BION  , of Borysthenes (

Olbia), in Sarmatia, Greek moralist and philosopher, flourished in the first half of the 3rd century B.C . He was of low origin, his mother being a courtesan and his father a dealer in salt fish, with which he combined the occupation of smuggling . Bion, when a young man, was sold as a slave to a rhetorician, who gave him his freedom and made him his heir . After the death of his patron, Bion went to Athens to study philosophy . Here he attached himself in succession to the Academy, the Cynics, the Cyrenaics and the Peripatetics . One of his teachers was the Cyrenaic Theodorus, called " the atheist," whose influence is clearly shown in Bion's attitude towards the gods . After the manner of the sophists of the period, Bion travelled through Greece and Macedonia, and was admitted to the literary circle at the court of Antigonus Gonatas . He subsequently taught philosophy at Rhodes and died at Chalcis in Euboea . His life was written by Diogenes Laertius . Bion was essentially a popular writer, and in his Diatribae he satirized the follies of mankind in a manner calculated to appeal to the sympathies of a low-class audience . While eulogizing poverty and philosophy, he attacked the gods, musicians, geometricians, astrologers, and the wealthy, and denied the efficacy of prayer . His influence is distinctly traceable in succeeding writers, e.g. in the satires of Menippus .

Horace (Epistles, ii . 2 . 6o) alludes to his satires and caustic wit (sal nigrum) . An idea of his writings can be gathered from the fragments of Teles, a cynic philosopher who lived towards the end of the 3rd century, and who made great use of them . Specimens of his apophthegms may be found in Diogenes Laertius and the florilegium of Stobaeus, while there are traces of his influence in Seneca . ,I See Hoogvliet, De Vita, Doctrina, et Scriptis Bionis (1821) ; Ros-' signol, Fragmenta Bionis Borysthenitae (183o) ; Heinze, De Horatio Bionis Imitatore (1889) .