When one of his friends said: “Demonax, let’s
go to the Aesculapium and pray for my son,” he
replied: “You must think Aesculapius very deaf,
that he can’t hear our prayers from where we
are!”

 

On seeing two philosophers very ignorantly debating a given subject, one asking silly questions and
the other giving answers that were not at all to the
point, he said: ‘“Doesn’t it seem to you, friends,
that one of these fellows is milking a he-goat and
the other is holding a sieve for him!”

 

When Agathocles the Peripatetic was boasting


 

that he was first among the logicians—that there
was no other, he said: “Come now, Agathocles; if
there is no other, you are not first: if you are first,
then there are others.”
 
Cethegus the ex-consul, going by way of Greece
to Asia to be his father’s lieutenant, did and said
many ridiculous things. One of the friends of
Demonax, looking on, said that he was a great goodfor-nothing. ‘No, he isn’t, either,” said he—“nota
great one!”
 
When he saw Apollonius the philosopher leaving
the city with a multitude of disciples (he was
called away to be tutor to the emperor), Demonax remarked: “There goes Apollonius and his
Argonauts!” Alluding to Apollonius of Rhodes and his poem on the
Argonauts, and implying that this was another quest of the
Golden Fleece.