Epicurus provided for his friend Metrodorus’ daughter in his will. Wills indicate that both male and female slaves were often freed on the deaths of their masters. On the other hand, wills and letters can reveal philosophers’ positive attitudes towards the women in their lives. In a fit of anger, he killed his wife by throwing a footstool at her, or by a kick, when she was pregnant, having been egged on by the slanderous tales of concubines, whom he afterwards burnt alive. However, whether or not it was conceptualized, misogyny existed. Whether there was a concept of misogyny in ancient times may be questionable. I searched in Perseus and found only one mention of the word, and that in a secondary source. When I first read this it struck me that I could not remember another use of the word ‘misogyny’ in the classics. He rarely employed men-servants once or twice indeed he might have a young girl to wait on him in order not to seem a misogynist. We are told, for example, that Pythagoras ‘got most of his moral doctrines from the Delphic Priestess Themistoclea’ (8 Pythagoras 169). But in focusing on women, we can also learn a lot about the male philosophers. Diogenes’ main concern was to write about men. Pamphila, though, is lost to us, just like Thales’ and Chrysippus’ slaves. One sire there is, he has twelve sons, and each of these has twice thirty daughters different in feature some of the daughters are white, the others again are black they are immortal, and yet they all die. The following riddle of Cleobulus is preserved in Pamphila’s collection: We also get the occasional glimpse of the sorts of things she recorded: ’ Putting these sentences together, it is possible to conclude that Pamphila wrote at least seven books of Commentaries and at least 32 books of Memorabilia. He often wrote things like: ‘Pamphila in the second book of her Memorabilia. She is only known because writers like Diogenes quoted from her works. Wikipedia tells us that all her works have been lost, but that she lived in Epidaurus in the first century CE. In the second I shall explore some of the anecdotes specifically about women, and in the third I will look at what Diogenes has to say about the roles women adopted.ĭiogenes often quoted his sources, and consequently we know of the existence of the historian Pamphila, because he used her writings extensively for his descriptions of early philosophers. This first one presents some general points about Diogenes’ writing. We do not know these women’s names, but we know they had a sense of humor, and, perhaps, senses of themselves.Īnecdotes like these led me to read further, and to try to identify all the women Diogenes mentioned, which eventually led to this series of blogposts. Perhaps Thales’ female companion was an astronomer. It is said that once, when he was taken out of doors by an old woman in order that he might observe the stars, he fell into a ditch, and his cry for help drew from the old woman the retort, “How can you expect to know all about the heavens, Thales, when you cannot even see what is just before your feet?” Here is an anecdote about the philosopher Thales: Carlo and Filippo Albacini: Chrysippusįor example, the philosopher Chrysippus appears to have been accompanied constantly by a nameless female slave to whom there are only three references, one of which demonstrates part of her character:Īt wine-parties he used to behave quietly, though he was unsteady on his legs which caused the woman-slave to say, “As for Chrysippus, only his legs get tipsy.” However, these trivia appealed to me because they seemed to convey the humanity of the characters he wrote about. Wikipedia reports that he has been criticized for focusing on trivia while not fully understanding philosophical principles. He gives us anecdotes, and he wrote his own poetry about his subjects. He described philosophical thought, and gave biographical details, genealogies, and quotes from letters and wills. The piece of writing that has survived to this day is his Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, which is a compilation of biographies. Diogenes Laertius wrote in Greek in Anatolia in the third century CE.
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