24
He went to a man who was mourning the death of a son and had shut himself up in the dark, and told him that he was a sorcerer and could raise the boy’s shade for him if only he would name three men who had never mourned for anyone. When the man hesitated long arfd was perplexed—I suppose he could not name a single one—Demonax said: “You ridiculous fellow, do you think, then, that you alone suffer beyond endurance, when you see that nobody is unacquainted with mourning?”
25
He also liked to poke fun at those who use obsolete and unusual. words in conversation. For instance, to a man who had been asked a certain question by him and had answered in far-fetched book-language, he said: “I asked you now, but you answer me as if I had asked in Agamemnon’s day.”
26
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!”
27
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!”
28
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.”
29
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!”
