Diogenes or On Virtue

Diogenes or On Virtue (Ancient Greek: Διογένης ἢ περὶ ἀρετῆς, romanized: Diogenēs e peri aretēs, Oration 8 in modern corpora) is a speech delivered by Dio Chrysostom between AD 82 and 96,[1] which is presented as a speech delivered by the Cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinope at the Isthmian Games.

Dio then recounts how Diogenes moved to Corinth after Antisthenes' death and made a habit of attending the Isthmian Games held there, with an extended metaphor of the philosopher as a doctor for spiritual illness (5-8).

His "rivals" are not athletes but "hardships" (Ancient Greek: πόνοι, romanized: ponoi), such hunger, thirst, cold, exile, and disreputable things.

Whereas the battle with hardship is like the combat of the heroic warriors in Homer's Iliad, pleasure is like Circe from the Odyssey, who needed only the slightest moment to transform Odysseus' men into pigs and wolves.

Heracles' ability to resist hardship allowed him to easily kill luxurious tyrants like Diomedes of Thrace, Geryon, and Busiris (31-32).

The brief conclusion (36) states that the crowd was initially swayed by Diogenes' words but then he, inspired by the story of the Augean stables with which he finished his oration, sat down and "did something disreputable" (probably defecating),[3][4] and then they dismissed him as crazy and departed.

And all the sophists went back to making a ruckus, like frogs in a pond, unaware of the water snake.At the time when the speech was delivered, Dio was in exile and we are probably meant to see parallels between his accounts of Diogenes and Heracles and his own situation.

[7] In this oration, as in those authors, athletics is presented as an empty waste of time, which produces a 'soft' body that requires constant monitoring and is incapable of facing hardship.