Antisthenes, son of an Athenian father and Thracian mother, was a pupil of the rhetorician Gorgias and an intimate and admirer of Socrates. He taught professionally at Athens, maintaining his own interpretation of Socrates against other Socratics such as Plato and Aristippus. There is, however, only one reference in classical literature to Antistheneans (Aristotle, Metaphysics 1043b24); later antiquity saw him as a founder of Cynicism, a view that may have gained support through later historical systematization or from Stoics attempting to trace their philosophical pedigree to Socrates. Nevertheless, while the historical relationship between Antisthenes and Diogenes remains obscure, there were elements in Antisthenes' thought that heralded and may have given some impulse to Diogenes. His numerous works have not survived (a list of titles is found in Diogenes Laertius's Lives, 6.15–18); but he is characterized in Xenophon, and Diogenes...