sun is carried up into the warmer region; whence, beating on the primal moisture, it evolves the salt sea. He conceived of an inner and outer air, and a necessary equilibrium between the two. The outer moved the blood and bodily functions in man, but he also inhaled the finer air of thought. Air is eternal, composing an infinite number of worlds moving in an infinite void; from it all things have life and soul; without it the intellect fails, the animal dies, and dissolution ensues. Diogenes held, with Heraclitus, that the wisest soul is dry and in a state of light. The perfect intelligence of pure air depended upon its freedom from contact with grosser particles. It is with this as with the rest of the ancient systems which mixed together physical with metaphysical conceptions; we better understand how the confusion arose in the minds of the early speculators, than the precise notions at which they arrived, or how much of their language was metaphorical, how much real. As the mind of man was transferred by Anaxagoras to the mind of the world (νους); so the breath of man was transferred by Diogenes to the breath of the world (anima mundi).—J. N.
DIOGENES, the Cynic, was born at Sinope in Pontus, 412 b.c. Early in life, in consequence of some discreditable transactions in which his family became involved, he left his native town, and went to Athens. After passing some years in the dissipation of the city, he was led by the reaction which often follows on such a course, to become a convert to the ascetic philosophy of Antisthenes, and outstripped his preceptor in the inculcation and practice of a rigid austerity. He resorted to the most extravagant practices to mortify his body—dressed in rags, fed on raw flesh, rolled himself in the summer's sand and the winter's snow, and slept by doorways in the street. The celebrated story of the tub is probably an exaggeration, but it illustrates the common feeling regarding his mode of life. A ship in which he was sailing, bound for Ægina, having been captured by pirates, Diogenes was conveyed to Crete, and sold as a slave. When some one asked the prisoner what he knew, his answer was—"How to command men; sell me to some one who wishes a ruler." He was ultimately bought by Xeniades of Corinth, and passed the rest of his life, consulted and esteemed by his master, and intrusted with the care of his children. His famous interview with Alexander, if anything more than imaginary, must be referred to this period. "I am Alexander," said the king; and "I am Diogenes," replied the philosopher. "Can I do anything for you?" was the gracious rejoinder—met by the surly sentence, "Yes, you can stand out of my light." The ethics of Socrates taught that we must at once make the best of the life around us, and strive to become as far as possible independent of circumstances. The schools which followed him, each taking a partial view of his teaching, developed the two views of the truth into opposite and exclusive exaggerations; Aristippus and the Cyrenaics, on the one side, advocating a crude Epicureanism in abandonment to the enjoyments of the hour Antisthenes, on the other, preaching a crude Stoicism in his doctrine of isolation and overstrained self-denial. The cynics caricatured at once the more complete philosophy which preceded, and that of the stoics who came after them. Diogenes caricatured the cynics, and his practice approached to a practical illustration of Rousseau's paradox, that the nearer our life is brought to that of the brutes the better. He cannot be said to have had a philosophy. His teaching was purely practical, calling on men to want nothing, not by gratifying their desires, but by having no wants; to despire luxury, and elevate themselves above circumstances by isolation. He ridiculed all speculation which did not result in some tangible good, and constituting himself a sort of universal critic during the time of his sojourn in Athens, was feared and respected as a universal railer. He laughed at many bad and some good developments of his age. Poets, musicians, orators, men of science, alike came under the lash of his indiscriminate and snarling sarcasm. He was of use in perpetually recalling them from their abstractions and artistic refinements to the evils which lay around them, and their daily duty. Half Mentor, half Thersites, Diogenes was a maimed imitation of Socrates; what he added to the ethics of his master detracted from their truth. But he had the merit of consummate consistency; and the records which have come down to us of the purity of his life, help to reconcile us to its eccentricity. When Diogenes knocked at my door, said Xeniades, I knew a good genius was coming into my house. Almost the only speculative doctrine attributed to him is that more properly belonging to his namesake of Apollonia, that minds are made of air variously deteriorated by various proportions of moisture. Diogenes lived ninety years, and his death in 323 b.c. coincided with the arrival of Epicurus at Athens.—J. N.
