Works, vol 3 | Page 5

Spartans [Footnote: See Spartans in Notes.] like yourself?' He observed to one Danae, who was bringing a suit against her brother, 'Have the law of him by all means; it was another Danae whose father was called the Lawless. [Footnote: See Danae in Notes.]
He waged constant warfare against all whose philosophy was not practical, but for show. So when he saw a cynic, with threadbare cloak and wallet, but a braying-pestle instead of a staff, proclaiming himself loudly as a follower of Antisthenes, Crates, and Diogenes, he said: 'Tell us no lies; your master is the professor of braying.'
Noticing how foul play was growing among the athletes, who often supplemented the resources of boxing and wrestling with their teeth, he said it was no wonder that the champions' partisans had taken to describing them as lions.
There was both wit and sting in what he said to the proconsul. The latter was one of the people who take all the hair off their bodies with pitch-plaster. A cynic mounted a block of stone and cast this practice in his teeth, suggesting that it was for immoral purposes. The proconsul in a rage had the man pulled down, and was on the point of condemning him to be beaten or banished, when Demonax, who was present, pleaded for him on the ground that he was only exercising the traditional cynic licence. 'Well,' said the proconsul, 'I pardon him this time at your request; but if he offends again, what shall I do to him?' 'Have him depilated,' said Demonax.
Another person, entrusted by the Emperor with the command of legions and the charge of a great province, asked him what was the way to govern well. 'Keep your temper, say little, and hear much.'
Asked whether he ate honey-cakes, 'Do you suppose,' he said, 'that bees only make honey for fools?'
Noticing near the Poecile a statue minus a hand, he said it had taken Athens a long time to get up a bronze to Cynaegirus.
Alluding to the lame Cyprian Rufinus, who was a Peripatetic and spent much time in the Lyceum walks, 'What presumption,' he exclaimed, 'for a cripple to call himself a Walking Philosopher!'
Epictetus once urged him, with a touch of reproof, to take a wife and raise a family--for it beseemed a philosopher to leave some one to represent him after the flesh. But he received the home thrust: 'Very well, Epictetus; give me one of your daughters.'
His remark to Herminus the Aristotelian is equally worth recording. He was aware that this man's character was vile and his misdeeds innumerable, and yet his mouth was always full of Aristotle and his ten predicaments. 'Certainly, Herminus,' he said, 'no predicament is too bad for you.'
When the Athenians were thinking, in their rivalry with Corinth, of starting gladiatorial shows, he came forward and said: 'Men of Athens, before you pass this motion, do not forget to destroy the altar of Pity.'
On the occasion of his visiting Olympia, the Eleans voted a bronze statue to him. But he remonstrated: 'It will imply a reproach to your ancestors, men of Elis, who set up no statue to Socrates or Diogenes.'
I once heard him observe to a learned lawyer that laws were not of much use, whether meant for the good or for the bad; the first do not need them, and upon the second they have no effect.
There was one line of Homer always on his tongue:
Idle or busy, death takes all alike.
He had a good word for Thersites, as a cynic and a leveller.
Asked which of the philosophers was most to his taste, he said: 'I admire them all; Socrates I revere, Diogenes I admire, Aristippus I love.'
He lived to nearly a hundred, free from disease and pain, burdening no man, asking no man's favour, serving his friends, and having no enemies. Not Athens only, but all Greece was so in love with him that as he passed the great would give him place and there would be a general hush. Towards the end of his long life he would go uninvited into the first house that offered, and there get his dinner and his bed, the household regarding it as the visit of some heavenly being which brought them a blessing. When they saw him go by, the baker-wives would contend for the honour of supplying him, and a happy woman was the actual donor. Children too used to call him father, and bring him offerings of fruit.
Party spirit was once running high at Athens; he came into the assembly, and his mere appearance was enough to still the storm. When he saw that they were ashamed, he departed again without having uttered a word.
When he found that he was no longer able to take care of himself, he repeated to his friends the