Diogenes and the plucked chicken / 'Plato's man'
About the work
Imported from the workbook's Full reassessment sheet, revised 7 October 2026 (record ID 34). The assessment below is the workbook's comparative judgment under its stated criteria; source links and limits are retained.
Workbook assessment: Spread only
Date or witness: Anecdote set in 4th century BCE; Diogenes Laertius composed the extant account in the 3rd century CE; surviving manuscript tradition is medieval.
Region: Greek philosophical anecdote tradition
Workbook date-sort bounds: 200 CE to 300 CE; these bounds are not automatically invention or disappearance dates.
Description
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 6.40 (within Chapter 2 on Diogenes), reports that Diogenes mocked a definition of the human as a featherless biped by presenting a plucked bird as Plato's human.
Evidence of adoption or transmission
The philosophical anecdote is preserved and transmitted within Diogenes Laertius literary account.
What remains uncertain
No independent contemporary adoption among workers is established; the stories protagonist and accessibility do not determine audience.
Workbook revision note: Reassessed using grassroots criteria