# The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers — Character guide

> Key figures in The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius.

- [Plato](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/plato.md): Plato stands at the center of Diogenes Laërtius's third book, the heir who gave Socrates' restless questioning a school, a system, and a library of dialogues. His relationship to his teacher is the book's great hinge: he
- [Socrates](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/socrates.md): Socrates dominates the middle books as the teacher whose pupils founded rival schools — Plato, Antisthenes, Aristippus, Euclid — each claiming his legacy. Diogenes Laërtius shows him as both the most delightful of conver
- [Diogenes of Sinope](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/diogenes.md): Diogenes of Sinope arrives in Athens as a fugitive — his father ran the public bank and adulterated the coinage — and attaches himself to Antisthenes with such pertinacity that even a raised stick cannot drive him off. H
- [Zeno of Citium](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/zeno.md): Zeno arrives in Athens after a shipwreck and turns to philosophy, building the Stoic school whose doctrines Diogenes Laërtius treats as the most manly of the Socratic inheritances. He is a man of political weight in his 
- [Epicurus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/epicurus.md): Epicurus closes Diogenes Laërtius's Lives as the founder of the last great school, the Garden, whose doctrines of atomism, friendship, and tranquil pleasure stand in deliberate contrast to Stoic austerity. His letters an
- [Aristotle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/aristotle.md): Aristotle appears in Diogenes Laërtius as the great classifier, the pupil of Plato who founded the Lyceum and whose writings span logic, ethics, politics, and natural science. His relationship to Plato is the book's cent
- [Pythagoras](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/pythagoras.md): Pythagoras founded the Italian school that turned philosophy into a way of life, drawing disciples into a brotherhood bound by silence, ritual, and the belief that souls migrate through bodies. He carried geometry to per
- [Thales](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/thales.md): Thales stands at the head of Diogenes Laërtius's whole enterprise, the Ionian founder from whom the entire Greek philosophical succession is traced, counted among the Seven Sages and credited with predicting an eclipse. 
- [Heraclitus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/heraclitus.md): Heraclitus of Ephesus, nicknamed the cuckoo and the riddler, composed a book so obscure that even Socrates reportedly said it needed a Delian diver to fathom. He held the many in contempt, refused to legislate for his ci
- [Democritus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/democritus.md): Democritus inherited a fortune, took the smallest share in cash so he could wander Egypt, Persia, and perhaps India in search of wisdom, and returned to shut himself in a garden cottage where he cut himself off from the 
- [Antisthenes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/antisthenes.md): Antisthenes came to Socrates and took from him not dialectic but endurance, dressing in a threadbare cloak and praising leisure as the most valuable of possessions. He turned Euthyphron from prosecuting his own father, t
- [Chrysippus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/chrysippus.md): Chrysippus, third head of the Stoa, was so formidable a logician that people said if the gods practiced dialectic it would be his. He was slight of build, so obscure beside a nearby equestrian statue that Carneades calle
- [Empedocles](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/empedocles.md): Pre-Socratic philosopher who made the four elements the building blocks of all things, and whose self-sufficiency and virtue-as-weapon doctrine helped shape the Cynic and Stoic traditions.
- [Xenophon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/xenophon.md): Athenian soldier and historian who followed Socrates after being blocked in a narrow lane, then recorded his master's conversations for posterity.
- [Solon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/solon.md): Athenian lawgiver and one of the Seven Sages, whose neat dress and gymnasium habits belied the political wisdom that saved his city from ruin.
- [Pyrrho](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/pyrrho.md): Founder of the skeptical school that bears his name, who doubted everything, answered few questions, and skewered pretension with devastating one-liners.
- [Anaxagoras](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/anaxagoras.md): Clazomenae philosopher who first attributed mind to matter, gave away his patrimony, and pointed to heaven when accused of neglecting his country.
- [Protagoras](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/protagoras.md): Abderan sophist who declared man the measure of all things, charged a hundred minae for lessons, and was banished for doubting the gods.
