Discourses - Book III   

family, and from providing for their support. And, to say nothing of
the rest, he must have a vessel for heating water for the child that
he may wash it in the bath; wool for his wife when she is delivered of
a child, oil, a bed, a cup: so the furniture of the house is
increased. I say nothing of his other occupations and of his
distraction. Where, then, now is that king, he who devotes himself
to the public interests,

The people's guardian and so full of cares.

whose duty it is to look after others, the married and those who
have children; to see who uses his wife well, who uses her badly;
who quarrels; what family is well administered, what is not; going
about as a physician does and feels pulses? He says to one, "You
have a fever," to another, "You have a headache, or the gout": he says
to one, "Abstain from food"; to another he says, "Eat"; or "Do not use
the bath"; to another, "You require the knife, or the cautery." How
can he have time for this who is tied to the duties of common life? is
it not his duty to supply clothing to his children, and to send them
to the schoolmaster with writing tablets, and styles. Besides, must he
not supply them with beds? for they cannot be genuine Cynics as soon
as they are born. If he does not do this, it would be better to expose
the children as soon as they are born than to kill them in this way.
Consider what we are bringing the Cynic down to, how we are taking his
royalty from him. "Yes, but Crates took a wife." You are speaking of a
circumstance which arose from love and of a woman who was another
Crates. But we are inquiring about ordinary marriages and those
which are free from distractions, and making this inquiry we do not
find the affair of marriage in this state of the world a thing which
is especially suited to the Cynic.
"How, then, shall a man maintain the existence of society?" In the
name of God, are those men greater benefactors to society who
introduce into the world to occupy their own places two or three
grunting children, or those who superintend as far as they can all
mankind, and see what they do, how they live, what they attend to,
what they neglect contrary to their duty? Did they who left little
children to the Thebans do them more good than Epaminondas who died
childless? And did Priamus, who begat fifty worthless sons, or
Danaus or AEolus contribute more to the community than Homer? then
shall the duty of a general or the business of a writer exclude a
man from marriage or the begetting of children, and such a man shall
not be judged to have accepted the condition of childlessness for
nothing; and shall not the royalty of a Cynic be considered an
equivalent for the want of children? Do we not perceive his grandeur
and do we not justly contemplate the character of Diogenes; and do we,
instead of this, turn our eyes to the present Cynics, who are dogs
that wait at tables and in no respect imitate the Cynics of old except
perchance in breaking wind, but in nothing else? For such matters
would not have moved us at all nor should we have wondered if a
Cynic should not marry or beget children. Man, the Cynic is the father