menippean

Updated: August 9, 2024

And as the last breath of the good spirit of the old burgess-times ere it departed, as the latest fresh growth which the national Latin poetry put forth, the Satires of Varro deserved that the poet in his poetical testament should commend these his Menippean children to every one "who had at heart the prosperity of Rome and of Latium"; and they accordingly retain an honourable place in the literature as in the history of the Italian people.

Theodor Mommsen - The History of Rome, Book V : The Establishment of the Military Monarchy

The whole subject of the Menippean satires is brilliantly treated in Mommsen's History of Rome, and Riese's edition of the satires, to both which, if he desire further information, we refer the reader. The genius of Varro, however, more and more inclined him to prose. The model for these was furnished by Heraclides Ponticus, a friend and pupil of Plato, and after his death, of Aristotle.

Charles Thomas Cruttwell - The History of Roman Literature : From the earliest period to the death of Marcus Aurelius

But the grace and humour of the Menippean satires above all, which seem to have been in number and importance far superior to Varro's graver works, captivated his contemporaries as well as those in after times who had any relish for originality and national spirit; and even we, who are no longer permitted to read them, may still from the fragments preserved discern in some measure that the writer "knew how to laugh and how to jest in moderation."

Theodor Mommsen - The History of Rome, Book V : The Establishment of the Military Monarchy

His polemic against the hereditary foes of the genuine Roman spirit, the Greek philosophers, was only a single aspect of this old-fashioned opposition to the spirit of the new times; but it resulted both from the nature of the Cynical philosophy and from the temperament of Varro, that the Menippean lash was very specially plied round the cars of the philosophers and put them accordingly into proportional alarm it was not without palpitation that the philosophic scribes of the time transmitted to the "severe man" their newly-issued treatises.

Theodor Mommsen - The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5)

The two philosophico-historical essays "Laelius or concerning Friendship," "Cato or concerning Old Age," which Cicero wrote probably after the model of those of Varro, may give us some approximate idea of Varro's half-didactic, half-narrative, treatment of these subjects. Varros' Menippean Satires

Theodor Mommsen - The History of Rome, Book V : The Establishment of the Military Monarchy