Demonax

Noticing near the Poecile a statue minus a hand, he said it had taken Athens a long time to get up a bronze to Cynaegirus.

Alluding to the lame Cyprian Rufinus, who was a Peripatetic and spent much time in the Lyceum walks, ‘What presumption,’ he exclaimed, ‘for a cripple to call himself a Walking Philosopher!’

Epictetus once urged him, with a touch of reproof, to take a wife and raise a family—for it beseemed a philosopher to leave some one to represent him after the flesh. But he received the home thrust: ‘Very well, Epictetus; give me one of your daughters.’

His remark to Herminus the Aristotelian is equally worth recording. He was aware that this man’s character was vile and his misdeeds innumerable, and yet his mouth was always full of Aristotle and his ten predicaments. ‘Certainly, Herminus,’ he said, ‘no predicament is too bad for you.’