Life of Demonax (21-25)

‘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,

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 he should be given the names of three people who had never had to mourn. The father hum’d and ha’d, unable, doubtless, to produce any such person, till Demonax broke in: ‘And have you, then, a monopoly of the unendurable, when you cannot name a man who has not some grief to endure?”