A quotation from Dio Chrysostom
Quotation
Poverty does not hinder a man from living a life worthy of a free person, if he is willing to work with his own hands.
Dio Chrysostom
He spent years as a wandering philosopher in exile, and returned to tell the emperors what they were doing wrong.
Dio was born in Prusa, a prosperous city in Bithynia, and came to Rome as an orator and intellectual. The emperor Domitian exiled him, likely for opposing a court favorite, and for years Dio wandered the edges of the Roman world, living as a day laborer, picking up the talk of soldiers, farmers, and fishermen. The exile was his education. He returned after Domitian's death, befriended the emperor Trajan, and gave a series of speeches on kingship that rank among antiquity's most searching political philosophy: a true king rules not by fear but by service; power is not possession but responsibility. He also wrote a Stoic cosmology, a dialogue on Homer, and a fable about hunters cut off from civilization whose natural religion surpasses Rome's. He called himself a student of Musonius Rufus and bore that title with something approaching grace.
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What does Dio Chrysostom mean by this quotation?
He spent years as a wandering philosopher in exile, and returned to tell the emperors what they were doing wrong. Dio was born in Prusa, a prosperous city in Bithynia, and came to Rome as an orator and intellectual. The emperor Domitian exiled him, likely for opposing a court favorite, and for years Dio wandered the edges of the Rom…
What was the context or school of thought behind this idea?
Dio Chrysostom articulated this thought in Discourses. Some eighty speeches survive from the man Rome nicknamed Golden-Mouth: orations on kingship addressed to Trajan, civic sermons scolding rioting cities, and the famous Euboean discourse: a long, warm p…