Menippus

Menippus of Gadara was a Cynic satirist from Gadara, a Hellenistic city in the Decapolis, active in the late 3rd to early 2nd century BCE. He wrote in Greek and is traditionally credited with inventing or shaping a form of satire later named after him: Menippean satire, a discursive, mixed-genre style that combines prose and verse, parable, myth, and digression to target philosophers, rhetorical pretensions, and social norms.

Most of Menippus's works survive only in fragments and are known through later writers such as Varro, Athenaeus, and Seneca. They describe him as a witty, skeptical Cynic who used episodic narratives, dialogues, and personifications (Death, Fortune, etc.) to puncture pedantry and dogma. The pieces often blend prose with verse and employ parody, dream-vision, and burlesque.

The influence of Menippus extends beyond antiquity. The genre that bears his name—menippean satire—became a model for later Latin and European satire, influencing Seneca and Apuleius, and shaping long, digressive narratives that mock philosophy and society. In modern literary studies, the term is used to classify works that mix prose, verse, satire, and digression in a philosophical or social critique.

Dating and textual transmission are uncertain, with most scholars placing him in the 3rd century BCE. What survives are fragments quoted by later authors; no complete works remain. The corpus and its interpretation remain topics of classical philology and literary history. See also: Menippean satire; Gadara; Cynicism.