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A What’s your meaning now?
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B Go to the man who inflicted the wound and beg him to heal us! Telephus had been grievously wounded by Achilles. Acting on the advice of the oracle at Delphi: "He who burt will heal you” (ὁ τρώσας καὶ ἰάσεται), he applied to Achilles for relief, and was at last cured with the rust of his spear. All that we know of Demonax derives from this essay, except for a few sayings elsewhere attributed to him. The authenticity of the essay has been repeatedly questioned, but should not be made to depend on the critic’s opinion of Demonax’s jokes, for—to paraphrase Lucian—we do not need a George Meredith to tell us that the flavour of a joke grows weak with age,
