This man was a Syrian by birth,
And a Cretan usurious hound,
As the name he was known by sets forth,
You’ve heard of him oft I’ll be bound;
His name was Menippus—men entered his house,
And stole all his goods without leaving a louse,
When (from this the dog’s nature you plainly may tell)
He hung himself up, and so went off to hell.
IV. But some say that the books attributed to him are not really his work, but are the composition of Dionysius and Zopyrus the Colophonians, who wrote them out of joke, and then gave them to him as a man well able to dispose of them.
V. There were six persons of the name of Menippus; the first was the man who wrote a history of the Lydians, and made an abridgment of Xanthus; the second was this man of whom we have been speaking; the third was a sophist of Stratonice, a Carian by descent; the fourth was a statuary; the fifth and the sixth were painters, and they are both mentioned by Apollodorus.