Hipparchia: Crates the Cynic
Table of Contents
1 Hipparchia, the sister of Metrocles, was charmed among others, by the doctrines of this school.
2 She and Metrocles were natives of Maronea.
She:
- fell in love with the doctrines and manners of Crates.
- could not be diverted from her regard for him by either the wealth, high birth, or personal beauty, of any of her suitors
Crates was everything to her.
She threatened her parents to make away with herself, if she were not given in marriage to him.
Crates accordingly, being entreated by her parents to dissuade her from this resolution, did all he could.
and at last, as he could not persuade her, he rose up, and placing all his furniture before her, he said, “This is the bridegroom whom you are choosing, and this is the whole of his property;
Consider these facts, for it will not be possible for you to become his partner, if you do not also apply yourself to the same studies, and conform to the same habits that he does.”
But the girl chose him. She wore the same dress that he wore, went about with him as her husband, and appeared with him in public everywhere, and went to all entertainments in his company.
3 When she went to sup with Lysimachus, she attacked Theodorus the Atheist.
She proposed to him the following sophism;
“What Theodorus could not be called wrong for doing, that same thing Hipparchia ought not to be called wrong for doing. But Theodorus does no wrong when he beats himself; therefore Hipparchia does no wrong when she beats Theodorus.”
He made no reply to what she said, but only pulled her clothes around.
But Hipparchia was neither offended nor ashamed, as many a woman would have been.
Who is the woman who has left the shuttle so near the warp?
I am that person. Do I appear to you to have come to a wrong decision, if I devote that time to philosophy, which I otherwise should have spent at the loom?
4 There is also a volume of letters of Crates[79] extant, in which he philosophizes most excellently. In style is very little inferior to Plato.
He also wrote some tragedies, which are imbued with a very sublime spirit of philosophy, of which the following lines are a specimen:
’Tis not one town, nor one poor single house, That is my country; but in every land Each city and each dwelling seems to me, A place for my reception ready made.