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.
Places
Ideas
Words
“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.”
“The good king holds his subjects' welfare to be his own proper work.”
Works
Life & Moments
Born in Prusa
Born to a wealthy family of Prusa in Bithynia, at the foot of the Mysian Olympus, and trained for the life of a provincial notable and orator.
Banished by Domitian
Exiled from Italy and his home province for his connection to a disgraced noble. On a friend's advice he consulted the Delphic oracle, put on a beggar's cloak, and wandered the empire's roads for fourteen years, the sophist remade as a Cynic.
Restored under Nerva and Trajan
Domitian's assassination ended the exile. Under Nerva and Trajan the wanderer became the empire's most honored voice, invited to lecture the emperor himself on what a king should be.
Influence
Influenced by
- Musonius Rufus
Dio was associated with Musonius Rufus in Rome and carried his practical Stoicism into public oratory, turning moral instruction into speeches a crowd would stay to hear.
- Diogenes
Exiled from Rome and wandering poor, Dio wrote four orations on Diogenes and modelled his own public persona on him. The Cynic had become a way for later writers to think about freedom and power.
