Menippus

Menippos of Gadara ( ancient Greek Μένιππος Menippos Latinized, Menippus ) was a Greek writer of antiquity, who was close to the idea of ​​the Cynic philosopher. He came from Gadara and BC was active in the first half of the 3rd century.

Menippos writings are lost. Reported are only a few reports about his life and he has written satires. He mixed it the first prose and verse, which is why he became the namesake of a literary genre, the Menippeischen satire.

Life

Menippos came from Gadara, now Umm Qais in Jordan. He was probably of Phoenician origin, should be freed from slavery and have received the right of citizenship in Thebes. Furthermore, it is reported that he had come through money lending as a single asset and killed himself because he had been cheated out of this. His exact survival data are unknown, after evaluation of the ancient reports, it is believed that he was BC active in the first half of the 3rd century.

Work

Menippos ' writings are lost. Ancient authors report that they included a total of 13 books, count on various titles of individual securities and have few contents of individual writings survived. Some of these items are:

• Descent into the underworld ( Νέκυια ). One assumes the following background story of this document. Menippos itself comes from the underworld to the upper world to the errors of the people to observe and later to report the gods. Disguised as he is Erinye.
• Wills ( Διαθῆκαι ). These were believed to be parodies of the Testaments of philosophers.
• Letters, conceived from the perspective of the Gods ( Ἐπιστολαὶ κεκομψευμέναι ἀπὸ τῶν θεῶν προσώπου ).
• Epicurus's birth and the cult acclaimed by the Epicureans Twentieth ( Γονὰς Ἐπικούρου καὶ τὰς θρησκευομένας ὑπ ' αὐτῶν εἰκάδας ). Here Menippos made ​​probably about celebrations funny that prevented the Epicureans on the twentieth day of each month and on Epicurus birthday.

Except on Epicurus were also Arcesilaus, the natural philosopher, mathematician and grammarian to targets Menippos writings '.

The style of his work can be, as all works are lost, reconstruct only about his imitators. They include among others the satirist Lucian of Samosata and the Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro. It is believed that the first prose and verse Menippos mixed together. In the dead conversations of Lucian Menippos also occurs as a literary figure; how Lucian's style wrote independently or closely based on Menippos is controversial in research. According to Diogenes Laertius contained Menippos ' writings hardly Ernst Increasing and were full of scorn and derision. This judgment is in line with other ancient reports, it is believed, therefore, that Menippos hardly wrote down their own philosophical doctrines but mainly as a satirist, mocking critic and parodist can be seen. His writings were in the tradition of the Cynic diatribe.

Aftereffect

Menippos ' mixture of prose and verse ( cf. Prosimetrum ) was influential and found in Latin literature to the Middle Ages numerous successors (see Menippeischen satire).

Menippos is not valid as a symbol of a philosophical school, but as the founder of satire as a literary genre on the grounds that the literary form and the entertaining function relevant with him appearing as the philosophical intent. The reason for this may lie in the fact that the philosophy of irony, wit and ridicule did not let more than their own resources are already in antiquity; they were rather the tasks of the literature that was no longer able to challenge the philosophy in their field. Therefore Menippos is still the figurehead, with the " serious " philosophy demarcated for the first time by the " foolish " literature. It may seem as a sign of the philosophical side vehemently advocated elimination of the literature of the philosophy that no single school of philosophy relies on Menippos, while on the other hand, a whole literary genre is named after him.

The historian Theodor Mommsen described Menippos as the "father of the feuilleton literature " and speculated about him, he was " the most genuine literary representatives that philosophy, whose wisdom is to deny the philosophy and mock the philosophers of the dogs Wisdom [ Note: Means the Cynicism ] of Diogenes; a funny master of serious wisdom he showed in examples and purr, except that the righteous life everything on earth and in heaven is vanity, nothing but vain as the strife of the so-called wise. "

Portraits

A resulting in the 2nd century Roman copy of a lost Greek statue from the 3rd century BC have interpreted as Menippos Schefold Karl and Gisela MA Richter. The copy was found in the villa of Antoninus Pius in Lanuvium and is now in the Capitoline Museums in Rome. In addition, Maria R. Wojcik one of the two portraits of a Doppelherme found in the Villa of the Papyri was interpreted as Menippos. The Doppelherme is now in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.

A modern-day portrait of Diego Velázquez is a fantasy representation.