Demonax, Cynic philosopher and Epictetus’ friend

Epictetus is one of the most influential of Stoic philosophers, if unfortunately not any longer a household name. He was well recognized throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and several of America’s founding fathers had a personal copy of his Enchiridion. Nowadays, however, unless you are into Stoicism, you’ve likely never heard of Epictetus. Heck, I went through an entire graduate program in philosophy, including courses on ancient philosophy, and never heard of him ether. That’s one reason last year I published my Field Guide to a Happy Life, which is both an update of and a homage to Epictetus’ philosophy.

We don’t really know much about Epictetus, even his name. “Epictetus” simply means acquired, because he was a slave. His brilliant student Arrian of Nicomedia — whose notes gave us both the Enchiridion and the Discourses — apparently wrote a biography of Epictetus, but it is lost to time (and so are four of the original eight volumes of the Discourses). Still, we know a little bit about one of Epictetus’ friends, who was also one of his students: Demonax the Cynic.

Pretty much our only source about Demonax is the Syrian satirist and rhetorician Lucian of Samosata, who lived between 125 and 180 CE (dying the same year as Marcus Aurelius). He wrote a short but fascinating Life of Demonax (full text here), from which I’ll draw all remaining material in this essay.

Demonax was born in Cyprus around 70 CE and moved to Athens, still the cultural center of the…