DIOGENES LAËRTIUS, the biographer of the Greek philosophers, was born at Laërte in Cilicia. By some his surname is derived from a Roman family, one of the members of which is supposed to have been the patron of an ancestor of Diogenes, but it is probable he was called Laërtius from his native town. Ranke (De Lex. Hesych.) supposes that his real name was Diogenianus, and identifies him with the Diogenianus of Cyzicus. We know nothing certainly about his life, studies, or age. Plutarch, Sextus Empiricus, and Saturninus are the latest writers he quotes; and it is accordingly supposed that he flourished towards the close of the second century after Christ. Some, however, place him in the time of Severus and his successors, or even as late as the age of Constantine. The work, which alone has brought his name down to posterity, is in MSS. entitled "Περὶ Βίων, δογματων καὶ αποφθεγμάτων τῶν ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ ευδόκιμησάντων." From some allusions which it contains, it has been conjectured that he wrote it for a lady of rank, who is supposed by some to have been Arria, the philosophical friend of Galen, and by others Julia Domna, the wife of Septimius Severus. It is a crude contribution towards the history of philosophy, containing a brief account of the lives, doctrines, and sayings of most persons who had been called philosophers, and consists of ten books. The author begins with the earliest history of philosophy, and endeavours to refute the opinions of those writers who sought its origin out of Greece. He then divides the philosophy of the Greeks into the Ionic and the Italian. The life and opinions of Epicurus are treated with especial minuteness. This part of his work (the tenth book) is particularly valuable, on account of its possessing some original letters of that philosopher, which comprise a pretty satisfactory epitome of the Epicurean doctrines, and throw great light on the great poem of Lucretius. Diogenes, however, was not equal to the task he undertook. He has shown very little judgment or discrimination, and has in reality produced only a compilation of heterogeneous and often directly contradictory facts and statements. They are jumbled together without plan, criticism, or connection. But as a collection of facts it has proved of incalculable value, most of the modern histories of ancient philosophy being formed upon it. The first part of those of Brucker and Stanley especially are little more than translations from Diogenes. "His work," it has been said, "contains a rich store of living features, which serve to illustrate the private life of the Greeks, and a considerable number of fragments of works which are lost. Montaigne (Essais ii. 10), therefore, justly wished that he had a dozen Laërtiuses, or that his work were more complete and better arranged." Besides his history of the Greek philosophers, Diogenes wrote some other works, to which he himself refers with the words "ὡς ἐν ἄλλοις ειρήκαμην." He composed also a number of epigrams, many of which are interspersed in his biographies; but his poetical attempts are not of the happiest, and the vanity with which he quotes them gives us an unfavourable notion of his taste. His history was first introduced into western Europe in a Latin translation made by Ambrosius, a pupil of Chrysoloras. The Greek text was, however, soon printed. Of the older editions, the most excellent was by Meibom, Amsterd., 1692; while the best modern one is that by H. G. Hübner, Leipzig, 2 vols. 8vo, 1828—R. M., A.
DION CASSIUS COCCEIANUS, a celebrated historian of Rome. The gentile name of Cassius was probably derived from some one of his ancestors, who, on becoming a Roman citizen, had been admitted into the gens Cassia. He took the cognomen of Cocccianus from Dion Chrysostom Cocccianus, the orator, who was his grandfather on the mother's side. Dion Cassius was born at Nicæa in Bithynia, about a.d. 155. On the completion of his literary studies, which had been conducted with great care, he accompanied his father to Cilicia, whence, after the death of the latter, he went to Rome. He arrived there either in the last year of the reign of Marcus Aurelius, or in the first of that of Commodus, and was immediately raised to the rank of a Roman senator. Under Commodus he obtained the ædileship and questorship, and the office of prætor in 193, thirteen years after his coming to Rome. During this period, besides pleading frequently in the courts of justice, he was engaged in collecting materials for a history of the Emperor
