Diogenes in his storage jar, as depicted on an engraved gem-stone of the Roman age. The story that the
Cynic philosopher (414-323 B.C.) lived in a jar reflects the ascetic manner of life which he and his
followers favoured. He is shown with the stick and dog of a beggar, debating with a seated disciple who
holds a scroll.
Arcesilaus and Carneades wrote nothing, but their thoughts were recorded by their disciples. Epicurus
wrote at huge length, and so did the Old Stoics. Of that massive volume little has survived. Epicurus has
come off best: three introductory essays, in the form of letters, are preserved, substantial fragments have
been recovered from the ruins of Herculaneum, and in addition we have Lucretius. For the Old Stoa and
the New Academy we are obliged to rely almost entirely on second-hand sources - on quotations,
paraphrases and allusions in later writers. Much of the testimony comes from hostile or tendentious
witnesses. The difficulty of assessing such reports exacerbates the problem of piecing together a coherent
system from scattered and fragmentary evidence.
Ethics
Philosophy was customarily divided into three parts: logic, physics, and ethics. Hellenistic ethics, like the
ethics of Aristotle, turns on the notion of eudaimonia - of well-being, welfare, flourishing. The task of
ethics is to analyse human welfare and to determine the conditions under which it may be attained. There