- [Parmenides](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/parmenides.md): In Diogenes' pages Parmenides is the revered elder of Elea, a man so trusted in politics that his city made him admiral, and so admired for private virtue that his doctrines carried weight beyond the school. His teaching
- [Cleanthes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/cleanthes.md): Cleanthes inherits Zeno's school and turns it toward a rugged, self-sufficient ethic: the wise man needs nothing but the strength of Socrates, marries for children, and builds his fortress in impregnable thoughts. Nickna
- [Arcesilaus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/arcesilaus.md): Arcesilaus arrives in Athens as a young man torn between rhetoric and philosophy, and his choice of Crantor over his brother's wishes seals his place in the Academy. He is the first to make the Platonic method of questio
- [Carneades](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/carneades.md): Carneades stands at the head of the skeptical Academy, a philosopher whose dialogues on justice, the gods, and pleasure made him a formidable and unsettling presence in Rome and Athens alike. His wit is as sharp as his a
- [Theophrastus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/theophrastus.md): Born Tyrtamus, he was renamed Theophrastus by Aristotle for the divine character of his eloquence, and he inherited both the Lyceum and Aristotle's son Nicomachus as a charge. His apothegms—better a horse without a bridl
- [Strato of Lampsacus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/strato.md): Strato of Lampsacus takes over the Lyceum after Theophrastus and is remembered chiefly for his work on nature, earning the nickname the Physicist. In Diogenes' account he is a quieter figure than his predecessors, but hi
- [Xenocrates](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/xenocrates.md): Xenocrates inherits the Academy after Plato and rules it as a kind of living statue: austere, trustworthy, and famously unmoved when the courtesan Phryne takes refuge in his bed. Plato's jibe that he needs the spur while
- [Polemo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/polemo.md): Polemo succeeds Xenocrates at the Academy and becomes the model of the disciplined philosophical life, lecturing while walking and inspiring pupils to build huts around his garden. He praises Xenocrates' guileless nature
- [Crates of Thebes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/crates.md): Crates of Thebes abandons his wealth for the Cynic life, and his wit becomes a weapon: told of a rich man in love with an ugly woman, he offers to find a prettier one for ten talents. He writes dialogues on riches, pleas
- [Bion of Borysthenes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/bion.md): Bion of Borysthenes drifts from Cynicism into the Cyrenaic sect, earning the label Theodorean and a reputation for wit rather than system. He leaves behind eminent pupils including Arcesilaus, and his name is invoked amo
- [Menedemus of Eretria](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/menedemus.md): Menedemus of Eretria establishes his own school and is remembered through letters that expose the precariousness of Greek intellectual life, as when Anaximenes writes to Pythagoras that he cannot contemplate the skies wh
- [Stilpo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/stilpo.md): Stilpo the Megarian earns the epithet 'wise' for a logical sharpness that Diogenes treats as both impressive and slightly suspect, since Polemo warns that dialectical cleverness can coexist with inconsistency of characte
- [Euclides of Megara](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/euclides.md): Euclides of Megara was a devoted follower of Socrates who, after the master's death, sheltered Plato and other Socratics in his hometown and built a school around the art of argument. He was known for his combative style
- [Aristippus of Cyrene](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/aristippus.md): Aristippus of Cyrene was a student of Socrates who took the master's lessons in self-command and turned them toward a philosophy of refined enjoyment. He was at home in courts and marketplaces alike, and his willingness 
- [Anaximenes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/anaximenes.md): Anaximenes of Miletus was the third of the great Milesian cosmologists, following Thales and Anaximander, and he taught that everything arises from air through rarefaction and condensation. His surviving letters to Pytha
- [Anaximander](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/anaximander.md): Anaximander of Miletus was a pupil of Thales who refused to name a familiar element as the first principle, positing instead the apeiron — the boundless, indefinite stuff from which all worlds emerge and to which they re
- [Xenophanes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/xenophanes.md): Xenophanes of Colophon was a traveling rhapsode who used verse to attack the anthropomorphic gods of Homer and Hesiod, arguing that if oxen could paint, their gods would look like oxen. He was also a serious epistemologi
- [Melissus of Samos](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/melissus.md): Melissus of Samos was a statesman and naval commander who brought the Eleatic philosophy of Parmenides and Zeno into the political arena. He argued that the universe is one, unchanging, and infinite, and that motion and 
- [Leucippus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/leucippus.md): Leucippus stands at the head of the atomist tradition, the thinker who first proposed that reality consists of atoms and empty space, though he left so little trace that even his existence was doubted. His legacy passes 
- [Diogenes of Apollonia](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/diogenes_of_apollonia.md): Diogenes of Apollonia held that air is the primary substance and the source of life, mind, and motion, a monistic vision that made the whole universe breathe as one. Unlike many of his peers, he was deeply engaged in pol
