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 ==== To the Uneducated Cynics ====
-Behold the rivers are flowing backwards, as the proverb says! Here is a Cynic who says that **Diogenes** was conceited, and who refuses to take cold baths for fear they may injure him, though he has a very strong constitution and is lusty and in the prime of life, and this too though the Sun-god is now nearing the summer solstice. Moreover he even ridicules the eating of octopus and says that **Diogenes** paid a sufficient penalty for his folly and vanity in that he perished of this diet as though by a draught of hemlock. So far indeed is he advanced in wisdom that he knows for certain that death is an evil. Yet this even the wise Socrates thought he did not know, yes and after him **Diogenes** as well. At any rate when Antisthenes was suffering from a long and incurable illness **Diogenes** handed him a dagger with these words, "In case you need the aid of a friend." So convinced was he that there is nothing terrible or grievous in death. But we who have inherited his staff know out of our greater wisdom that death is a calamity. And we say that sickness is even more terrible than death, and cold harder to bear than sickness. For the man who is sick is often tenderly nursed, so that his ill-health is straightway converted into a luxury, especially if he be rich. Indeed I myself, by Zeus, have observed that certain persons are more luxurious in sickness than in health, though even in health they were conspicuous for luxury. And so it once occurred to me to say to certain of my friends that it were better for those men to be servants than masters, and to be poor and more naked than the lily of the field than to be rich as they now are. For they would have ceased being at once sick and luxurious. The fact is that some people think it a fine thing to make a display of their ailments and to play the part of luxurious invalids. But, says someone, is not a man who has to endure cold and to support heat really more miserable than the sick? Well, at any rate he has no comforts to mitigate his sufferings.
+<blockquote>Behold the rivers are flowing backwards, as the proverb says! Here is a Cynic who says that **Diogenes** was conceited, and who refuses to take cold baths for fear they may injure him, though he has a very strong constitution and is lusty and in the prime of life, and this too though the Sun-god is now nearing the summer solstice. Moreover he even ridicules the eating of octopus and says that **Diogenes** paid a sufficient penalty for his folly and vanity in that he perished of this diet as though by a draught of hemlock. So far indeed is he advanced in wisdom that he knows for certain that death is an evil. Yet this even the wise Socrates thought he did not know, yes and after him **Diogenes** as well. At any rate when Antisthenes was suffering from a long and incurable illness **Diogenes** handed him a dagger with these words, "In case you need the aid of a friend." So convinced was he that there is nothing terrible or grievous in death. But we who have inherited his staff know out of our greater wisdom that death is a calamity. And we say that sickness is even more terrible than death, and cold harder to bear than sickness. For the man who is sick is often tenderly nursed, so that his ill-health is straightway converted into a luxury, especially if he be rich. Indeed I myself, by Zeus, have observed that certain persons are more luxurious in sickness than in health, though even in health they were conspicuous for luxury. And so it once occurred to me to say to certain of my friends that it were better for those men to be servants than masters, and to be poor and more naked than the lily of the field than to be rich as they now are. For they would have ceased being at once sick and luxurious. The fact is that some people think it a fine thing to make a display of their ailments and to play the part of luxurious invalids. But, says someone, is not a man who has to endure cold and to support heat really more miserable than the sick? Well, at any rate he has no comforts to mitigate his sufferings.
 Come now, let me set down for the benefit of the public what I learned from my teachers about the Cynics, so that all who are entering on this mode of life may consider it. And if they are convinced by what I say, those who are now aiming to be Cynics will, I am sure, be none the worse for it; and if they are unconvinced but cherish aims that are brilliant and noble, and set themselves above my argument not in words only but in deeds, then my discourse will at any rate put no hindrance in their way. But if there are others already enslaved by greed or self-indulgence, or to sum it up briefly in a single phrase, by the pleasures of the body, and they therefore neglect my words or even laugh them down just as dogs sometimes defile the front porticoes of schools and law-courts, "'Tis all one to Hippocleides," for indeed we take no notice of puppies who behave in this fashion. Come then let me pursue my argument under headings from the beginning in due order, so that by giving every question its proper treatment I may myself more conveniently achieve what I have in mind and may make it more easy for you also to follow. And since it is a fact that Cynicism is a branch of philosophy, and by no means the most insignificant or least honourable, but rivaling the noblest, I must first say a few words about philosophy itself.
