Life of Demonax (26-30)

He often ridiculed the people who use obsolete and uncommon words in their lectures. One of these produced a bit of Attic purism in answer to some question he had put. ‘My dear sir,’ he said, ‘the date of my question is to-day; that of your answer is temp. Bell. Troj.'

A friend asking him to come to the temple of Asclepius, there to make prayer for his son, ‘Poor deaf Asclepius!’ he exclaimed; 'can he not hear at this distance?’

He once saw two philosophers engaged in a very unedifying game of cross questions and crooked answers. ‘Gentlemen,’ said he, ‘here is one man milking a billy-goat, and another catching the proceeds in a sieve.’

When Agathocles the Peripatetic vaunted himself as the first and only dialectician, he asked him how he could be the first, if he was the only, or the only, if he was the first.

The consular Cethegus, on his way to serve under his father in Asia, said and did many foolish things. A friend describing him as a great ass, ‘Not even a great ass,’ said Demonax.