[6] According to one account, he engaged in dialectic encounters with Diodorus Cronus at the court of Ptolemy Soter; according to another, he did not comply with the invitation of the king, to go to Alexandria.

We are further told that Demetrius, the son of Antigonus, honoured him no less, spared his house at the capture of Megara, and offered him indemnity for the injury which it had received, which, however, Stilpo declined.

[7] Uniting elevated sentiment with gentleness and patience, he, as Plutarch says,[8] was an ornament to his country and friends, and had his acquaintance sought by kings.

His original propensity to wine and voluptuousness he is said to have entirely overcome;[9] in inventive power and dialectic art to have surpassed his contemporaries, and to have inspired almost all Greece with a devotion to Megarian philosophy.

A number of distinguished men too are named, whom he is said to have drawn away from Theophrastus, Aristotle of Cyrene, and others, and attached to himself;[10] among others Crates the Cynic, and Zeno, the founder of the Stoic school.

[12] Cicero relates that Stilpo's friends had described him as "vehemently addicted to wine and women",[13] but that his philosophy eliminated his inclinations.

He maintained that the wise man ought not only to overcome every evil, but not even to be affected by any, not even to feel it,[19] showing, perhaps, how closely allied Stilpo was to the contemporary Cynics: For Stilbo, after his country was captured and his children and his wife lost, as he emerged from the general desolation alone and yet happy, spoke as follows to Demetrius, called Sacker of Cities because of the destruction he brought upon them, in answer to the question whether he had lost anything: "I have all my goods with me!

[20] A one-page fragment or paraphrase from a work concerning exile is preserved in the writings of Teles of Megara, a 3rd-century BC Cynic.