Miscellany
It is said that Alexander the Great once found Diogenes the Cynic examining a pile of human bones. “What are you looking for?” the ruler inquired. “I am searching for the bones of your father,” replied the philosopher, “but I cannot distinguish them from those of his slaves.” On another occasion a woman came to see Diogenes, complaining that her son was poorly behaved, and asked what she could do about it. Diogenes answered by slapping the woman in the face.
Miscellany
The third-century Greek biographer Diogenes Laërtius stated that one of the favorite sayings of Antisthenes was, “The fellowship of brothers of one mind was stronger than any fortified city.” Laërtius also recalled an anecdote about Socrates—when asked by a young man if he should marry or not, the philosopher replied, “Whichever you do, you will regret it.”
Miscellany
Philocles, the nephew of Aeschylus, received the prize for tragedy at the dramatic festival the year that Sophocles presented Oedipus Rex. None of his one hundred or so plays is extant.
Miscellany
After his death in 1665, Pierre de Fermat’s son Clement-Samuel discovered a copy of Arithmetic, a third-century math book by Diophantus, in which Fermat had written on one page, “It is impossible…for any number which is a power greater than the second to be written as the sum of two like powers [xn + yn = zn for n > 2]. I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.” His son published the note, and “Fermat’s Last Theorem” beguiled mathematicians for over 350 years, until it was proved by Andrew Wiles, with Richard Taylor, in 1995.
