Everyone wants to live a meaningful life. Before our era with self-help books offering twelve-step programs and other guides to achieving happiness, the philosophers of ancient Greece explored the enigma of what makes life worthwhile, producing a wide variety of ideas and examples to follow. This rich tradition was compiled by Diogenes Laërtius in an anthology, a mixture of sayings and anecdotes, which generations of Western readers have consulted for education as well as entertainment. The work "Lives of Eminent Philosophers," compiled in the third century AD, came to prominence during the Renaissance in Italy. To this day, it remains a critical source for much of what we know about the roots and practice of philosophy in ancient Greece, covering a longer time span and a greater number of figures—from Pythagoras and Socrates to Aristotle and Epicurus—than any other ancient source.