Demonax (36-40)

Again, on seeing a soothsayer make public forecasts for money, he said: “1 don’t see on what ground you claim the fee: if you think you can change destiny in any way, you ask too little, however much you ask; but if everything is to turn out as Heaven has ordained, what good is your soothsaying?”

When a Roman ofticer, well-developed physically, gave him an exhibition of sword-practice on a post, and asked: “What did you think of my swordsmanship, Demonax?”’ he said: “Fine, if you have a wooden adversary!”

‘Moreover, when questions were unanswerable he always had an apt retort ready. When a man asked him’ banteringly: “1f I should burn a thousand pounds of wood, Demonax, how many pounds of smoke would it make?” he replied: “Weigh the ashes: all the rest will be smoke.”

A man named Polybius, quite uneducated and ungrammatical, said: “The emperor has honoured ‘me with the Roman citizenslfip.” “Oh, why didn’t he make you a Greek instead of a Roman?” said he.

On seeing an aristocrat who set great store on the breadth of his purple band, Demonax, taking hold of the garment and calling his attention to it,