Lives of Eminent Philosophers (2.11.114-2.11.118)

And besides these he won over Phrasidemus the Peripatetic, an accomplished physicist, and Alcimus the rhetorician, the first orator in all Greece; Crates, too, and many others he got into his toils, and, what is more, along with these, he carried off Zeno the Phoenician.

He was also an authority on politics.

He married a wife, and had a mistress named Nicarete, as Onetor has somewhere stated. He had a profligate daughter, who was married to his friend Simmias of Syracuse. And, as she would not live by rule, some one told Stilpo that she was a disgrace to him. To this he replied, Not so, any more than I am an honour to her.

Ptolemy Soter, they say, made much of him, and when he had got possession of Megara, offered him a sum of money and invited him to return with him to Egypt. But Stilpo would only accept a very moderate sum, and he declined the proposed journey, and removed to Aegina until Ptolemy set sail. Again, when Demetrius, the son of Antigonus, had taken Megara, he took measures that Stilpo’s house should be preserved and all his plundered property restored to him. But when he requested that a schedule of the lost property should be drawn up,

And conversing upon the duty of doing good to men he made such an impression on the king that he became eager to hear him. There is a story that he once used the following argument concerning the Athena of Phidias: Is it not Athena the daughter of Zeus who is a goddess? And when the other said Yes, he went on, But this at least is not by Zeus but by Phidias, and, this being granted, he concluded, This then is not a god. For this he was summoned before the Areopagus; he did not deny the charge, but contended that the reasoning was correct, for that Athena was no god but a goddess; it was the male divinities who were gods. However, the story goes that the Areopagites ordered him to quit the city, and that thereupon Theodorus, whose nickname was Θεός, said in derision, Whence did Stilpo learn this? and how could he tell whether she was a god or a goddess? But in truth Theodorus was most impudent, and Stilpo most ingenious.

When Crates asked him whether the gods take delight in prayers and adorations, he is said to have replied, Don’t put such a question in the street, simpleton, but when we are alone! It is said that Bion, when he was asked the same question whether there are gods, replied:

Will you not scatter the crowd from me, O much-enduring elder?

In character Stilpo was simple and unaffected, and he could readily adapt himself to the plain man. For instance, when Crates the Cynic did not answer the question put to him and only insulted the questioner,

And once when Crates held out a fig to him when putting a question, he took the fig and ate it. Upon which the other exclaimed, O Heracles, I have lost the fig, and Stilpo remarked, Not only that but your question as well, for which the fig was payment in advance. Again, on seeing Crates shrivelled with cold in the winter, he said, You seem to me, Crates, to want a new coat, i.e. to be wanting in sense as well.[*] And the other being annoyed replied with the following burlesque[*]:

And Stilpo I saw enduring toilsome woes in Megara, where men say that the bed of Typhos is. There he would ever be wrangling, and many comrades about him, wasting time in the verbal pursuit of virtue.