A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

DIOGENES.
lost. Montaigne (Essais, ii. 10) therefore justly
wished, that we had a dozen Lairtiuses, or that his
work were more complete and better arranged. One
must indeed confess, that he made bad use of the
enormous quantity of materials which he had at his
command in writing his work, and that he was unequal to the task of writing a history of Greek philosophy. His work is in reality nothing but a compilation of the most heterogeneous, and often directly contradictory, accounts, put together without
plan, criticism, or connexion. Even some early
scholars, such as H. Stephens, considered these biographies of the philosophers to be anything but
worthy of the philosophers. His object evidently
was to furnish a book which was to amuse its readers by piquant anecdotes, for he had no conception
of the value and dignity of philosophy, or of the
greatness of the men whose lives he described. The
traces of carelessness and mistakes are very numerous; much in the work is confused, and there is
much also that is quite absurd; and as far as philosophy itself is concerned, Diogenes very frequently
did not know what he was talking about, when he
abridged the theories of the philosophers.
The love of scandal and anecdotes, which had
arisen from petty views of men and things, at a
time when all political freedom was gone, and
among a people which had become demoralized,
had crept into literature also, and such compilations as those of Phlegon, Ptolemaeus Chennus,
Athenaeus, Aelian, and Diogenes Ladrtius display
this taste of a decaying literature. All the defects
of such a period, however, are so glaring in the
work of Diogenes, that in order to rescue the common sense of the writer, critics have had recourse
to the hypothesis, that the present work is a mutilated abridgment of the original production of
Diogenes. (J. G. Schneider in F. A. Wolf's Lit.
Anal. iii. p. 227.) Gualterus Burlaeus, who lived
at the close of the 13th century, wrote a work
" De Vita et Moribus Philosophorum," in which he
principally used Diogenes. Now Burlaeus makes
many statements, and quotes sayings of the philosophers, which seem to be derived from no other
source than Diogenes, and yet are not to be found
in our present text. Burlaeus, moreover, gives us
several valuable various readings, a better order
and plan, and several accounts which in his work
are minute and complete, but which are abridged in
Diogenes in a manner which renders them unintelligible. From these circumstances Schneider infers,
that Burlaeus had a more complete copy of Diogenes. But the hope of discovering a more complete MS. has not been realized as yet.
The work of Diogenes became first known
in western Europe through a Latin translation
made by Ambrosius, a pupil of Chrysoloras, which,
however, is rather a free paraphrase than a
translation. It was printed after Ambrosius's death.
(Rome, before A. D. 1475; reprinted Venice, 1475;
Brixen, 1485; Venice, 1493; and Antwerp, 1566.)
Of the Greek text only some portions were then
printed in the editions of Aristotle, Theophrastus,
Plato, and Xenophon. The first complete edition
is that of Basel, 1533, 4to., ap. Frobenium. It was
followed by that of H. Stephens, with notes,
which, however, extend only to the ninth book,
Paris, 1570, and of Isaac Casaubon, with notes,
1594. Stephens's edition, with the addition of
Hesychius Milesius, de Vita Illustr. Philos. appeared again at Colon. Allobrog. 1515. Then fol

DIOGENES. 1023
lowed the editions of Th. Aldobrandinus (Rome,
1594, fol.), corrected by a collation of new MSS.,
and of J. Pearson with a new Latin translation
(London, 1664, fol.), which contains the valuable
commentary of Menage, and the notes of the earlier
commentators. All these editions were surpassed
in some respects by that of Meibom (Amsterd.
1692, 2 vols.4to.), but the text is here treated carelessly, and altered by conjectures. This edition was
badly reprinted in the editions of Longolius (1739
and 1759), in which only the preface of Longolius
is of value. The best modern edition is that of
H. G. Hiibner, Leipzig, 2 vols. 8vo. 1828 -1831. The text is here greatly improved, and
accompanied by short critical notes. In 1831,
the commentaries of Menage, Casaubon, and
others, were printed in 2 vols. 8vo. uniformly with
Hibner's edition. (Comp. P. Gassendi, Animadv.
in x librum Diog. Laert., Lugdun. 1649, 3 vols.
fol. 3rd edition, Lugdun. 1675; I. Bossius, Commentationes Laiertianae, Rome, 1788, 4to.; S. Battier, Observat. in Diog. Lairt. in the Mus. Helvet.
xv. p. 32, &c.; Fabric. Bibl. Graec. v. p. 564.)
Diogenes seems to have taken the lists of the
writings of his philosophers from Hermippus and
Alexandrian authors. (Stahr, Aristot. ii. p. 68;
Brandis, in the Rhein. AMus. i. 3, p. 249; Trendelenburg, ad Aristot. de Anim. p. 123.) Besides
the work on Greek philosophers, Diogenes Laertius also composed other works, to which he himself (ii. 65) refers with the words W.s Ev 'AAots
elsp'cKayv. The epigrams, many of which are interspersed in his biographies, and with reference
to which Tzetzes (Chil. iii. 61) calls him an epigrammatic poet, were collected in a separate work,
and divided into several books. (Diog. Ladrt. i.
39, 63, where the first book is quoted.) It bore
the title i' Trdciperpos, but, unfortunately, these
poetical attempts, so far as they are extant, shew
the same deficiencies as the history of philosophy,
and the vanity with which he quotes them, does
not give us a favourable notion of his taste. (G.
H. Klippel, de Diogcenis Lailrtii Vita, Scriptis atque
Auctoritate, Gittingen, 1831, 4to.) [A. S.]
DIO'GENES OENO'MAUS, a tragic poet,
who is said to have begun to exhibit at Athens
in B. c. 404. Of his tragedies only a few titles remain, namely, Ove'rTqs, 'AXLXAAXvs, 'EAe'vi, 'HpaIch s, M'S'Ea, OlSirovs, Xpvainorros, s/A?; and
it is remarkable that all of these, except the last,
are ascribed by Diogenes Laertius to Diogenes the
Cynic. (vi. 80, or 73.) Others ascribe them to
Philiscus of Aegina, a friend of Diogenes the Cynic
(Menagius, ad Diog. Lacrt. 1. c.), and others to
Pasiphaon. Melanthius in Plutarch (de Aud. Poet.
4, p. 41, d.) complains of the obscurity of a certain
Diogenes. Aelian (V. 1. iii. 30, N. A. vi. 1)
mentions a tragic poet Diogenes, who seems, however, to be a different person from either Diogenes
the Cynic or Diogenes Oenomaids. (Suid. s. v.;
Ath. xiv. p. 636, a.; Fabric. Bibl. Graec. ii.
p. 295.) [P. S.]
DIO'GENES (AroyE'v7s), a Greek PHYSICIAN
who must have lived in or before the first century
after Christ, as he is quoted by Celsus. (De Medic.
v. 19, 27, pp. 90, 104.) Some of his medical formulae are preserved by Celsus (1. c.), Galen (de
Compos. JMIedicam. sec. Locos, iii. 3, vol. xii. p. 686;
ix. 7, vol. xiii. p. 313), and Aetius (i. 3. 109, p.
135). He is probably not the same person with any
of the other individuals of this name. [W.A. G.]