The Life Of Chrysippus

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1:30Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that we like here or recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long-form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy, and most importantly, that you're able to apply it to your actual life. Thank you for listening.

2:10Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. One of my favorite jokes from Epictetus, he hears two of his students bragging about having read all of the works of Chrysippus. Now, Chrysippus is an early Stoic philosopher, and he wrote a lot, something like 700 books. Almost none of them survive except for a few fragments. But what we know of Chrysippus is that he was a particularly dense and maybe not the easiest to read of the Stoics. He's what we think of when we think of philosophers, particularly ancient philosophers, right? Unpronounceable name, super smart, too smart for his own good, pretentious maybe a little bit, all these things.

2:52Anyways, Epictetus hears them bragging about it and he goes, you know what? If Chrysippus was a better writer, you'd have less to brag about. Meaning that if Chrysippus had written more clearly and more accessibly, the students wouldn't be so haughty and pretentious because everyone would be able to read it. And I've always thought of that as a great encapsulation of what Stoicism is really about. It's not totally fair to Chrysippus, who is the successor of Cleanthes, so basically the third head of the Stoic school. We don't really know how good or bad he was as a writer because most of them are lost to us, but this could change.

3:26Actually, they've begun to discover some of his works entombed at Herculaneum and at Pompeii. And so perhaps future generations will have a very different understanding of Chrysippus. Chrysippus was a fighter, a protector, a bit pedantic at times, but overall a fascinating guy, much to learn from. Seneca is a huge fan of his less so Epictetus for the reasons we mentioned earlier. But in today's episode, I wanted to give you Diogenes Laertes' miniature biography of Chrysippus. We've been bringing you some of these lately, read by the one and only Michael Reed, who we brought on as a narrator. He's been doing a great job.

4:07You might recognize him from some of our YouTube videos as well. And if you haven't read Lives of the Stoics, we do a deep dive into Chrysippus there as well. But it's always good to go straight to the source or as close to the source as we can. And this is a biography many, many thousands of years old. It gives you a sense of who these Stoics were, not just what they wrote about, but who they were and how they lived. And hopefully that will help you understand the philosophy a little bit better.

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5:39OTROSUS Crissippus was the son of Apollonius, and a native of either Soli or Tarsus, as Alexander tells us in his successions, and he was a pupil of Cleanthes. Previously, he used to practice running as a public runner. Then he became a pupil of Xenon, or of Cleanthes, as Diocles and the generality of authors say. and while he was still living he abandoned him and became a very eminent philosopher. He was a man of great natural ability and of great acuteness in every way, so that in many points he dissented from Zenon and also from Cleanthes, to whom he often used to say that he only wanted to be instructed in the dogmas of the school and that he would discover the demonstrations for himself.

6:28But whenever he opposed him with any vehemence, he also repented, so that he used frequently to say, In most respects I am a happy man, excepting where Cleanthes is concerned, for in that matter I am far from fortunate. And he had such high reputation as a dialectician that most people thought that if there were such a science as dialectics among the gods, it would be in no respect different from that of Chrysippus. But though he was so eminently able in matter, he was not perfect in style. He was industrious beyond all other men, as is plain from his writings, for he wrote more than 705 books.

7:14And he often wrote several books on the same subject, wishing to put down everything that occurred to him, and constantly correcting his previous assertions and using a great abundance of testimonies. So that, as in one of his writings, he had quoted nearly the whole of the Medea of Euripides, and someone had his book in his hands. This latter, when he was asked what he had got there, made answer, the Medea of Chrysippus, and Apollodorus the Athenian, in his collection of dogmas, wishing to assert that Epicurus had written out of his own head, and without any quotations to support his arguments, was a great deal more than all the books of Chrysippus, speaks thus.

8:00I give his exact words. For if anyone were to take away from the books of Chrysippus all the passages which he quotes from other authors, his paper would be left empty. These are the words of Apollodorus, but the old woman who lived with him, as Diocles reports, used to say that he wrote 500 lines every day, and Hecaton says that he first applied himself to philosophy when his patrimony had been confiscated and seized by the royal treasury. He was slight in person, as is plain from his statue which is in the ceramicus, which is nearly hidden by the equestrian statue near it, in reference to which circumstance.

8:45Carniades called him Crixippus. He was once reproached by someone for not attending the lectures of Ariston, who was drawing a great crowd after him at the time, and he replied, If I had attended to the multitude, I should not have been a philosopher. And once, when he saw a dialectician pressing hard on Cleanthes and proposing sophistical fallacies to him, he said, Cease to drag that old man from more important business, and propose these questions to us who are young. At another time, when someone wishing to ask him something privately was addressing him quietly, but when he saw a multitude approaching began to speak more energetically, he said to him, Alas, my brother, now your eye is troubled.

