The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

Diogenes Laertius c. 230 CE

Biographies, sayings, and anecdotes introduce Greek philosophers and the different ways they lived and thought. One story shows Diogenes asking Alexander the Great to stop blocking his sunlight.

597 pages 11h 35m reading time

The main surviving ancient source for the lives of the Greek philosophers, and often the only one for thinkers whose own writings are lost.
Argues that philosophy began with the Greeks, not with older peoples such as the Egyptians or Persians.
Traces philosophy as long chains of teachers and students, grouping thinkers into schools that later histories of philosophy still use.
Preserves the only complete writings of Epicurus that survive, including three of his letters and his list of core teachings.
Shaped how later writers pictured ancient thinkers: Montaigne drew on it heavily in his essays, and the young Nietzsche wrote scholarly studies of its sources.

Author added his own poems

He slipped in short, joking verses of his own about how many of the philosophers died.
Built from lost books

He quotes or names more than two hundred earlier writers, and most of their works no longer survive.
Written for a mystery woman

He addresses a woman who loved Plato's ideas, but he never tells us her name.
Part went missing

Surviving copies break off partway through the life of Chrysippus, so the end of that section is lost.