Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

--- diogenes_of_sinope:dio_chrysostom_oration_6 [2012/06/02 12:30] – created frank
+++ diogenes_of_sinope:dio_chrysostom_oration_6 [2014/01/14 23:19] (current) – external edit 127.0.0.1
@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 ====== Diogenes of Sinope | Dio Chrysostom, Oration 6 ======
-When **Diogenes of Sinope** was exiled from that place, he came to Greece and used to divide his time between Corinth and Athens. And he said he was following the practice of the Persian king. For that monarch spent the winters in Babylon and Susa, or occasionally in Bactra, which are the warmest parts of Asia, and the summers in Median Ecbatana, where the air is always very cool and the summer is like the winter in the region of Babylon. So he too, he said, changed his residence according to the seasons of year. For Attica had no high mountains, nor rivers running through it as had the Peloponnese and Thessaly; its soil was thin and the air so dry that rain rarely fell, and what did fall was not retained. Besides, it was almost entirely surrounded by the sea; from which fact indeed it got its name, since Attica is a sort of beach-land. The city, moreover, was low-lying and faced to the south, as shown by the fact that those sailing from Sunium could not enter the Peiraeus except with a south wind. Naturally, therefore, the winters were mild. In Corinth, on the other hand, the summer was breezy, since currents of air always met there on account of the bays that dented the shore. The Acrocorinthus, too, overshadows it, and the city itself rather inclines toward the Lechaeum and the north. **Diogenes** thought that these cities were far more beautiful than Ecbatana and Babylon, and that the Craneion, and the Athenian acropolis with the Propylaea were far more beautiful structures than those abodes of royalty, yielding to them only in size. And yet the circumference of Athens was two hundred stades, now that the Peiraeus and the connecting walls had been added to the compass of the city — for this whole area was not inhabited in ancient times — so that Athens was one-half as large as Babylon, if we could take as true what was said of things there. Moreover, in respect to the beauty of the harbours, and, further, to the statues, paintings, the works in gold, silver, and bronze, in respect to the coinage, the furnishings, the splendour of the houses, he thought that Athens was far superior; only he, for his part, did not care much about such things.
+<blockquote>When **Diogenes of Sinope** was exiled from that place, he came to Greece and used to divide his time between Corinth and Athens. And he said he was following the practice of the Persian king. For that monarch spent the winters in Babylon and Susa, or occasionally in Bactra, which are the warmest parts of Asia, and the summers in Median Ecbatana, where the air is always very cool and the summer is like the winter in the region of Babylon. So he too, he said, changed his residence according to the seasons of year. For Attica had no high mountains, nor rivers running through it as had the Peloponnese and Thessaly; its soil was thin and the air so dry that rain rarely fell, and what did fall was not retained. Besides, it was almost entirely surrounded by the sea; from which fact indeed it got its name, since Attica is a sort of beach-land. The city, moreover, was low-lying and faced to the south, as shown by the fact that those sailing from Sunium could not enter the Peiraeus except with a south wind. Naturally, therefore, the winters were mild. In Corinth, on the other hand, the summer was breezy, since currents of air always met there on account of the bays that dented the shore. The Acrocorinthus, too, overshadows it, and the city itself rather inclines toward the Lechaeum and the north. **Diogenes** thought that these cities were far more beautiful than Ecbatana and Babylon, and that the Craneion, and the Athenian acropolis with the Propylaea were far more beautiful structures than those abodes of royalty, yielding to them only in size. And yet the circumference of Athens was two hundred stades, now that the Peiraeus and the connecting walls had been added to the compass of the city — for this whole area was not inhabited in ancient times — so that Athens was one-half as large as Babylon, if we could take as true what was said of things there. Moreover, in respect to the beauty of the harbours, and, further, to the statues, paintings, the works in gold, silver, and bronze, in respect to the coinage, the furnishings, the splendour of the houses, he thought that Athens was far superior; only he, for his part, did not care much about such things.
 Besides, the king had a very long distance to travel in changing residences; he had to spend pretty much the larger part of the winter and summer on the road. He himself, on the other hand,
@@ Line 34: / Line 34: @@
 "I, however," says **Diogenes**, "go by night whithersoever I will and travel by day unattended, and I am not afraid to go even through an army if need be, without the herald's staff, yea, and amid brigands; for I have no enemy, public or private, to block my way. If all the gold, all the silver, and all the copper should give out, that would not injure me in the least. And if an earthquake lays all the houses low as happened once in Sparta, and all the sheep are killed so that not a single man has wherewithal to clothe himself, and want overwhelms not only Attica but Boeotia as well and the Peloponnesus and Thessaly, as it is said to have done aforetime, I shall fare none the worse nor be the more destitute.  For how much more naked shall I be than I am now, how much more homeless? I shall find all the food I need in apples, millet, barley, vetches, the cheapest of lentils, acorns roasted in the ashes, and cornel-berries, on which Homer says Circe feasted Odysseus' comrades and on which even the largest animals can subsist."
+\\
+\\
+Source: Discourses by Dio Chrysostom published in the Loeb Classical Library, 1932. The text is in the public domain. </blockquote>