Talk:Diogenes and Alexander

Greek or Latin

strange that these "sayings" of a Greek are in Latin

just saying - 99.102.175.140 06:12, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes I noticed the same oddity. I've edited the page, to point out that Diogenes spoke Greek. I can't help wondering if this particular Latin phrase is in any way famous or notable. Singinglemon (talk) 19:09, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Diogenes, Alexander, and the pile of bones

I just thought I'd mention one little historical oddity, now that there's a page on Diogenes and Alexander. A couple of years ago I went through the page on Diogenes of Sinope and added in the references for all the anecdotes which appear on the page, but there was one anecdote which drove me nuts, because it doesn't seem to come from any ancient source, but nevertheless has been around for several hundred years. The anecdote, which comes in various forms, is:

Alexander found the philosopher looking attentively at a pile of human bones. Diogenes explained, "I am searching for the bones of your father but cannot distinguish them from those of a slave."

It's a rather bizarre story, (in some versions the context seems to be that Alexander finds Diogenes in some sort of charnel house), but its moral is pretty clear. It seems to have enjoyed it's own independent life, at least since the 16th century, albeit in books of no great importance. The story has even been depicted in some (admittedly obscure) artworks, which shows that it was fairly well-known. But once we reach the 20th century the story just pretty much disappears (except in books which I think are copying their information from Wikipedia!). In the end, the only ancient parallel I found was in a satire by Lucian ([1]) which has Menippus in the underworld, where Menippus sees a pile of bones and can't tell "Thersites from Nireus the beauty, beggar Irus from the Phaeacian king, or cook Pyrrhias from Agamemnon's self." That, I think, is probably the origin of the anecdote. It would almost be worth mentioning the anecdote on this page, except, of course, I can't find a single secondary source which discusses it's origin or history. Oh well, I'm just glad to get that out of my system. :) Singinglemon (talk) 16:52, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

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Untranslated text

Okay, what exactly is the point of including this in the English article?

Valerius Maximus comments "Alexander Diogenem gradu suo diuitiis pellere temptat, celerius Darium armis". Seneca says "multo potentior, multo locupletior fuit [diogenes] omnia tunc possidenta Alexandro: plus enim erat, quod hic nollet accipiere quam quor ille posset dare.", and adds "Alexander Macedonum rex gloriari solebat a nullo se beneficiis uictum.".

To prove that whoever put it there has access to these quotes in Latin? Untranslated, they're profoundly useless and, IMO, ought to be removed. Also, why is "medieval" in that section being spelled with a ligature? It all smacks of extreme pretentiousness. RobertM525 (talk) 20:20, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

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allegory of the cave

It is interesting there are no references to how whole anecdote converges to allegory of the cave, to which it is most historically related/rooted into. 185.81.77.84 (talk) 00:02, 6 September 2022 (UTC)