_戴奥真尼斯和亚历山大

Diogenes and Alexander 戴奥吉尼斯和亚历山大

The Dog Has His Day

Gilbert Highet

This article by the late classicist Gilbert Highet describes a meeting between two sharply contrasting personalities of history: Alexander the Great and Diogenes. This selection originally appeared in Horizon, the first in a series entitled Great Confrontations.

此文是由晚期著名的古典学者Gilbert Highet 所写，描述了历史上两位性格极端伟大人物的会面场面：亚历山大国王和戴奥吉尼斯。本文选择来自Horizon，一篇名叫“伟大的会面”的开始部分。

Lying on the bare earth, shoeless, bearded, half-naked, he looked like a beggar or a lunatic(神经病,疯子). He was one, but not the other. He had opened his eyes with the sun at dawn (拂晓), scratched, done his business like a dog at the roadside, washed at the public fountain, begged a piece of breakfast bread and a few olives, eaten them squatting on the ground, and washed them down with a few handfuls of water scooped from the spring. (Long ago he had owned a rough wooden cup, but he threw it away when he saw a boy drinking out of his hollowed hands.) Having no work to go to and no family to provide for, he was free. 他躺在光溜溜的地上，赤着脚，胡子拉茬的，半裸着身子，模样活像个乞丐或疯子。他是乞丐，而不是疯子。大清早，他随着初升的太阳睁开双眼，搔了搔痒，便像狗一样在路边忙开了他的公事”。他在公共喷泉边抹了把脸，向路人讨了一块面包和几颗橄榄，然后蹲在地上大嚼起来，又掬起几捧泉水送入肚中。他不需要去工作，也不需要养家，是一个逍遥自在的人。As the market place filled up with shoppers and merchants and gossipers and sharpers (a cheater, esp. a cardsharper) and slaves and foreigners, he had strolled through it for an hour or two. Everybody knew him, or knew of him. They would throw sharp questions at him and get sharper answers. Sometimes they threw jeers, and got jibes; sometimes bits of food, and got scant thanks; sometimes a mischievous pebble, and got a shower of stones and abuse(漫骂). They were not quite sure whether he was mad or not. He knew they were mad, all mad, each in a different way; they amused him. 街市上熙熙攘攘，到处是顾客、商人、奴隶、异邦人，这时他也会在其中转悠一二个钟头。人人都认识他，或者都听说过他。他们会问他一些尖刻的问题，而他也更尖刻地回答。有时他们丢给他一些食物，得到很少的感谢；有时他们恶作剧地扔给他卵石子，他破口大骂，毫不客气地回敬一阵石头雨。他们拿不准他是不是疯了。他却认定他们疯了，只是他们的疯各有各的不同；他们令他感到好笑。

Now he was back at his home. It was not a house, not even a squatter's hut. He thought everybody lived far too elaborately, expensively, anxiously. What good is a house? No one needs privacy: natural acts are not shameful; we all do the same thing, and need not hide them. 此刻他正走回家去。他没有房子，甚至连一个茅庐都没有。他认为人们为生活煞费苦心，过于精致奢华。房子有什么用处？人不需要隐私；自然的行为并不可耻；我们做着同样的事情，没什

么必要把它们隐藏起来。No one needs beds and chairs and such furniture: the animals live healthy lives and sleep on the ground. All we require, since nature did not dress us properly, is one garment to keep us warm, and some shelter from rain and wind. So he had one blanket—to dress him in the daytime and cover him at night—and he slept in a cask. His name was Diogenes. 人实在不需要床榻和椅子等诸如此类的家具，动物睡在地上也活得很健康。既然大自然没有给我们穿上适当的东西。那我们惟一需要的是一件御寒的衣服，某种躲避风雨的遮蔽。所以他拥有一张毯子——白天披在身，晚上盖在身上——他睡在一个桶里，他的名字叫狄奥真尼斯。He was the founder of the creed called Cynicism (the word means "doggishness"); he spent much of his life in the rich, lazy, corrupt Greek city of Corinth, mocking and satirizing its people, and occasionally converting one of them.人们称他为“狗”，把他的哲学叫做“犬儒哲学”。他一生大部分时光都在希腊的克林斯城邦度过，那是一个富裕、懒散、腐败的城市，他挖苦嘲讽那里的人们，偶尔也会让他们当中的某个人转而追随他。

His home was not a barrel made of wood: too expensive. It was a storage jar made of earthenware, something like a modern fuel tank—no doubt discarded because a break had made it useless. He was not the first to inhabit such a thing: the refugees driven into Athens by the Spartan invasion had been forced to sleep in casks. But he was the first who ever did so by choice, out of principle.他的住所不是木材做成的，那太贵了。他的桶是泥土做的贮物桶，有点像现在的油桶。这是一个破桶，显然是人们弃之不用的。住这样的地方他并不是第一个，那些因为斯巴达侵略而逃到雅典的人就被迫谁在桶里。但他确实是第一个自愿这么做的人，这出乎众人的想法。

Diogenes was not a degenerate or a maniac(疯子). He was a philosopher who wrote plays and poems and essays expounding(解释) his doctrine; he talked to those who cared to listen; he had pupils who admired him. But he taught chiefly by example. All should live naturally, he said, for what is natural is normal and cannot possibly be evil or shameful. Live without conventions, which are artificial and false; escape complexities and superfluities and extravagances: only so can you live a free life. 狄奥根尼不是疯子，他是一个哲学家，通过戏剧、诗歌和散文的创作来阐述他的学说；他向那些愿意倾听的人传道；他拥有一批崇拜他的门徒。他言传身教地进行简单明了的教学。他说，所有的人都应当自然地生活，所谓自然的就是正常的而不可能是罪恶的或可耻的。抛开那些造作虚伪的习俗；摆脱那些繁文缛节和奢侈享受：只有这样，你才能过自由的生活。The rich man believes he possesses his big house with its many rooms and its elaborate furniture, his pictures and expensive clothes, his horses and his servants and his bank accounts. He does not. He is their slave. In order to procure a quantity of false, perishable goods he has sold the only true, lasting good, his own independence. 富有的人认为他占有着宽敞的房子、精致的家具，名画和华贵的衣服，还有马匹、仆人和银行存款。其实并非如此，他是它们的奴隶。为了攫取这些虚假浮华的东西，他出卖了自己的独立性，这惟一直实长久的东西。

There have been many men who grew tired of human society with its complications, and went away to live simply—on a small farm, in a quiet village, in a hermit's cave, or in the darkness of