Now Dogs will eat almost anything and people say one day Diogenes ate an octopus that upset his tummy, because it hadn’t been cooked properly. The man and his sons followed Diogenes around and learned a lot of wisdom from him. A rich man was looking at him and Diogenes said “You look like you need a good boss, to tell you what to do!” So the man bought him, and instead of being his slave, Diogenes became his boss, and his teacher. When they tried to sell him, he just rolled around on the floor laughing. (People aren’t allowed to have slaves anymore because it’s wrong, but a long time ago there were lots of slaves.)ĭiogenes wasn’t bothered.

They wanted to sell him as a slave, which is a person that belongs to someone else like a pet, or like an animal that’s made to work for them. They chained him up, threw him on their ship, and sailed away with him. One day, Diogenes was captured by a gang of pirates. And if they didn’t have wisdom but were foolish and wanted to do bad things, he’d bite them, or hit them with his stick! If they had wisdom but didn’t share it, he’d bark at them until they did. If people had wisdom and gave it to him, he’d be their best friend for life, and follow them around. (You have to be careful if you want to take a bone away from a dog.)ĭiogenes said he was like a dog but instead of food he only wanted one thing: wisdom. And number three: they sometimes get angry and bite people who upset them by trying to steal their food. Number two: dogs bark at people who have food but won’t share it with them. Let me tell you three things about dogs… Number one: dogs love people who are nice to them and give them food they lick their hands, rub up against their legs, and follow them around. Some people were scared of him but other people really loved him, and followed him around, hoping to learn from him and become wise. He would bark at them like a dog, when he saw them doing silly things or misbehaving. And his job was to guard over living people, and show them when they were doing wrong. But Diogenes said he was the guard dog of Zeus, Hades’ brother, the god of the living.

He just laughed and said “You know what, you’re right, I am a dog… I’m the dog of Zeus!” Now, the god Hades had a pet dog, called Cerberus, whose job it was to guard all the dead people, the ghosts, in the Underworld. My mother used to say: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”ĭiogenes wasn’t hurt by words, even when people called him a nasty dog. Diogenes the Cynic may well have had much to teach Elon Musk, the modern day Alexander the Great, write Massimo Pigliucci and Existential Comic creator Corey Mohler. So the children used to make fun of him and they pointed at him shouting “You’re just a dirty dog!” If a crowd of people made fun of me and called me a dirty dog, I might cry, but Diogenes didn’t let things like that upset him. Diogenes went about naked, slept on the streets, and begged for scraps of food. Let me tell you a story… Hundreds and hundreds of years ago, in ancient Greece, there was a very famous philosopher called Diogenes the Dog.

Diogenes dog