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 And if **Diogenes** did sometimes visit a courtesan though even this happened only once perhaps or not even once let him who would be a Cynic first satisfy us that he is, like **Diogenes**, a man of solid worth; and then if he see fit to do that sort of thing openly and in the sight of all men, we shall not reproach him with it or accuse him. First however we must see him display the ability to learn and the quick wit of **Diogenes**, and in all other relations he must show the same independence, self-sufficiency, justice, moderation, piety, gratitude, and the same extreme carefulness not to act at random or without a purpose or irrationally. For these too are characteristic of the philosophy of **Diogenes**. Then let him trample on vaingloriousness, let him ridicule those who though they conceal in darkness the necessary functions of our nature for instance the secretion of what is superfluous yet in the centre of the market-place and of our cities carry on practices that are most brutal and by no means akin to our nature, for instance robbery of money, false accusations, unjust indictments, and the pursuit of other rascally business of the same sort. On the other hand when **Diogenes** made unseemly noises or obeyed the call of nature or did anything else of that sort in the market-place, as they say he did, he did so because he was trying to trample on the conceit of the men I have just mentioned, and to teach them that their practices were far more sordid and insupportable than his own. For what he did was in accordance with the nature of all of us, but theirs accorded with no man's real nature, one may say, but were all due to moral depravity.
-In our own day, however, the imitators of **Diogenes** have chosen only what is easiest and least burdensome and have failed to see his nobler side. And as for you, in your desire to be more dignified than those early Cynics you have strayed so far from **Diogenes**' plan of life that you thought him an object of pity. But if you did not believe all this that I say about a man whom all the Greeks in the generation of Plato and Aristotle admired next to Socrates and Pythagoras, a man whose pupil was the teacher of the most modest and most wise Zeno, and it is not likely that they were all deceived about a man as contemptible as you make him out to be in your travesty, well, in that case, my dear sir, perhaps you might have studied his character more carefully and you would have progressed further in your knowledge of the man. Was there, I ask, a single Greek who was not amazed by the endurance of **Diogenes** and by his perseverance, which had in it a truly royal greatness of soul? The man used to sleep in his jar on a~bed of leaves more soundly than the Great King on his soft couch under a gilded roof; he used to eat his crust with a better appetite than you now eat your Sicilian courses; he used to bathe his body in cold water and dry himself in the open air instead of with the linen towels with which you rub yourself down, my most philosophic friend! It becomes you well to ridicule him because, I suppose, like Themistocles you conquered Xerxes, or Darius like Alexander of Macedon. But if you had the least habit of reading books as I do, though I am a statesman and engrossed in public affairs, you would know how much Alexander is said to have admired **Diogenes**' greatness of soul. But you care little, I suppose, for any of these things. How should you care? Far from it! 1 You admire and emulate the life of wretched women.
+In our own day, however, the imitators of **Diogenes** have chosen only what is easiest and least burdensome and have failed to see his nobler side. And as for you, in your desire to be more dignified than those early Cynics you have strayed so far from **Diogenes**' plan of life that you thought him an object of pity. But if you did not believe all this that I say about a man whom all the Greeks in the generation of Plato and Aristotle admired next to Socrates and Pythagoras, a man whose pupil was the teacher of the most modest and most wise Zeno, and it is not likely that they were all deceived about a man as contemptible as you make him out to be in your travesty, well, in that case, my dear sir, perhaps you might have studied his character more carefully and you would have progressed further in your knowledge of the man. Was there, I ask, a single Greek who was not amazed by the endurance of **Diogenes** and by his perseverance, which had in it a truly royal greatness of soul? The man used to sleep in his jar on a~bed of leaves more soundly than the Great King on his soft couch under a gilded roof; he used to eat his crust with a better appetite than you now eat your Sicilian courses; he used to bathe his body in cold water and dry himself in the open air instead of with the linen towels with which you rub yourself down, my most philosophic friend! It becomes you well to ridicule him because, I suppose, like Themistocles you conquered Xerxes, or Darius like Alexander of Macedon. But if you had the least habit of reading books as I do, though I am a statesman and engrossed in public affairs, you would know how much Alexander is said to have admired **Diogenes**' greatness of soul. But you care little, I suppose, for any of these things. How should you care? Far from it! You admire and emulate the life of wretched women.
-However, if my discourse has improved you at all you will have gained more than I. But even if I accomplish nothing at the moment by writing on such a great subject thus hastily, and, as the saying is, without taking breath 2 for I gave to it only the leisure of two days, as the Muses or rather you yourself will bear me witness then do you abide by your former opinions, but I at any rate shall never regret having spoken of that great man with due reverence.
+However, if my discourse has improved you at all you will have gained more than I. But even if I accomplish nothing at the moment by writing on such a great subject thus hastily, and, as the saying is, without taking breath for I gave to it only the leisure of two days, as the Muses or rather you yourself will bear me witness then do you abide by your former opinions, but I at any rate shall never regret having spoken of that great man with due reverence.
-//The Loeb Classical Library, Edited by T. E. Page, Litt.D. and W. H. D. Rouse, Litt.D. __The Works of the Emporer Julian, Volume II__ with an English Translation by Winmer Cave Wright, Ph. D.//
+//The Loeb Classical Library, Edited by T. E. Page, Litt.D. and W. H. D. Rouse, Litt.D. __The Works of the Emporer Julian, Volume II__ with an English Translation by Winmer Cave Wright, Ph. D.//</blockquote>