A story we can't stop thinking about
Diogenes tracks mud into Plato's house
Here's one Ryan tells on that SOLVED episode. Diogenes the Cynic — the philosopher who lived in a barrel and rejected every convention of polite society — walks into Plato's house and starts stomping across the fine carpets with muddy feet. “I am trampling on Plato's vanity,” he announces. And Plato, unbothered, replies: “Yes — with a vanity of your own.”
Not just teacher and rival — frenemies, needling each other over dinner. And that's the part that gets you: this whole tradition survived because a handful of people wrote it down and one copy made it through. The ancient world was somehow both far bigger — more people, more happening — and far smaller than we picture. These giants knew each other. They ate at the same tables.
— as told by Ryan Holiday on SOLVED with Mark Manson; the exchange comes down to us from Diogenes Laërtius