CYNÆUS of Thessaly, the scholar of Demosthenes, flourished 275 years before Christ. Pyrrhus had so high an esteem for him, that he sent him to Rome to solicit a peace; and so vast was his memory, that the day after his arrival he saluted all the senators and knights by name. Pyrrhus and he wrote a Treatise of War, quoted by Tully.

CYNICS, a sect of ancient philosophers, who valued themselves upon their contempt of riches and state, arts and sciences, and every thing, in short, except virtue or morality.

The cynic philosophers owe their origin and institution to Antisthenes of Athens, a disciple of Socrates; who being asked of what use his philosophy had been to him, replied, "It enables me to live with myself." Diogenes was the most famous of his disciples, in whose life the system of this philosophy appears in its greatest perfection. He led a most wretched life, a tub having served him for a lodging, which he rolled before him wherever he went. Yet he was nevertheless not the more humble on account of his ragged cloak, bag, and tub; for one day entering Plato's house, at a time when there was a splendid entertainment there for several persons of distinction, he jumped up upon a very rich couch in all his dirt, saying, "I trample on the pride of Plato." "Yes (replied Plato), but with great pride, Diogenes." He had the utmost contempt for all the human race; for he walked the streets of Athens at noon day with a lighted lanthorn in his hand, telling the people, "He was in search of a man." Amongst many excellent maxims of morality, he held some very pernicious opinions; for he used to say, that the uninterrupted good fortune of Harpalus, who generally passed for a thief and a robber, was a testimony against the gods. He regarded chastity and modesty as weaknesses; hence Laertius observes of him, that he did every thing openly, whether it belonged to Ceres or Venus; though he adds, that Diogenes only ran to an excess of impiety to put others out of conceit with it. But impudence was the characteristic of these philosophers; who argued, that what was right to be done, might be done at all times and in all places. The chief principle of this sect, in common with the stoics, was, that we should follow nature. But they differed from the stoics in their explanation of that maxim; the cynics being of opinion, that a man followed nature that gratified his natural motions and appetites; while the stoics understood right reason by the word nature.