A little more on names in ancient Greece: By making changes to names, some people in higher education tried rebrand their rivals. Someone called the philosopher Democritus Lerocritus, meaning nonsense dealer. Antidorus, another philosopher, became Sannidorus, meaning gift-bearing sycophant.
People played with names and with descriptions. Imagine that you are trying to decide on a school for your kid. You hear that one school is run by wastrel who, after squandering his inheritance, took up soldiering and drug sales.
Are you thinking of Aristotle?
The civilization from which our civilization allegedly emerged was not all that civilized.
• Source: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers; translated by R.D. Hicks; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991, Vol. II, p. 536. Diogenes says that all these ugly sayings were attributed — falsely — to Epicurus.
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