A profligate eunuch had written on his house, “Let no evil thing enter in.” “Where,” said Diogenes, “is the master of the house going?” After having anointed his feet with perfume, he said that the ointment from his head mounted up to heaven, and that from his feet up to his nose. When the Athenians entreated him to be initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries, and said that in the shades below the initiated had the best seats; “It will,” he replied, “be an absurd thing if Agesilaus and Epaminondas are to live in the mud, and some miserable wretches, who have been initiated, are to be in the islands of the blest.” Some mice crept up to his table, and he said, “See, even Diogenes maintains his favourites.” Once, when he was leaving the bath, and a man asked him whether many men were bathing, he said, “No;” but when a number of people came out, he confessed that there were a great many. When Plato called him a dog, he said, “Undoubtedly, for I have come back to those who sold me.” Plato defined man thus: “Man is a two-footed, featherless animal,” and was much praised for the definition; so Diogenes plucked a cock and brought it into his school, and said, “This is Plato’s man.” On which account this addition was made to the definition, “With broad flat nails.” A man once asked him what was the proper time for supper, and he made answer, “If you are a rich man, whenever you please; and if you are a poor man, whenever you can.” When he was at Megara he saw some sheep carefully covered over with skins, and the children running about naked; and so he said, “It is better at Megara to be a man’s ram, than his son.” A man once struck him with a beam, and then said, “Take care.” “What,” said he, “are you going to strike me again?” He used to say that the demagogues were the servants of the people; and garlands the blossoms of glory. Having lighted a candle in the day time, he said, “I am looking for a man.” On one occasion he stood under a fountain, and as the bystanders were pitying him, Plato, who was present, said to them, “If you wish really to show your pity for him, come away;” intimating that he was only acting thus out of a desire for notoriety. Once, when a man had struck him with his fist, he said, “O Hercules, what a strange thing that I should be walking about with a helmet on without knowing it!”