- [Anaxarchus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/anaxarchus.md): Anaxarchus belonged to the school of Democritus and traveled with Alexander's circle, where his calm indifference to fortune became the stuff of anecdote. His most famous moment comes when a tyrant orders him pounded in 
- [Timon of Phlius](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/timon.md): Timon of Phlius was a student of Pyrrho and a writer of biting satirical verse, using his Silloi to skewer the pretensions of dogmatic philosophers across the schools. He admired Plato enough to own all his writings, yet
- [Heraclides Ponticus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/heraclides_ponticus.md): Heraclides Ponticus was a wealthy native of Heraclea who studied under Speusippus, Aristotle, and the Pythagoreans, and wrote an astonishing range of dialogues on everything from justice to the heavenly bodies. The Athen
- [Demetrius of Phalerum](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/demetrius_phalereus.md): Demetrius of Phalerum was a student of Theophrastus who became the effective ruler of Athens under Cassander, and later a librarian and advisor in Ptolemaic Alexandria. He appears throughout the Lives as a source and a w
- [Lycon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/lycon.md): Lycon inherits the headship of Aristotle's school after Strato, a caretaker of the Peripatetic tradition whose long catalogue of dialogues and commentaries — on riches, pleasure, justice, friendship, the gods — shows a p
- [Speusippus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/speusippus.md): Speusippus takes over the Academy when Plato dies, inheriting a school already thick with rivalries and strong personalities. Diogenes Laërtius frames him amid a swirl of successors — Xenocrates, Aristotle, and others — 
- [Crantor](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/crantor.md): Crantor arrives from Soli, becomes a devoted pupil of Xenocrates alongside Polemo, and earns a reputation for exquisite taste — he loved Homer and Euripides, coined vivid phrases like a tragedian's voice 'all over bark,'
- [Lacydes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/lacydes.md): Lacydes leads the Academy but teaches like a proto-Stoic: the wise man is self-sufficient, virtue is the only good, obscurity of fame is as good as labor, and one should marry for children, choosing the most beautiful wi
- [Clitomachus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/clitomachus.md): Clitomachus, a Carthaginian by birth, becomes head of the Academy, and Diogenes Laërtius places him in a dense web of Socratic anecdote: Socrates barefoot in a cloak, mocked by comic poets, praised by Xenophon as the mos
- [Ariston of Chios](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/ariston.md): Ariston of Chios studies under Zeno and belongs to the first generation of Stoics, but in Diogenes Laërtius he surfaces chiefly in the roll-call of thinkers — Pherecydes, Anaximander, Thales — whose lives and doctrines f
- [Herillus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/herillus.md): Herillus belongs to the first generation of Stoics circling Zeno, the kind of philosopher who defines himself by what he refuses — pleasure, flattery, easy disciples. His sharpest tension is between his humble origins (a
- [Dionysius of Heraclea](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/dionysius.md): Dionysius is the great apostate of the early Stoic school, a man whose body overruled his doctrine. A former poet and devoted pupil of Zeno, he abandoned the porch for the Cyrenaic garden the moment his eyes began to tor
- [Sphaerus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/sphaerus.md): Sphaerus occupies the quiet middle of the Stoic lineage, one of those figures whose importance lies less in original doctrine than in transmission — he carried the school's teachings forward when its founders were gone. 
- [Epicharmus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/epicharmus.md): Epicharmus sits at the strange intersection of Athenian comedy and pre-Socratic thought, a writer whose stagecraft doubled as philosophy. His surviving lines argue that nothing stays the same — that you and I are differe
- [Archytas](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/archytas.md): Archytas is the rare Pythagorean who actually ran things — a magistrate and military commander whose political career did not stop him from writing on number, harmony, and the nature of the universe. His friendship with 
- [Alcmaeon of Croton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/alcmaeon.md): Alcmaeon stands at the head of a tradition that treated the body as a philosophical problem, not just a medical one. He wrote on sensation, on the soul, and on the equilibrium of opposites that produces health — ideas th
- [Hippasus of Metapontum](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/hippasus.md): A Pythagorean of Metapontum whose name survives less for what he proved than for what he allegedly revealed: that the ratio of a square's diagonal to its side cannot be expressed as a fraction. In a brotherhood that trea
- [Philolaus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/philolaus.md): Philolaus of Crotona, pupil of Pythagoras, is the man through whom the school's secret doctrines reached the outside world — Plato himself is said to have acquired his book, and from it to have drawn the Timaeus. He taug
- [Eudoxus of Cnidus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/eudoxus.md): Eudoxus of Cnidus arrived in Athens poor and hungry, attached himself to the Socratic circle, then sailed to Egypt with letters of introduction and spent a year and a half among the priests, adopting their customs down t
- [Pittacus of Mytilene](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/pittacus.md): Pittacus of Mytilene, one of the Seven Sages, ruled his city and then gave it up, and his sayings survive as a kind of practical ethics: power shows the man, watch your opportunity, do not reproach a man with his misfort
