Legacy of the Dog

Diogenes spent his later years not in Athens but in Corinth, where he settled and where he eventually died — reportedly around 323 BCE, on the same day as Alexander the Great. The pairing was deliberate in the retelling — the man who conquered the world and the man who conquered desire, ending together. Buried near a city gate at Corinth, he was honored by the locals with a pillar topped with a marble dog over his grave, a fitting tribute to the philosopher the Greeks called "the Dog."

His influence outlived him. The Stoics drew heavily on Cynic ideas about self-sufficiency, early Christian monks adopted his asceticism, and even modern minimalism echoes his claim that possessions create more anxiety than comfort.