Menippus

Menippus, a satirist who lived in the first half of the 3d century B.C., was born a Phœnician slave, and became a Cynic philosopher. His works in Greek have perished, and he is known only through the imitations of Marcus Terentius Varro (q.v.), whose own fragments bear the title of Menippean Satires.—The name was adopted as title for a famous French collection of political satires in prose and verse, the Satire Ménippée, which appeared in 1594 at the crucial period of the League.