He lived and died a bachelor, and we are told that on being blamed by Epictetus, with whom he studied, for not marrying and having a family as a philosopher should, he replied “Very well, give me one of your daughters.”  Epictetus was an old bachelor.

He counselled a bad orator to practise and exercise himself in the art of speaking, and on his replying, “I am always doing so—­to myself,” he added, “It is therefore not surprising you speak as you do—­having a fool for your audience.”

When the sophist Sidonius, delivering a long panegyric on himself, said that he was acquainted with all the tenets of the philosophers:  “If Aristotle calls me to the Lyceum, I obey; if Plato to the Academy, I come; Zeno to the Stoa, I take up my abode there; if Pythagoras calls, I am silent:”  Demonax jumped up in the middle of the Assembly and cried out, “Pythagoras calls you.”

His humour was purely genial and jocose, as when, on the point of setting sail in winter, he replied to a friend who asked him whether he was not afraid he should be ship-wrecked and go to feed the fishes, “Should I not be ungrateful were I unwilling to be devoured by fishes, when I have feasted on so many myself?”

But there is one speech of his which must ever make his memory dear to all good men.  When the Athenians wished to emulate the Corinthians by exhibiting a gladiatorial combat, he said, “Do not vote this, Athenians, before ye have taken down the Altar of Mercy.”

Demonax lived to a ripe old age, and we are told that he was so much beloved in Athens that, as he passed the bread-shops, the bakers would run out to beg his acceptance of a loaf, and thought it a good omen if he complied; and that the little children called him father, and would bring him presents of fruit.

Apuleius wrote in Latin in the second century.  He was a native of Carthage—­not the celebrated Carthage of Terence, but that of Cyprian—­a new city.  He travelled like many of the learned men of his time to Athens and Alexandria, and thus, most probably, became acquainted with his contemporary Lucian.  At any rate, his “Golden Ass” seems taken from the work by that author.  Bishop Warburton has seen in his production a subtle attack upon Christianity, but we may take it as intended to ridicule magical arts, and those who believed in them.  He was likely to feel keenly on this subject, for having married a rich widow, Pudentilla, her relatives accused him of having obtained her by witchcraft, and even dragged him into a court of justice.

Lucian ridiculed the religion of his day, Apuleius its superstitions.  Apuleius speaks of his “book of jests,” but it is lost—­the few lines he gives out of it are a somewhat matter-of-fact recommendation of tooth-powder.  His enemies thought that tooth-powder was something magical and unholy—­at any rate, they made his mention of it a charge against him.  In reply, he says that perhaps a man who only opens his mouth to revile ought not to have tooth-powder.