9:35You were quite sane just now, and yet how quickly have you succumbed to frenzy. And at drinking parties he used to behave quietly, moving his legs about however, so that a female slave once said, It is only the legs of Chrysippus that are drunk. And he had so high an opinion of himself, that once when a man asked him, To whom shall I entrust my son? He said, To me, for if I thought that there was anyone better than myself, I would have gone to him to teach me philosophy. In reference to which anecdote, they report that people used to save him. He was indeed a clear and subtle head. The rest are forms of empty ether made.

10:21And also, for if Chrysippus had not lived and taught, the Stoic school would surely have been not.

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11:57discover your uncharted territory. Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. But at last, when Arsicelaus and Lachides, as Sochen records in his eighth book, came to the academy, he joined them in the study of philosophy, from which circumstance he got the habit of arguing for and against a custom and discussed magnitudes and quantities following the system of the academics. Hermippus relates that one day, when he was teaching in the Odium, he was invited to a sacrifice by his pupils, and that drinking some sweet, unmixed wine, he was seized with giddiness and departed this life five days afterwards, when he had lived seventy-three years, dying in the hundred and forty-third Olympiad, two hundred and eight to two hundred and five B.C., as Apollodorus says in his Chronicles, and we have written an epigram on him.

13:03Chrysippus drank with open mouth some wine, then became giddy and so quickly died. Too little thought he of the porch's wheel, or of his country's, or of his own dear life, and so descended to the realms of hell. But some people say that he died of a fit of immoderate laughter, for that seeing his ass eating figs, he told his old woman to give the ass some unmixed wine to drink afterwards and then laughed so violently that he died. He appears to have been a man of exceeding arrogance. Accordingly, though he wrote such numbers of books, he never dedicated one of them to any sovereign. And he was contented with one single old woman, as Demetrius tells us in his people of the same name.

13:55And when Ptolemy wrote to Cleanthes, begging him either to come to him himself or to send him someone, Spheras went to him, but Chrysippus slighted the invitation. However, he sent for the sons of his sister, Aristocrian and Philocrates and educated them and he was the first person who ventured to hold a school in the open air in the Lyceum as the before-mentioned Demetrius relates there was also another Chrysippus a native of Nidus a doctor from whom Erasistratus testifies that he received great benefit and another also who was a son of his and the physician of Ptolemy who having had a false accusation brought against him was apprehended and punished by being scourged.

14:45There was also a fourth who was a pupil of Erasostratus, and a fifth was an author of a work called Georgics. Now this philosopher used to delight in proposing questions of this sort. The person who reveals the mysteries of the uninitiated commits a sin. The hierophant reveals them to be uninitiated, therefore the hierophant commits sin. Another was, that which is not in the city is also not in the house, but a well is not in the city, therefore there is not a well in the house. Another was, there is a certain head, that head you have not got, there is then a head that you have not got, therefore you have not got ahead.

15:35Again, if a man is in Megara, he is not in Athens. But there is a man in Megara, therefore there is not a man in Athens. Again, if you say anything, what you say comes out of your mouth. But if you say a wagon, therefore a wagon comes out of your mouth. Another was, if you have not lost a thing, you have it, but if you have not lost horns, therefore you have horns. Though some attribute this sophism to eubulides. There are people who run Chrysippus down as having written a great deal that is very shameful and indecent. For in his treatise on the ancient natural historians, he relates the story of Zeus and Hera very indecently, devoting 600 lines to what no one could repeat without polluting his mouth.

16:32For, as it is said, he composes this story, though he praises it as consisting of natural details, in a way more suitable to streetwalkers than to goddesses, and not at all resembling the ideas which have been adopted or cited by writers and paintings. For they were found neither in Poleman, nor in Hypsicrates, nor in Antigonus, but were inserted by himself. And in his treatise on the Republic, he allows people to marry their mothers, or their daughters, or their sons. And he repeats this doctrine in his treatise on those things, which are not desirable for their own sake, in the very opening of it.

17:16And in the third book of his treatise on justice, he devotes a thousand lines to bidding people devour even the dead. In the second book of his treatise on life and means of support, where he is warning us to consider beforehand how the wise man ought to provide for himself with means, he says, And yet, why need he provide himself with means? For if it is for the sake of living, living at all is a matter of indifference. If it is for the sake of pleasure, that is a matter of indifference too. If it is for the sake of virtue, that is of itself sufficient for happiness. But the methods of providing oneself with means are ridiculous.

18:03For instance, some derive them from a king, and then it is necessary to humor him. Some from friendship, and then friendship will become a thing to be bought with a price. Some from wisdom, and then wisdom will become mercenary. And these are the accusations which he brings.

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