“He used to say that the word “disabled” [anapêrous] is not for the deaf or the blind but for those who have no wallet [pêra]. Once he went to a party with young men with his head half shaved—as Metrokles says in his Anecdotes—he got some abuse. After that he wrote down on a tablet the names of the men who hit him and walked around with the tablet on his neck until he had smothered them with insult, ensuring they were blamed and thoroughly undermined.
He used to say that he was the kind of dog people praised, but that no one who praised him dared to join him hunting. When someone said, “I defeat men at the Pythian games!” He responded, “No, I defeat men; you defeat slaves.”
When people said to him, “You’re old, take a rest,” He used to respond, “Why? If I were running a race would it be right for me to slow down near the finish rather than sprinting to the end?” When he was invited to dinner, he said he would not go because the last time he forgot to say “thank you”.
Dio recounts how the philosopher proposed dealing with, um, animal urges.
Dio Chrysostom, The Sixth Oration: On Diogenes or Tyranny (16-20)
“On behalf of that very thing which men make the most effort and waste the most money—through which many cities have been overturned and for whose sake many people have perished pitiably—for [Diogenes] this was the easiest and cheapest thing. For he didn’t have to go anywhere for sexual satisfaction, since, as he used to joke, Aphrodite was near him everywhere, and for free. He used to say that the poets slandered the goddess because of their own lack of control when they called her “all golden”. Since many did not believe this, he proved it out in the open while everyone was watching. And he used to say that if people did this, then Troy would not have fallen, nor would have Priam, the Phrygian king of the line of Zeus, bled out on Zeus’ altar.
He added that the Achaeans were so witless as to imagine that even corpses needed women and so slaughtered Polyxena on the tomb of Achilles. So he used to explain that fish proved themselves to be almost more prudent than men—for whenever they needed to expel their seed, the went out and rubbed up against something with friction. Diogenes was amazed at the unwillingness of men to spend money to have their foot, hand, or any other part of the body rubbed, and how the very rich would not waste even a drachma on this. But they [all] lavished many a talent on that single member often and that some even still endangered their lives too. He used to joke that this kind of intercourse was Pan’s discovery: when he was lusting after Echo but couldn’t overtake her, he was wondering in the mountains night and day until that point when Hermes taught him how to do this, because he pitied his helplessness and he was his son. And, after he learned this, he got a break from his great suffering. Apparently, shepherds learned this from him.”
