Honouring the winner: Diogenes

The running track at Olympia, Greece, part of the sports complex
 where the Ancient Olympic Games were held

The Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope (404?-323 BC), who lived in Corinth in his later years, was known for his provocative behaviour towards other people. Some would call him stimulating and challenging in a positive way, others would call him irritating or were even afraid of him and tried to avoid him. But Diogenes liked it to watch people and comment on what they did.
Once, during the Isthmian Games (a kind of Olympic Games) in Corinth, Diogenes went there, too, but not as a spectator to watch the athletes and for relaxing and eating and being together, as many people do, but for observing the people and their behaviour. For on such occasions people most show who they really are. Inhabitants of Corinth ignored him but people from elsewhere – and some came even from Libya or Sicily or Massalia (now Marseille, in France) – flocked around him and wanted to hear what he had to say or wanted to test him. But when cross-examined by Diogenes, many fled, afraid of his provocations. The poor and the ordinary, military commander or authority, whatever their position, Diogenes treated everyone equally. People saw Diogenes as he was, in optima forma (compare my blog “Diogenes in anecdotes”). The organisers of the Games didn’t know what to do. Diogenes’s behaviour was not provocative and irritating enough to chase him away, but ignoring him was also no option. But when Diogenes took a victory crown and placed it on his own head, the authorities found he went too far and ordered Diogenes to take it off and do nothing unlawful. “Why”, so Diogenes, “is it unlawful for me to wear a victory crown but not for others?” “Because, Diogenes, you haven’t won a victory.” But Diogenes returned that he had defeated many great competitors, formidable people; men who were greater than all those athletes around here, who were nothing but bundles of meat fighting against each other. So he was at least as entitled to wear a victory crown as these meaty victors. And by awarding the crown to himself it was he who made these Games famous.
By doing and talking so Diogenes held up a mirror to the organisers and admirers of the Isthmian Games for he showed that those who praise themselves and all who praise them and cheer them on are held in esteem, but that those who say the truth and show the mistakes and limits of those narcissists and their followers are despised and humiliated.
Then Diogenes saw a man coming from the running track, surrounded by a cheering crowd. He asked him what had happened “We have won!” the man said. “The men’s two-hundred-yard dash!” Diogenes was not impressed: “What kind of achievement is that. Did it make you more intelligent for having beaten your fellow runners? Or more moderate? Or less cowardly or less dissatisfied? Not at all! And it will not make your future life better.” “Maybe so”, the winner replied, “but I am the fastest man among all other Greeks.” “So what,” so Diogenes. “You are not faster than rabbits or deer, the fastest of all but also the flightiest. They are afraid of other animals and of humans and live miserably.” In this way the argument and Diogenes’s provocations went on for some time.
Dio of Prusa (c. 40 – c. 115 AD), the itinerant Cynic philosopher who handed down this story to us, concludes: “By conversing with the man in this way Diogenes made many in attendance look down on the footrace, and the man himself went away downcast and much humbler. Thus, Diogenes offered humanity no small service here: Whenever he saw someone putting on airs and going crazy over some worthless matter, he brought that person down to size a bit and removed a mote of ignorance, in the same way people prick and puncture swollen or inflated boils.” But alas, listening to wise words and understanding provocations and acting accordingly is only for the wisest and the greatest. Those who really have a say in what happens usually are not of that kind and don’t accept criticism. They prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of their egos. And most of their followers accept it.
On the same occasion, so Dio of Prusa, Diogenes saw two horses tied together fighting and kicking until one broke away and fled. Then Diogenes crowned the horse that stayed behind and proclaimed for it an Isthmian prize because it had won at kicking. How many people today take it seriously, when such a thing happens – and it does happen more often than most of us think – and don’t see the joke of it if not the point of it?

Source
Chapter 7. Best in Show (Dio Chrysostom, Oration 9, “Isthmian Discourse”), in: How to Say No: An Ancient Guide to the Art of Cynicism. Diogenes and the Cynics. Edited and translated by M. D. Usher. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2022.