Diogene and Alexander.docVIP

Diogenes and Alexander Lying on the bare earth, shoeless, bearded, half-naked, he looked like a beggar or lunatic. He was one, but not the other. He had opened his eyes with the sun at dawn, scratched, done his business like a dog at the roadside, washed at the public fountain, begged a piece of breakfast bread and a few olives, eaten them squatting on the ground, and washed them down with a few handfuls of water scooped from the spring. (Long ago he had owned a rough wooded cup, but he threw it away when he saw a boy drinking out of his hollowed hands.) Having on work to go to and no family to provide for, he was free. As the market place filled up with shoppers and merchants and slaves and foreigners, he had strolled through it for an hour or two: Everyone knew him, or knew of him. They could threw sharp question at him and get sharp answers. Sometimes they threw bits of food, and got scant thanks; sometimes a mischievous pebble, and got a shower of stones and abuse, they were not quite sure weather he was mad or not. He knew they were mad, each in a different way; they amused him. Now he was back at his home. 2011. It was not a house, not even a squatter’s hut. He thought everybody lived far too elaborately, expensively, anxiously. What good is a house? No one needs privacy; natural acts are not shameful; we all do the same things, and need not hide them. No one needs beds and chairs and such furniture：the animals live healthy lives and sleep on the ground. All we require, since nature did not dress us properly, is one garment to keep us warm, and some shelter from rain and wind. So he had one blanket-to dress him in the daytime and cover him at night-and he slept in a cask. His name is Diogenes. He was the founder of the creed called Cynicism (doggishness) ; he spent mush of his life in the rich, lazy, corrupt Great city of Corinth, mocking and satirizing its people, and occasionally converting one of them. His home was not a barrel made of wood; too expensive