Diotimus the Stoic

Diotimus (Greek: Διότιμος) was a Stoic philosopher, who lived c. 100 BC.

He is said to have accused Epicurus of being depraved, and to have forged fifty letters, professing to have been written by Epicurus, to prove it.^[1] According to Athenaeus, who is evidently alluding to the same story in a passage where Diotimus apparently should be substituted for Theotimus, he was convicted of the forgery, at the suit of Zeno the Epicurean, and put to death.^[2] We learn from Clement of Alexandria,^[3] that he considered happiness or well-being to consist, not in any one good, but in the perfect accumulation of blessings, which looks like a departure from strict Stoicism to the more sober view of Aristotle.^[4]

Notes

1. ^ Diogenes Laërtius, x.3
2. ^ Athenaeus, xiii.611
3. ^ Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, ii. 21.
4. ^ Aristotle, Eth. Nicom. i. 7, 8.

This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology by William Smith (1870).