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Demonax (Δημώναξ) was a Greek philosopher of the 2nd century BC. He tried to revive the philosophy of the Cynic school. Born in Cyprus, he went to Athens, where he became very popular, so that people vied with one another in presenting him with food, and even the young children gave him great quantities of fruit. Much less austere than Diogenes, whom he took as his philosophic model, he nevertheless rebuked vice unsparingly, and was charged with neglecting the Eleusinian Mysteries, to which he replied: “If the mysteries are bad, no one should be initiated; and if they are good, they ought to be open to every one.” He was a friend of Epictetus, who once rebuked him for not marrying, but was silenced by Demonax, who said, “Very well; give me one of your daughters for a wife”—Epictetus being himself a bachelor. Demonax lived to be nearly a hundred, and on his death was buried with great magnificence. See the Demonax of Lucian, in which the character of the philosopher is painted in glowing colours.