Menippus, of Gadara in Coele-Syria, Greek cynic and satirist, lived during the 3rd century BC. According to Diogenes Laërtius (vi. 8) he was originally a slave, amassed a fortune as a money-lender, lost it, and committed suicide through grief. Coele-Syria means hollow Syria and it was the region of Southern Syria disputed between the Seleucid dynasty and the Ptolemaic dynasty. ... The Cynics were a influential school of ancient philosophers. ... List of satirists below - writers, cartoonists and others known for their involvement in satire - humourous social criticism. ... (4th century BC - 3rd century BC - 2nd century BC - other centuries) (2nd millennium BC - 1st millennium BC - 1st millennium AD) Events The first two Punic Wars between Carthage and Rome over dominance in western Mediterranean Rome conquers Spain Great Wall of China begun Indian traders regularly visited Arabia Scythians occupy... Diogenes Laërtius, the biographer of the Greek philosophers, is supposed by some to have received his surname from the town of Laerte in Cilicia, and by others from the Roman family of the Laërtii. ... The word slaves has several meanings and usages: People who are owned by others, and live to serve them without pay. ... Jump to: navigation, search Suicide (from Latin sui caedere, to kill oneself) is the act of willfully ending ones own life; it is sometimes a noun for one who has committed or attempted the act. ...

His works (written in a mixture of prose and verse) are all lost. He discussed serious subjects in a spirit of raillery, and especially delighted in attacking the Epicureans and Stoics. His writings exercised considerable influence upon later literature. One of the dialogues attributed to Lucian, his avowed imitator, who frequently mentions him, is called Menippus. But this dialogue is regarded with suspicion, and since the sub-title ("The Oracle of the Dead") resembles that of a work ascribed to Menippus by Diogenes Laërtius, it has been suggested that it is really the work of Menippus himself, or at any rate imitated from his Necromancy by the author, whether Lucian. or another. It is well known that the Menippean satires of M. Terentius Varro, the fragments of which give an idea of this kind of composition, were called after Menippus of Gadara (see Teuffel-Schwabe, Hist. of Roman Literature, § 165, 3). Prose is writing distinguished from poetry by its greater variety of rhythm and its closer resemblance to the patterns of everyday speech. ... Bust of Homer, one of the earliest European poets, in the British Museum Poetry (ancient Greek: ποιεω (poieo) = I create) is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. ... Jump to: navigation, search Epicurus (Epikouros or Eπίκουρος in Greek) (born Samos 341 BC–died Athens, 270 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosopher who was the founder of Epicureanism, one of the most popular schools of Hellenistic Philosophy. ... Stoicism is a school of philosophy commonly associated with such Greek philosophers as Zeno of Citium, Cleanthes, or Chrysippus and with such later Romans as Cicero, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus. ... Lucian Lucian of Samosata (Greek, Λουκιανὸς Σαμοσατεύς, Latin, Lucianus; c. ... Lucian Lucian of Samosata (Greek, Λουκιανὸς Σαμοσατεύς, Latin, Lucianus; c. ... Menippean Satire is a term employed broadly to refer to satires that are rhapsodic in nature, combining many different targets of ridicule into a fragmented satiric narrative. ... Marcus Terentius Varro ([[116 BC]–27 BC), also known as Varro Reatinus to distinguish him from his contemporary Varro Atacinus, was a Roman scholar and writer, who the Romans came to call the most learned of all the Romans. ...

Reference

• This article incorporates text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, which is in the public domain.