Born in Cyprus, he moved to Athens, where his wisdom, and his skill in solving disputes, earned him the admiration of the citizens.
[5] He eventually moved to Athens, where he seems initially to have offended the citizens,[6] but eventually he came to be regarded with reverence for his resolute character: To a natural impulse towards the good, an innate yearning for philosophy which manifested itself in childish years, that he owed his superiority to all the things that ordinary men pursue.
He took independence and candour for his guiding principles, lived himself an upright, wholesome, irreproachable life, and exhibited to all who saw or heard him the model of his own disposition and philosophic sincerity.
[5]He is described as a peace-maker, able to bring harmony between husband and wife, and to solve disputes between brothers.
Towards the end of his long life he would go uninvited into the first house that offered, and there get his dinner and his bed, the household regarding it as the visit of some heavenly being which brought them a blessing.
Demonax is also a genus of longicorn beetles (Cerambycidae), characterised in part by possessing several spines on their antennae.
The father hum’d and ha’d, unable, doubtless, to produce any such person, till Demonax broke in: ‘And have you, then, a monopoly of the unendurable, when you cannot name a man who has not some grief to endure?’[16](compare the story of Kisa Gotami).