Son of a banker [named] Hikesios, from Sinope. Diogenes, after running away from his homeland on account of having counterfeited some coinage,[1] arrived in Athens. After meeting Antisthenes the Cynic,[2] he fell in love with that lifestyle and embraced the Cynic philosophy; he became contemptuous of his own great wealth. When he was old, he was taken by a pirate named Skirtalos[3] and after he had been sold in Corinth to a certain Xeniades, he stayed for a long time with his buyer, not choosing to be ransomed by the Athenians nor by his family and friends.
In the 113th Olympiad, he died after being bitten in the leg by a dog and refusing treatment, on the same day as Alexander of Macedon died in Babylon.[4]