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Chapter 8. MENIPPUS
[99] Menippus,
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also a Cynic, was by descent a Phoenician—a slave, as Achaïcus in his treatise on
Ethics says. Diocles further informs us that his master was a citizen of Pontus and was named Baton. But as avarice made him very resolute in begging, he succeeded in becoming a Theban.
Hermippus says that he lent out money by the day and got a nickname from doing so. For he used to make loans on bottomry and take security, thus accumulating a large fortune.
[100] At last, however, he fell a victim to a plot, was robbed of all, and in despair ended his days by hanging himself. I have composed a trifle upon him
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:
May be, you know Menippus,
Phoenician by birth, but a Cretan hound:
A money-lender by the day—so he was called—
At Thebes when once on a time his house was broken into
And he lost his all, not understanding what it is to be a Cynic,
He hanged himself.
Some authorities question the genuineness of the books attributed to him, alleging them to be by Dionysius and Zopyrus of Colophon, who, writing them for a joke, made them over to Menippus as a person able to dispose of them advantageously.
[101] There have been six men named Menippus: the first the man who wrote a History of the Lydians and abridged Xanthus; the second my present subject; the third a sophist of Stratonicea, a Carian by descent
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; the fourth a sculptor; the fifth and sixth painters, both mentioned by Apollodorus.
However, the writings of Menippus the Cynic are thirteen in number:
Necromancy.
Wills.
Epistles artificially composed as if by the gods.
Replies to the physicists and mathematicians and grammarians; and
A book about the birth of Epicurus; and
The School’s reverence for the twentieth day.
Besides other works.
Vitae philosophorum. Diogenes Laertius. R. D. Hicks (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1925.
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