Monimus: Diogenes

¹ Monimus was a Syracusan, and a pupil of Diogenes, but also a slave of some Corinthian money-changer, as Sosicrates tells us.

Xeniades, who bought Diogenes, used often to come to him, extolling the excellency of Diogenes both in actions and words, till he excited a great affection for the man in the mind of Monimus. For he immediately feigned madness, and threw about all the money and all the coins that were on the table, until his master discarded him, and then he straightway went to Diogenes and became his pupil.

He also followed Crates the Cynic a good deal, and devoted himself to the same studies as he did; and the sight of this conduct of his made his master all the more think him mad.

II. And he was a very eminent man, so that even Menander, the comic poet, speaks of him; accordingly, in one of his plays, namely in the Hippocomus, he mentions him thus:

There is a man, O Philo, named Monimus, A wise man, though but little known, and one Who bears a wallet at his back, and is not Content with one but three. He never spoke A single sentence, by great Jove I swear, Like this one, “Know thyself,” or any other Of the oft-quoted proverbs: all such sayings He scorned, as he did beg his way through dirt; Teaching that all opinion is but vanity.

But he was a man of such gravity that he despised glory, and sought only for truth.

III. He wrote some jests mingled with serious treatises, and two essays on the Appetites, and an Exhortation.