There are many tales about his dogging Antisthenes' footsteps and becoming his 'faithful hound'. He declared himself a cosmopolitan and a citizen of the world rather than claiming allegiance to just one place. He had a reputation for sleeping and eating wherever he chose in a highly non-traditional fashion, and took to toughening himself against nature. He used his simple lifestyle and behavior to criticize the social values and institutions of what he saw as a corrupt, confused society.

He modeled himself on the example of Heracles, and believed that virtue was better revealed in action than in theory. After his hasty departure from Sinope he moved to Athens where he proceeded to criticize many cultural conventions of the Athens of that day. He was the son of the mintmaster of Sinope, and there is some debate as to whether or not he alone had debased the Sinopian currency, whether his father had done this, or whether they had both done it. He was allegedly banished from, or fled from Sinope, for debasement of currency. He was born in Sinope, an Ionian colony on the Black Sea coast of Anatolia ( Asia Minor ) in 412 or 404 BC and died at Corinth in 323 BC.

Crates of Thebes, other Cynics, Epicurus, the Stoics, Han Ryner, Michel Onfray, Søren Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Max Stirner, Nussbaum, Appiahĭiogenes ( / d aɪ ˈ ɒ dʒ ɪ n iː z/ dy- OJ-in-eez Ancient Greek: Διογένης, romanized: Diogénēs ), also known as Diogenes the Cynic ( Διογένης ὁ Κυνικός, Diogénēs ho Kynikós), was a Greek philosopher and one of the founders of Cynic philosophy.

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