BION

This article appears in Volume V03, Page 956 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: BER-BLA

BION , of Borysthenes (Olbia), in Sarmatia, Greek moralist and philosopher, flourished in the first half of the 3rd century B.C. He was of low origin, his mother being a courtesan and his father a dealer in salt fish, with which he combined the occupation of smuggling. Bion, when a

young

man, was sold as a slave to a rhetorician, who gave him his freedom and made him his

heir

HEIR (Lat. heres, from a root meaning to grasp, seen in heres or erus, master of a
house
- HOUSE
- HOUSE (O. Eng. hiss, a word common to Teutonic languages, cf. Dut. huis, Ger. Haus; in
  Gothic
  - GOTHIC
  it is only found in gudhiss, a temple; it may be ultimately connected with the root of " hide," conceal)
, Gr. xeip, hand, Sans. hat ana, hand)

. After the death of his patron, Bion went to Athens to study philosophy. Here he attached himself in succession to the

Academy

ACADEMY, GREEK
ACADEMY, ROYAL

, the

Cynics

CYNICS

, the Cyrenaics and the Peripatetics. One of his teachers was the Cyrenaic Theodorus, called " the atheist," whose influence is clearly shown in Bion's attitude towards the gods. After the manner of the sophists of the period, Bion travelled through Greece and Macedonia, and was admitted to the literary circle at the court of Antigonus Gonatas. He subsequently taught philosophy at Rhodes and died at Chalcis in Euboea. His life was written by

Diogenes

DIOGENES

Laertius. Bion was essentially a popular writer, and in his Diatribae he satirized the follies of mankind in a manner calculated to appeal to the sympathies of a low-class audience. While eulogizing poverty and philosophy, he attacked the gods, musicians, geometricians, astrologers, and the wealthy, and denied the efficacy of prayer. His influence is distinctly traceable in succeeding writers, e.g. in the satires of Menippus.

Horace

HORACE [QuINTus HORATIUS FLACCUS] (65-8 B.C.)

(Epistles, ii. 2. 6o) alludes to his satires and caustic wit (sal nigrum). An idea of his writings can be gathered from the fragments of Teles, a cynic philosopher who lived towards the end of the 3rd century, and who made

great

GREAT

use of them. Specimens of his apophthegms may be found in

Diogenes

DIOGENES

Laertius and the florilegium of Stobaeus, while there are traces of his influence in Seneca. ,I
See Hoogvliet, De Vita, Doctrina, et Scriptis Bionis (1821) ; Ros-' signol, Fragmenta Bionis Borysthenitae (183o) ; Heinze, De Horatio Bionis Imitatore (1889).

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