830), p. 17, etc., and Pars posterior, p. 30, etc.).

According to Lucian (Macrob. 20), Diogenes died at the age of 88; since in Cicero's Cato Maior (7), he is spoken of as deceased, he must have died before 151 BC.

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This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology by William Smith (1867).