Crates of Thebes

Position

Crates kept Diogenes’ rejection of wealth, rank and convention but is remembered for a milder manner. Diogenes Laertius reports that he was called the “door-opener” (thyrepanoiktēs) because he entered any house and gave advice, and later writers describe him settling family quarrels. He wrote verse, and some of it survives in quotations. The “Wallet” (Pēra) parodies Homer’s description of Crete to describe an island of frugality where no one goes to war or sails for profit; another poem turns Solon’s prayer to the Muses into a prayer for simple food and freedom from greed. His teaching was practical. Freedom comes from needing little, from training body and mind to bear hardship, and from frank speech (parrhēsia), and a philosopher owes no respect to opinions about shame. Ancient writers report that he and Hipparchia lived as a couple in public view, the sharpest demonstration of that indifference. Through Zeno he is the main link between Cynicism and Stoicism: Zeno’s Republic, which did away with temples, law courts and money, was mocked as a work inscribed on a dog’s tail. Letters circulating under Crates’ name, several of them addressed to Hipparchia, were composed centuries later.

Life & context

Crates was born in Thebes in Boeotia around 365 BCE into a wealthy family; Diogenes Laertius places his prime in the years 328–325 BCE. Almost everything known about him comes from the anecdotes Diogenes Laertius collected (VI 85–98). One story says he turned his estate into money and distributed it among his fellow citizens; another, that he left it with a banker, to go to his sons if they grew up ordinary men and to the people if they became philosophers. Most sources make him a pupil of Diogenes of Sinope, but Hippobotus, quoted by Diogenes Laertius, names Bryson the Achaean instead. He lived in Athens as a Cynic, with cloak, staff and wallet. Hipparchia of Maroneia, the sister of his pupil Metrocles, insisted on marrying him against her family’s wishes and shared his way of life; they had a son, Pasicles. Zeno of Citium, who had come to Athens after a shipwreck, became his pupil before founding the Stoa. Crates died at an advanced age and was buried in Boeotia.

Main works

• No complete work survives; fragments of poems quoted by Diogenes Laertius, Plutarch and others, among them the “Wallet” (Pēra) and parodies of Homer and Solon
• Letters attributed to him (part of the “Cynic Epistles”, written centuries later)