A What a noble, marvellous,—yes, divine tale you have told, my dear fellow! I did not realise it, but you certainly were chock-full of your ambrosia and your lotus! The coysequence is that as you talked I felt something like a change of heart, and now that you have stopped I am put out: to speak in your own style, I am wounded. And no wonder! for yeu. know that people bitten by mad dogs not: only go mad themselves, but if in their fury they treat others as the dogs treated them, the others take leave of their senses too. Something of the affection is transmitted with the bite; the diseage multiplies, and there is a great run of-madness.

B Then you admit your madness?

A Why, certainly ; and more than that, I ask you to think out some course of treatment for us both.

B We must do as Telephus did, I suppose.

A What’s your meaning now?

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,