Exile to Athens
Diogenes was exiled from his hometown of Sinope, reportedly for defacing currency. He arrived in Athens with nothing and began studying under Antisthenes, a follower of Socrates. He never looked back.
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Diogenes took philosophy out of the lecture hall and into the street. He slept in a large ceramic jar, owned almost nothing, and confronted Alexander the Great without flinching. His philosophy was radical simplicity: strip away custom, status, and comfort, and what remains is a human being, free. The Cynics who followed him believed that virtue meant living according to nature, and that most of civilization was a distraction from it.
