Antisthenes tried to chase him away, beating him with his staff, and Diogenes replied that he was going nowhere, there being no staff hard enough to drive him away from Antisthenes’ wisdom. According to the story, Diogenes heard Antisthenes in the marketplace, and offered to become his disciple. While later cynics believed that Diogenes studied with Antisthenes, this is questionable. Diogenes became the most famous and emblematic cynic. Socrates did prefer the simple life, and despised wealth and excess. In Athens, Antisthenes (445 – 365 BCE), a student of Socrates, was the first to make Cynicism a distinct philosophy. Either way, sources tell us that Diogenes moved to Athens, where he became famous for his lifestyle and amusingly cynical interactions with others. If this is true, the story stuck to Diogenes as a metaphor after the fact. It is also true that there were, understandably, warring factions of pro-Greek separatists and pro-Persian loyalists fighting over authority of the city, and the coins may not have involved Diogenes but rather political infighting. Diogenes believed that people were corrupted by society, and should return to a simple life. While some believe that Diogenes and his father were involved in counterfeiting, it is likely that this is a metaphor for Diogenes’ rejection of traditional life, the “way of his father”, the common currency used in the marketplace.
Large numbers of coins have been found in the region that have been defaced, some with Diogenes’ father’s name on them as the minter. One source says that Diogenes went to the Oracle at Delphi, and the pythias told him to deface the currency. Legend has it that Diogenes’ father was a banker in charge of the mint, making coins for the government, but Diogenes “defaced the currency” and was banished.
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