Could You Have Been
Diogenes of Sinope?

Your father was a banker in Sinope on the Black Sea. He has been caught debasing coins — adulterating silver with cheaper metals — and has died in prison. You are exiled. Before you left, you consulted the oracle at Delphi. The oracle said: "Parachattein to nomisma." Deface the currency. You have been turning the phrase over for weeks. Your father defaced it literally, and that is why he is dead. But you think the oracle meant something else. The currency of convention — of what people agree to call valuable, of the social money that buys status and respect — you can deface that too. You are standing at the gates of Sinope with nothing. Athens is three weeks' walk to the west.

You have been in Athens seven years. Antisthenes is dead. You have nowhere to sleep. Someone has offered you a room in their house — comfortable, dry, quiet. You look at it for a long moment. Then you walk to the marketplace and find a large ceramic pithos — a storage jar used for grain — that has been discarded. You drag it to the edge of the Agora. This is where you will live. People come to stare. Children throw things at you. You engage with the children more warmly than with the philosophers.

Plato has defined man as "a featherless biped." The Academy is celebrating the definition. It is elegant, memorable, and testable. You go to the market, buy a chicken, pluck every feather from it, and walk into the Academy holding it up over your head. "Here is Plato's man." The students look at you. Plato looks at you. The chicken drips. You set it down on the floor and walk out.

You are on a ship — why you are sailing, the ancient sources do not agree — when pirates intercept it. Everyone on board is taken to be sold as slaves in the market at Corinth. At the auction, the auctioneer asks what you know how to do. You say: "Govern men." You survey the crowd of bidders. Your eye falls on a prosperous-looking Corinthian named Xeniades. You point at him: "Sell me to that man. He needs a master."

You teach Xeniades's children. You teach them to wrestle, to memorize Homer, to argue. You also teach them to need little — to eat simply, to sleep on hard surfaces, to distinguish between what they want and what they need. Xeniades's children grow up lean, unsentimental, and capable. You are, by any measure, the most effective teacher in Corinth. You charge nothing. You are a slave. The professional teachers charging fees in Athens are less effective than you.

Alexander the Great is in Corinth to receive the recognition of the Greek city-states after his father's assassination. Every notable person in Greece has come to pay their respects. You are lying in the sun outside your barrel — you have acquired one in Corinth — sunbathing. Alexander comes to you. He has heard about you. He is twenty years old. He stands between you and the sun, casting a shadow across your body, and says: "I am Alexander. Ask me for anything." You look up at him from the ground.

You walk through the market at midday carrying a lit lamp. Not a small lamp — a proper torch, burning in full sunlight. People stop and stare. "What are you doing, Diogenes?" You do not break stride. "I am looking for an honest man." You have been doing this for years. The search continues.

You are dying in Corinth. The exact cause is disputed: a dog bite, a voluntary held breath, eating a raw octopus to prove that cooking is unnecessary. Your followers ask what to do with your body. You tell them to throw it over the city wall for the animals. When they protest — "But the birds and beasts will get at it" — you ask them to leave a stick near you so you can drive them away. When they point out that you will be dead and cannot use a stick, you say: "Then what does it matter?" Alternatively, you ask to be buried face-down. "Because," you say, "in a little while everything will be turned upside down, and then I will be right-side up."