Between 1424 and 1433 he worked on the translation of the Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius, which came to be widely circulated in manuscript form and was published at Rome in 1472 ( the first printed edition of the Lives ; the Greek text was printed only in 1533 ).

** Diogenes Laërtius, Vitae philosophorum ( Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers )

The main source for the life of Heraclitus is Diogenes Laërtius, although some have questioned the validity of his account as " a tissue of Hellenistic anecdotes, most of them obviously fabricated on the basis of statements in the preserved fragments.

Timon of Phlius calls him " the riddler " ( ainiktēs ) according to Diogenes Laërtius, who had just explained that Heraclitus wrote his book " rather unclearly " ( asaphesteron ) so that only the " capable " should attempt it.

Diogenes Laërtius ascribes to Theophrastus the theory that Heraclitus did not complete some of his works because of melancholia.

Diogenes Laërtius divides the physiologoi into two groups, Ionian and Italiote, led by Anaximander and Pythagoras, respectively.

The knowledge we have of them derives from accounts of later philosophical writers ( especially Aristotle, Plutarch, Diogenes Laërtius, Stobaeus and Simplicius ), and some early theologians, ( especially Clement of Alexandria and Hippolytus of Rome ).

Most of the details known about his life come from the anecdotes preserved by Diogenes Laërtius in his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers.

Diogenes Laërtius has preserved many clever and witty remarks by Zeno, the veracity of which cannot be ascertained.

According to Persaeus ( Diogenes Laërtius vii.

A plausible chronology for his life is as follows: He was born 334 / 3 BC, and came to Athens in 312 / 11 BC at the age of 22 ( Diogenes Laërtius, vii.

He studied philosophy for about 10 years ( Diogenes Laërtius, vii.

Around 387 BC, at the age of 23, he traveled with the physician Theomedon, who according to Diogenes Laërtius some believed was his lover, to Athens to study with the followers of Socrates.

Diogenes Laërtius, however, wrote that Protagoras invented the “ Socratic ” method.

But most modern scholars, following the suggestion of Diogenes Laërtius, consider them to be forgeries, some forged by the philosopher Heraclides Ponticus, others by or altered by Christian writers:

Diogenes Laërtius preserves several different accounts of this story ; one of them has Crates giving his money away to the citizens of Thebes, apparently after seeing the beggar king Telephus in a tragedy ; whereas another account has him placing his money in the hands of a banker, with the agreement that he should deliver it to his sons, unless they too became philosophers, in which case he should distribute it among the poor.

Crates wrote a book of letters on philosophical subjects, the style of which is compared by Diogenes Laërtius to that of Plato ; but these no longer survive.

* Diogenes Laërtius ( between 200 – 500 CE ), historian

* Diogenes Laërtius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, translated by Charles Duke Yonge ( 1853 ) ( Uses a different method of enumerating the sections from the modern editions.

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Diogenes Laërtius says that his works filled ten volumes, but of these, only fragments remain.

Most of the biographical information we have of Theophrastus was provided by Diogenes Laërtius ' Lives of the Philosophers, written more than four hundred years after Theophrastus ' time.

From the lists of Diogenes Laërtius, giving 227 titles, it appears that the activity of Theophrastus extended over the whole field of contemporary knowledge.

" Diogenes in his barrel and Crates of Thebes who gives up wealth for virtue.

Diogenes Laërtius, on the authority of Sotion and Panaetius, gives a long list of books whose authorship is ascribed to Aristippus, though he also says that Sosicrates of Rhodes states that he wrote nothing.

Diogenes Laërtius gives us a list of some of the titles of the many dialogues and commentaries of Speusippus, which is of little help in determining their contents, and the fragments provided by other writers provide us with only a little extra.

The only surviving complete works by Epicurus are three letters, which are to be found in book X of Diogenes Laertius ' Lives of Eminent Philosophers, and two groups of quotes: the Principal Doctrines, reported as well in Diogenes ' book X, and the Vatican Sayings, preserved in a manuscript from the Vatican Library.

Diogenes treats his subject in two divisions which he describes as the Ionian and the Italian schools ; the division is somewhat dubious and appears to be drawn from the lost doxography of Sotion.

There are many later tales about the infamous Cynic Diogenes of Sinope dogging Antisthenes ' footsteps and becoming his faithful hound, but it is no means certain that the two men ever met.

The first two comprise entirely his Syntagma philosophicum ; the third contains his critical writings on Epicurus, Aristotle, Descartes, Robert Fludd and Herbert of Cherbury, with some occasional pieces on certain problems of physics ; the fourth, his Institutio astronomica, and his Commentarii de rebus celestibus ; the fifth, his commentary on the tenth book of Diogenes Laërtius, the biographies of Epicurus, Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, Tycho Brahe, Nicolaus Copernicus, Georg von Peuerbach, and Regiomontanus, with some tracts on the value of ancient money, on the Roman calendar, and on the theory of music, with an appended large and prolix piece entitled Notitia ecclesiae Diniensis ; the sixth volume contains his correspondence.

Although according to the different sources that Diogenes relates, Epimenides lived to be one hundred and fifty-seven years, two hundred and ninety-nine years, or one hundred and fifty-four years old.

The Stoics, who later took Diogenes ' idea and developed it into a full blown concept, typically stressed that each human being " dwells in two communities – the local community of our birth, and the community of human argument and aspiration ".

* In the BBC TV series Sherlock episode " The Reichenbach Fall ", the Diogenes Club is shown ; Watson goes there, desperate to see Mycroft Holmes, gets into trouble for talking, and is briskly and not too gently escorted to the Stranger's Room by two muffle-shoed bouncers who hold a cloth pad to his mouth to prevent further noise.

According to Diogenes, Hecato divided the virtues into two kinds, those founded on scientific intellectual principles ( i. e. wisdom and justice ), and those with no such basis ( e. g., temperance and the resultant health and vigour ).

Diogenes Laërtius also calls him " Onesicritus of Aegina ", and says that he came to Athens because his two adult sons, Androsthenes and Philiscus, were attracted to the philosophy of Diogenes the Cynic, whence Onesicritus also became an ardent disciple.

* Mavrikios Gavras of the original Videssos Cycle resembles Romanus IV Diogenes, but the two rivalling imperial families, the Gavras and the Sphrantzes, are analogous to the Komnenos and the Ducas dynasties.

In 157 BC, when Ariarathes had been deposed and had fled to Rome, Orophernes sent two ambassadors ( Timotheus and Diogenes ) to the capital city to join the emissaries of Demetrius in opposing his brother.

It was long believed that Lucian of Samosata had Diogenes ' work principally in mind when he wrote his celebrated parody, the Verae Historiae, though J. R. Morgan has more recently questioned this accepted notion on extensive comparative study of the two works.

Diogenes Laertius further states that Dicaearchus gave ten possible names, Hippobotus suggested twelve names, and Hermippus enumerated seventeen possible sages from which different people made different selections of seven.

According to Diogenes Laertius, he forged plays under the name of Thespis, and according to the same author, this time drawing from a different source, Dionysius the Deserter composed plays and forged them under the name of Sophocles.

During the Sassanian era, scientists from various countries, one of whom was Diogenes, studied different fields, including medicine, at the academy in Gondi Shapur.

This recurs in a different form in the much later statement of Diogenes Laertius ( 1. 2. 57 ) that Solon made a law that the poems should be recited " with prompting ".