- [Bias of Priene](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/bias.md): Bias of Priene belongs to the Seven Sages, but the doctrines Diogenes records under his name have a harder, more self-reliant edge: virtue is a weapon no one can take from you, prudence is the safest fortification, and o
- [Cleobulus of Lindos](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/cleobulus.md): Cleobulus of Lindos ruled his city and wrote verse, and his maxims in Diogenes are a strange mix of the homely and the severe: honor old age, restrain anger, do not let your tongue outrun your sense, prefer punishment to
- [Periander of Corinth](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/periander.md): Periander rules Corinth with the uneasy authority of a man who invites philosophers to dine while privately atoning for a crime he calls unintended. His letter to Procles—half plea, half threat over the alienation of his
- [Anacharsis](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/anacharsis.md): Anacharsis arrives in Athens as a foreigner with two languages and no patience for ceremony, and his blunt wit—the 'Scythian conversation'—becomes a proverb. He wins Solon's friendship by sheer audacity at the doorstep, 
- [Myson of Chenae](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/myson.md): Myson of Chenae is the sage nobody expected—a rustic from a village so minor that his selection by the Delphic oracle became a standing rebuke to famous men. His wit is laconic and practical, the kind that deflates prete
- [Epimenides of Crete](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/epimenides.md): Epimenides belongs to the borderland between philosopher and holy man: he purifies cities, interprets oracles, and reportedly lives far longer than any man should. His famous paradox—that Cretans are always liars, spoken
- [Pherecydes of Syros](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/pherecydes.md): Pherecydes of Syros stands at the hinge between myth and philosophy, writing of Zeus, Time, and Chthon as the first principles of the world. He predicts disasters with unsettling accuracy, advises Sparta to renounce gold
- [Archelaus of Athens](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/archelaus.md): Archelaus is the bridge between Anaxagoras and Socrates, the teacher who turned the younger man from stone-cutting to moral inquiry. He is a philosopher of the physical world—boundless universe, sun as greatest star—whos
- [Aeschines of Sphettus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/aeschines.md): A Socratic dialogue-writer whose modest means and fierce loyalty to Socrates made him a quiet rival to Plato's literary legacy.
- [Phaedo of Elis](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/phaedo.md): Taken from Elis as a prisoner of war and ransomed into philosophy, he founded his own school and gave his name to Plato's most haunting dialogue.
- [Crito of Alopece](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/crito.md): A wealthy Athenian farmer and devoted friend of Socrates, whose practical generosity and unwavering loyalty made him a pillar of the philosopher's final days.
- [Simon the Shoemaker](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/simon.md): An Athenian shoemaker who turned his workshop into a Socratic salon, proving that philosophy could thrive as easily on leather as in the Academy.
- [Glauco](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/glauco.md): A Socratic disciple whose austere doctrines on virtue and self-sufficiency laid the groundwork for the Cynic and Stoic traditions that followed.
- [Simias of Thebes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/simias.md): A Theban philosopher who brought Boeotian practicality to Socratic circles, remembered for his dialogues on philosophy and his presence at Socrates' deathbed.
- [Cebes of Thebes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/cebes.md): Theban philosopher and companion of Socrates, remembered for dialogues on death, pleasure, and justice that made him a quiet force in the Socratic circle.
- [Monimus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/monimus.md): Cynic philosopher who studied under Diogenes of Sinope, known for his sharp apothegms and for treating virtue as a weapon no one can take away.
- [Onesicritus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/onesicritus.md): Cynic philosopher and historian who accompanied Alexander the Great, blending the rigors of the dog's life with the ambitions of empire.
- [Metrocles](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/metrocles.md): Cynic philosopher who studied under Crates, remembered for his austere life and for the sharp sayings that carried the Cynic spirit forward.
- [Hipparchia of Maroneia](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/hipparchia.md): Cynic philosopher of Maroneia who married Crates and chose poverty, scandalizing her family by living openly as a woman among philosophers.
- [Menippus of Gadara](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/menippus.md): Cynic philosopher and satirist from Gadara, known for his seriocomic style that mixed laughter with hard truths about human folly.
- [Antigonus of Carystus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/antigonus.md): Greek writer and biographer of philosophers.
- [Apollodorus of Athens](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/apollodorus.md): Greek scholar and writer, known for his chronicle of philosophers.
- [Phavorinus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/phavorinus.md): Greek philosopher and sophist, known for his eclectic works.
- [Hermippus of Smyrna](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/hermippus.md): Greek biographer and historian of philosophy.
- [Demetrius of Magnesia](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/demetrius_magnesian.md): Greek grammarian and biographer of philosophers.

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