====== Monimus of Syracuse ======
===== Diogenes Laertius, Book 6 §82-83 =====

<blockquote>82. **Monimus of Syracuse** was a pupil of Diogenes; and, according to Sosicrates, he was in the service of a certain Corinthian banker, to whom Xeniades, the purchaser of Diogenes, made frequent visits, and by the account which he gave of his goodness in word and deed, excited in **Monimus** a passionate admiration of Diogenes. For he forthwith pretended to be mad and proceeded to fling away the small change and all the money on the banker's table, until at length his master dismissed him; and he then straightway devoted himself to Diogenes. He often followed Crates the Cynic as well, and embraced the like pursuits; whereupon his master, seeing him do this, was all the more persuaded that he was mad.

83. He came to be a distinguished man; so much so that he is even mentioned by the comic poet Menander. At any rate in one of his plays, The Groom, his words are:

//One **Monimus** there was, a wise man, Philo,
But not so very famous.
a. He, you mean,
Who carried the scrip?
b. Nay, not one scrip, but three.
Yet never a word, so help me Zeus, spake he
To match the saying, Know thyself, nor such
Famed watchwords. Far beyond all these he went,
Your dusty mendicant, pronouncing wholly vain
All man's supposings.//

**Monimus** indeed showed himself a very grave moralist, so that he ever despised mere opinion and sought only truth.

He has left us, besides some trifles blended with covert earnestness, two books, //On Impulses// and an //Exhortation to Philosophy//.</blockquote>