Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​Menippus, who was also a Cynic, was by origin a Phoenician and a slave, as Achaicus says in his *Ethics*. Diocles adds that his master was a native of Pontus and was named Baton. Through his greed, begging quite relentlessly, he succeeded in becoming a citizen of Thebes. He conveys nothing of serious value; his books are full of mockery and are somewhat on a par with those of Meleager, who was his contemporary. Hermippus says that he became a daily money-lender and was called so; for he lent on maritime interest and took pledges, so that he amassed a very large fortune.

​In the end, however, he was trapped by a plot, stripped of everything, and through despondency ended his life by hanging. We also made an epigram upon him: "A Phoenician by race, but a Cretan hound, a daily money-lender—for so he was nicknamed—you perhaps know Menippus. In Thebes, when his house was once broken into and he lost all, not understanding the nature of a dog, he hanged himself." Some say that his books are not his own, but the work of Dionysius and Zopyrus of Colophon, who, composing them for the sake of a joke, gave them to him as one well able to turn them to profit.

​There have been six men named Menippus: first, the one who wrote on Lydian affairs and made an epitome of Xanthus; second, this very man; third, a sophist of Stratonicea, a Carian by origin; fourth, a sculptor; fifth and sixth, painters, both of whom are mentioned by Apollodorus. The books of the Cynic, at any rate, are thirteen in number: *Nekyia* (Descent to the Underworld), *Wills*, *Artfully Composed Letters in the Person of the Gods*, *Against the Physicists, Mathematicians, and Grammarians*, *The Birth of Epicurus*, *The Twentieth Day of the Month Celebrated by Them*, and others.