Diogenes of Babylon
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Diogenes of Babylon, also known as Diogenes of Seleucia, or Diogenes the Stoic, was a Stoic philosopher, lived c. 230-c. 150 BC.

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.[1]

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.[2]

Cicero calls Diogenes "a great and important Stoic."[3] 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.[4]

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

  1. Διαλεκτικὴ τέχνη (Art of Dialectic).[5]
  2. On Divination.[6]
  3. On the Goddess Athena, (whose birth he, like Chrysippus, explained by physiological principles).[7]
  4. Περὶ τοῦ τῆς ψυχῆς ἡγεμονικοῦ (On the Ruling Faculty of the Soul).[8]
  5. Περὶ φωνῆς (On Language, which seems to have been about the philo­sophy of language).[9]
  6. Περὶ εὐγενείας (Οn Αris­tocracy of Βirth), in several books.[10]
  7. Περὶ νόμων (On Laws).[11]

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.[12]

According to Lucian [13], Diogenes died at the age of 88; since in Cicero's Cato Maior, he is spoken of as deceased, he must have died before 151 BC.

Notes

  1. ^ Cicero, Academica, ii. 30; De Oratore, ii. 38
  2. ^ Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, vii. 14; Cicero, Academica, ii. 45
  3. ^ Cicero, De Officiis, iii. 12
  4. ^ Obbink, D., "Craft, Cult, and Canon in the Books from Herculaneum," in Philodemus and the New Testament World (Leiden: Brill, 2004), p. 73-84.
  5. ^ Diogenes Laertius, vii. 51
  6. ^ Cicero, De Divinatione, i. 3, ii. 43
  7. ^ Cicero, De Natura Deorum, i. 15
  8. ^ Galen.
  9. ^ Diogenes Laertius, vii. 55
  10. ^ Athenaeus, iv. p. 168
  11. ^ In several books, the first of which is quoted in Athenaeus, xii.; cf. Cicero, De Legibus iii. 5, where "Dio" is a false reading for "Diogenes"
  12. ^ Cicero, De Officiis, iii. 12, 13, 23; De Finibus, iii. 10, 15
  13. ^ Lucian, Macrob., 20

This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology by William Smith (1870).

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