Classical antiquity and reading Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments: is the sunbathing beggar an allusion to Diogenes the Cynic and Alexander the Great?

The works ofAdam Smith reveal his extensive knowledge of the literature, history, and philosophy of classical antiquity.1 As John Rae eloquently observes, ‘all through life [Smith] showed a knowledge of Greek and Latin literature not only uncommonly extensive but uncommonly exact’.2 The contents of Smith’s personal library reveal that he kept at hand editions in the original languages of many Greek and Roman authors.3 A top-flight education in Smith’s time included study in reading ancient Greek and Latin texts in the original and many eighteenth-century intellectuals acquired a considerable depth of knowledge of those sources. Perhaps most remarkable of all was Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, Smith’s rhetorical bête noire.4 Shaftesbury became fluent in Latin (and perhaps Greek as well) by the time he was eleven years old as a result of the visionary conversational pedagogy that John Locke, a family friend, had recommended for the boy’s private tutoring.5 Smith himself studied Latin and Greek sources so thoroughly that he learned many passages by heart and throughout his life could quote them from memory.6