====== Menippus of Gadara | Diogenes Laertius, Book 6 §99-101  ======


<blockquote>99. **Menippus**, also a Cynic, was by descent a Phoenician – a slave, as Achacus 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.

There is no seriousness in him; but his books overflow with laughter, much the same as those of his contemporary Meleager.

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:

//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;[62] 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.
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[[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lives_of_the_Eminent_Philosophers/Book_VI|Source]]</blockquote>