Monimus of Syracuse was a Cynic philosopher of the 4th century BCE, a younger pupil of Diogenes of Sinope and of Crates of Thebes. The principal biographical source is Diogenes Laertius VI 82–83. According to his account, Monimus was first a servant (or slave) of a Corinthian money-changer. Hearing from Xeniades, with whom Diogenes was then living, accounts of the philosopher, Monimus burned so to learn from him that he feigned madness: he began scattering his master's small coins and bread from the table. The master, naturally, drove him out. Monimus went off to study with Diogenes. After Diogenes' death he continued with Crates (Laertius again: συνῆν δὲ καὶ Κράτητι).

The episode of feigned madness is a characteristic Cynic gesture: Monimus chooses the shortest road to philosophy by a demonstrative casting-off of common-sense calculation (μανία in the service of σοφία).

Monimus is known above all for a single phrase, cited by the ancient doxographers:

τῦφον τὰ πάντα — "all things are smoke / vain illusion"

The word τῦφος in Cynic ethics is a technical term for the whole illusory axiological superstructure of social life: public honours, reputation, material values, evaluative prejudices. Literally τῦφος means "smoke," "fume," "vapour" — what looks dense and significant but, on closer look, is without body. Monimus' thesis is maximally radical: what the ordinary person calls "real" or "important" is only τῦφος — a counterfeit construction with no foundation of its own outside human opinion.

This position is proto-Stoic. The Stoics — through Zeno of Citium, who studied with Crates, and for whom Monimus may have been an immediate forerunner — take up the Cynic insight and technicise it: what the Cynic calls τῦφος, the Stoic translates into the vocabulary of precise psychology — this is a ψευδής ὑπόληψις (a false evaluative judgment). The content is akin: the reality of the affective charge of external things is counterfeit; it is constituted by the soul's judgments. The difference is one of register:

• the Cynic: rhetorical, shock-driven, through an emblematic gesture (τῦφος = smoke)
• the Stoic: analytical, through a theory of assent (ὑπόληψις = an act of the ruling part's assent)

• 02-15 — the only explicit mention of Monimus in Marcus. The context: the famous formula «πᾶν ὑπόληψις» ("all is judgment") is justified by appeal to Monimus. The crucial point is that Marcus performs the Stoic translation of the Cynic thesis: τῦφον τὰ πάντα → πᾶν ὑπόληψις. Technically this is:
• the same assertion — external things have no affective charge of their own
• in a new register — the rhetorical τῦφος is replaced by the analytical ὑπόληψις
• Marcus accepts cautiously: he adds the qualification «μέχρι τοῦ ἀληθοῦς» — "to the extent that it is true," and «τὸ νόστιμον δέχηται» — "let one take only the edible kernel." The signal: the Cynic is right in substance, but his rhetorical exaggeration (as if literally everything were illusion) must be moderated. The Stoics do not hold that the cosmos, virtue, or rational nature are τῦφος; what is illusory is only the axiological superstructure of the external indifferents.

• Diogenes Laertius VI 82–83 — biography
• Sextus Empiricus Adv. Math. VII 88; VIII 5 — for the preservation of τῦφον τὰ πάντα
• G. Giannantoni, Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae (SSR), vol. II, sect. V H (Monimus): the full corpus of fragments and testimonia
• M.-O. Goulet-Cazé, L'ascèse cynique, Paris 1986: a general introduction to the Cynic context
• D. Krueger, "The Bawdy and Society," in The Cynics: The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and its Legacy, ed. R. B. Branham & M.-O. Goulet-Cazé, Berkeley 1996