Bion of Borysthenes
Résumé
Bion of Borysthenes (ca. 335–245 bce), after being the favorite slave of a rhetor, went to Athens, where he attended the main schools of philosophy at that time: the Academy (Xenokrates), Cynicism, the Cyrenaic school (Theodorus the Atheist), and the Lyceum (Theophrastus). Although his teaching was mostly influenced by Cynic themes (focus on ethics, condemnation of pleasure, sexual desire, greed, traditional religion, and promotion of a simple life), and witty style (spoudaiogeloion), he did not live like a Cynic, but as a wandering teacher of philosophy and occasionally of rhetoric. For that reason he has been sometimes identified as a sophist. Since the end of the nineteenth century, he has been portrayed by scholars as the inventor of a literary genre, the diatribe, specific to moral predication in popular philosophy (cf. the diatribes of Teles), but the existence of this specific genre as well as the influence of Bion is now disputed.