The Life of Diogenes

Diogenes of Oenoanda (or Oinoanda) was an Epicurean Greek from the 2nd century AD. The main scholar of the inscription, Martin Ferguson Smith posits that he was born around 60-80 AD into a wealthy and influential Oinoandan family. As a young

man, he studied rhetoric, perhaps in Rhodes. At some stage of his life he becomes

an Epicurean and develops links with Epicurean circles in Athens, Chalcis, and Thebes as well as in Rhodes, where he sometimes resides.

Little more is known about the life of Diogenes apart from the limited information he reveals to us. The inscription itself has now been assigned on epigraphic grounds to the Hadrianic period.

Around 120-140 (ca.) when Diogenes is «at the sunset of life» and in poor health, he is moved, in a spirit of philanthropy, to share the Epicurean recipe for happiness with Oinoanda’s people and foreign visitors. As a man who had found peace by practicing the doctrines of Epicurus, relates that he was motivated "to help also those who come after us" and "to place therefore the remedies of salvation by means of this porch."

He was wealthy enough to pay for the materials and manpower of stonemasons and carvers to create and display his inscription. For this purpose he either paid the city (or persuaded them) to allow him to repurpose one of the stoas on the so-called Upper Agora to display the inscription. 

This seemingly quixotic endeavour has left us what is the largest inscription from ancient times and a swathe of detail of Epicurean thinking that would otherwise have been lost.