Works, vol 3 | Page 3

answer. The sophist had not had enough; 'You are no infant,' he went on, 'but a philosopher, it seems; may one ask what marks the transformation?' 'The marks of manhood,' said Demonax.
Another time the same person came up and asked him what school of philosophy he belonged to. 'Who told you I was a philosopher?' was all he said. But as he left him, he had a good laugh to himself, which Favorinus observing, demanded what he was laughing at; 'I was only amused by your taking a man for a philosopher because he wears a beard, when you have none yourself.'
When Sidonius, who had a great reputation at Athens as a teacher, was boasting that he was conversant with all the philosophic systems--but I had better quote his words. 'Let Aristotle call, and I follow to the Lyceum; Plato, and I hurry to the Academy; Zeno, and I make my home in the Porch; Pythagoras, and I keep the rule of silence.' Then rose Demonax from among the audience: 'Sidonius, Pythagoras calls.'
A pretty girlish young man called Python, son of some Macedonian grandee, once by way of quizzing him asked a riddling question and invited him to show his acumen over it. 'I only see one thing, dear child,' he said, 'and that is, that you are a fair logician.' The other lost his temper at this equivoque, and threatened him: 'You shall see in a minute what a man can do.' 'Oh, you keep a man, do you?' was Demonax's smiling retort.
He once, for daring to laugh at an athlete who displayed himself in gay clothes because he had won an Olympic victory, received a blow on the head with a stone, which drew blood. The bystanders were all as angry as if they had themselves been the victims, and set up a shout--'The Proconsul! the Proconsul!' 'Thank you, gentlemen,' said Demonax, 'but I should prefer the doctor.'
He once picked up a little gold charm in the road as he walked, and posted a notice in the market-place stating that the loser could recover his property, if he would call upon Demonax and give particulars of the weight, material, and workmanship. A handsome young exquisite came, professing to have lost it. The philosopher soon saw that it was a got-up story; 'Ah, my boy,' he said, 'you will do very well, if you lose your other charms as little as you have lost this one.'
A Roman senator at Athens once presented his son, who had great beauty of a soft womanish type. 'My son salutes you, sir,' he said. To which Demonax answered, 'A pretty lad, worthy of his father, and extremely like his mother.'
A cynic who emphasized his principles by wearing a bear's skin he insisted on addressing not by his name of Honoratus, but as Bruin.
Asked for a definition of Happiness, he said that only the free was happy. 'Well,' said the questioner, 'there is no lack of free men.'--'I count no man free who is subject to hopes and fears.'-- 'You ask impossibilities; of these two we are all very much the slaves.' 'Once grasp the nature of human affairs,' said Demonax, 'and you will find that they justify neither hope nor fear, since both pain and pleasure are to have an end.'
Peregrine Proteus was shocked at his taking things so lightly, and treating mankind as a subject for humour: 'You have no teeth, Demonax.' 'And you, Peregrine, have no bowels.'
A physical philosopher was discoursing about the antipodes; Demonax took his hand, and led him to a well, in which he showed him his own reflection: 'Do you want us to believe that the antipodes are like _that_?'
A man once boasted that he was a wizard, and possessed of mighty charms whereby he could get what he chose out of anybody. 'Will it surprise you to learn that I am a fellow-craftsman?' asked Demonax; 'pray come with me to the baker's, and you shall see a single charm, just one wave of my magic wand, induce him to bestow several loaves upon me.' Current coin, he meant, is as good a magician as most.
The great Herodes, mourning the untimely death of Pollux, used to have the carriage and horses got ready, and the place laid at table, as though the dead were going to drive and eat. To him came Demonax, saying that he brought a message from Pollux. Herodes, delighted with the idea that Demonax was humouring his whim like other people, asked what it was that Pollux required of him. 'He cannot think why you are so long coming to him.'
When another person kept himself shut up in the dark, mourning his son, Demonax represented himself to him as a magician: he would call up the son's ghost, the only condition being that