Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​Monimus of Syracuse was a disciple of Diogenes, but a household slave of a certain Corinthian banker, as Sosicrates says. Xeniades, who had purchased Diogenes, visited this banker continually and, by recounting Diogenes' excellence in both deeds and words, cast Monimus into a passionate longing for the man. For he immediately feigned madness and began flinging about the small coins and all the silver money on the table, until his master dismissed him; and he at once belonged to Diogenes. He also frequently followed Crates the Cynic and held fast to similar pursuits, at which time the master, seeing him, thought all the more that he was mad.

​And he became a distinguished man, so that even the comic poet Menander mentioned him. In one of his plays, at any rate, in *The Groom*, he spoke as follows: "There was a certain Monimus, Philon, a wise man, though somewhat less famous. A: The one who had the knapsack? B: Knapsacks, indeed, three of them! But that man uttered a saying, by Zeus, not at all like 'Know thyself,' nor like those oft-shouted sayings, but far above them—that beggar, covered in filth! For he said that everything supposed is mere smoke." He became an exceedingly grave man, so as to despise mere reputation, but to press eagerly toward truth. He wrote playful pieces mixed with covert seriousness, as well as two books *On Impulses* and an *Exhortation*.