Lives of the Eminent Philosophers

Everyone wants to live a meaningful life. Long before our own day of self-help books offering twelve-step programs and other guides to attain happiness the philosophers of ancient Greece explored the riddle of what makes a life worth living producing a wide variety of ideas and examples to follow. This rich tradition was recast by Diogenes Laertius into an anthology a miscellany of maxims and anecdotes that generations of Western readers have consulted for edification as well as entertainment ever since the <em>Lives of the Eminent Philosophers</em> first compiled in the third century AD came to prominence in Renaissance Italy. To this day it remains a crucial source for much of what we know about the origins and practice of philosophy in ancient Greece covering a longer period of time and a larger number of figures-from Pythagoras and Socrates to Aristotle and Epicurus-than any other ancient source.<br>