Diogenes of Sinope, were united less by doctrine than by a
common attitude, namely their contempt for societal
institutions and a desire for a life more in accord with nature.
Diogenes himself was largely responsible for the image of a
philosopher as an impoverished ascetic (the “philosopher
without clothes” evoked by Marcus at Meditations 4.30
might well be a Cynic). His famous claim to be a “citizen of
the world” surely anticipates, if it did not actually influence,
the Stoic conception of the world as a city-state. Marcus
refers to Diogenes in several passages, as well as to the
latter’s student Monimus (2.15), and invokes another Cynic,
Crates, at Meditations 6.13, in an anecdote whose tenor is
now uncertain.
Marcus’s relationship to Epicureanism, Stoicism’s great
rival among Hellenistic philosophical systems, is much more
vexed. The followers of Epicurus (341–270 B.C.) believed in
a universe radically unlike that posited by Zeno and
Chrysippus. The Stoic world is ordered to the nth degree; the
Epicurean universe is random, the product of the haphazard
conjunctions of billions of atoms. To speak of Providence in
such a world is transparently absurd, and while Epicurus
acknowledged the existence of gods, he denied that they took
any interest in human life. As for humans, our role is simply
to live as best we can, making the most of what pleasures are
available to us and insulating ourselves as far as possible
from pain and anxiety. In particular, we are to feel no anxiety
about death, which consists simply in the dissolution of our