Vitae philosophorum

Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius. Hicks, R. D., editor. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1925.

And when he said to her:

    Is this she
  1. Who quitting woof and warp and comb and loom?[*](Eur. Bacch. 1236.)
she replied, It is I, Theodorus,—but do you suppose that I have been ill advised about myself, if instead of wasting further time upon the loom I spent it in education? These tales and countless others are told of the female philosopher.

There is current a work of Crates entitled Epistles,

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containing excellent philosophy in a style which sometimes resembles that of Plato. He has also written tragedies, stamped with a very lofty kind of philosophy; as, for example, the following passage[*](Nauck, T.G.F.2, Crat. i. p. 810.):
    Not one tower hath my country nor one roof,
  1. But wide as the whole earth its citadel
  2. And home prepared for us to dwell therein.

He died in old age, and was buried in Boeotia.

Menippus,[*](Menippus ille, nobilis quidem canis, Varro apud Nonium 333. Cf. Lucian, Icaromenippus 15, Bis Accusatus 33. Varro’s Saturae Menippeae, a mixture of prose and verse, were an imitation of the style of Menippus, although their subject matter was original and genuinely Roman.) 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.

There is no seriousness[*](Strabo, however (xvi. p. 759), speaks of him as σπουδογέλοιος.) in him; but his books overflow with laughter, much the same as those of his contemporary Meleager.[*](For a fragment from his Banquet see Athenaeus 502 c.)

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.

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[*](Anth. Plan. v. 41.):

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  1. May be, you know Menippus,
  2. Phoenician by birth, but a Cretan hound:
  3. A money-lender by the day—so he was called—
  4. At Thebes when once on a time his house was broken into
  5. And he lost his all, not understanding what it is to be a Cynic,
  6. 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.

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[*](Cf.Cic.Brut.91, § 315 post a me tota Asia peragrata est, [fuique]cum summis quidem oratoribus, quibus-cum exercebar ipsis lubentibus; quorum erat princeps Menippus Stratonicensis meo iudicio tota Asia illis temporibus disertissimus, and Strabo xvi. 660.); 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.