“Human affairs are not really worth much seriousness, but all the same we can’t avoid taking them seriously”
—Plato, Laws 803b
“Men have been wise in many different modes, but they have always laughed the same way”
—Samuel Johnson, Life of Cowley 116
“Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious”
—Peter Ustinov
No surprise that more than one modern investigator laments that Menippus has, like the Cheshire Cat, faded away to a grin.1 What little we know of his life derives from the scrappy (contrast his brobdingnagian account of Diogenes) and unfriendly notice by Diogenes Laertius (Lives of the Philosophers 6.98). Apart from a few miniscule orts, his writings are quite lost. And, for good measure, no Greek or Roman critic ever talked generically of “Menippean Satire”—although this textbook topos should be qualified a bit, since Aulus Gellius (1.17.4; 3.18.5) does use the term satura Menippea of Varro, albeit this strictly is repeating the latter’s own description of his comic oeuvre. The label was apparently first affixed by Justus Lipsius in 1581, subsequently popularized by the 1590 s’ “Satyre ménippée,”2 nowadays sanctified by such luminaries as Northrop Frye (Anatomy of Criticism) and Mikhail Bakhtin (The Dialogic Imagination and Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics). Thanks to these, an enormous number of unlikely authors have been pressed into Menippean service, James Joyce being the latest victim.3 Along with the examples claimed by Bahktin and Frye, Eugene Kirk (1980) lists 738 titles in Western European languages before 1660 alone. In the words of Howard Weinbrot (2005, 1–2), to whom goes all praise for cleansing this generic Augean stable, “The thousand works that have been labeled ‘Menippean Satire’ in about the last fifty years” have spawned a genre “less baggy than bulbous.” A better place to look might be the English stage revue, often mixtures of irreverent prose and verse, albeit at different levels. Its best historian,4 quotes one celebrated practitioner, Jonathan Miller’s “Good manners have suffocated English satire more effectively than any secret police,” and Michael Flanders’ (of Flanders and Swann, apropos of their 1950s’ At the Drop of a Hat and At the Drop of Another Hat) “Satire squats hoof in mouth under every bush. The purpose of satire, it has been rightly said, is to strip off the veneer of comforting illusion and cosy half-truth. And our job, as I see it, is to put it back again.” Carpenter also adduces Thackeray’s 1854 lament over Victorian satire’s defanging: “We have washed, combed, clothed, and taught the rogue good manners … he has put aside his mad pranks and tipsy habits and has become gentle and harmless…” He notes amusedly that Prime Minister Harold MacMillan, a prime target of Beyond the Fringe, confused by hearsay “Satire” with “Saturnalia.” All generic labelers should heed Samuel Johnson (Rambler 125, 1751):
There is scarcely any species of writing, of which we can tell what is its essence, and what are its constituents; every new genius produces some innovation which, when invented and approved, subverts the rules which the practice of foregoing authors had established.
Menippus (first half of third century BC, no precise dates) hailed from Gadara, one of three prominent Cynics born there (Meleager and Oenomaus, the others), a place sometimes dubbed “a city of philosophers,” with an illustrious cultural history from its Hellenistic foundation to early Byzantine times (Desmond 2008, 36; Hadas 1931). Taking his cue from how the Arabian Nights keeps slipping into rhyming prose, Moses Hadas (1954, 58; cf. 1929) opined that Menippean Satire was Semitic in origin, a view not much heard nowadays, although embraced by Gilbert Highet (1962, 251 n. 23).5 According to Mark 5.1–5.20 and Luke 8.26–8.39, the miracle of the Gadarene swine was occasioned by Christ encountering a madman who lived dirty and naked among tombs, possessed by a devil called Legion. This has provoked piquant theories (inventoried with substantial bibliography by Desmond 2008, 272) that not only this character but Jesus himself were Cynics. Christ in this role does not square with the early Church Fathers’ claim that he never laughed or smiled (Halliwell 2008), but there are decent grounds for mitigating this dismal image.6
Diogenes Laertius’ thumbnail biography has Menippus as a turpilucricupidinous ex-slave who removed to Thebes, made a fortune from moneylending, lost it all, and hanged himself. Not the best credentials for a true Cynic, albeit an amorality tale suitable to our own present economic climate. A tragic by-product of his undoing was that it provoked Laertius to compose some of his own execrable verses upon it, a habit that, at the simple prosimetric level (his life pullulates with such confections and verse quotations), makes him a Menippean. A better effort (Anth. Pal. 9.367), attributed to Lucian, reviles the son of a Menippus for misuse of wealth, but the name is too common to establish this among the Cynic’s Nachleben (Baldwin 1975).
The tenth-century Byzantine dictionary-cum-encyclopedia Suda (formerly Suidas) has (Ph. 180: Adler) a rigmarole not in Laertius (nor Dudley) about Menippus as the self-styled reporter of sins, traveling to and from Hades, attired in a gray (phaios, the Suda’s rubric for this entry) cloak with purple belt, Arcadian cap bedizened with the 12 zodiac signs, tragic boots, bushy beard, and ashplant staff, a notable contrast to Lucian’s description (Dialogues of the Dead 1.1) of him dressed in rags, more typically Cynic, also possibly tinged by Euripides’ notorious “beggar-kings.” Elsewhere (Necyomantia 1), Lucian has Menippus in felt cap and lion’s skin, with lyre. Some of these features are represented in Velásquez’ (1639–1641) portrait of him. Calling this “a very important testimonium,” Relihan (1993, 45) connects this with depictions of the necyomantic Menippus in Varro and Lucian. Desmond (2008, 37) is rightly more circumspect: Laertius (6.102) has the same yarn about Meleager. Has the Suda confused the two Ms? It is little interested in Menippus himself, simply cross-referring his name to this lexicographical gray eminence.7
“There is no serious point to Menippus; but his books teem with laughter, much like those of his contemporary Meleager” (Diog. Laet.).8 Modern discussions sometimes give the impression that spoudogeloios—or spoudaiogeloios—were standard ancient terms. They are, in fact, rare (cf. Branham 1989, n. 31). For the former, LSJ adduces only Laertius 9.17 himself (of the citharoedic poet Heraclitus) and Strabo 16.2.29, thus describing Menippus, as does Stephen of Byzantium (Ethnika, p. 193, ed. Meineke), also (p. 357) applying the label to the poet Blaesus of Capreae.9 The latter seems restricted to an inscription from Imbros.10 LSJ adds a few cognate terms, all infrequent—the most intriguing may be the seemingly unnoticed spoudaioparados (Philodemus, Ind. Stoic. 74). For comparative record, the OED dates “jocoserious” from the seventeenth century and “serio-comic” from Colman’s Prose for Several Occasions (1787, “applied to a Satyrick Piece”). The copulation derives from Aristophanes, Frogs 389–390, polla men geloia eipein, polla de spoudaia.
Despite rancid competition from the likes of Diogenes, Bion, and a host of other “Dogs,” Menippus became the most notorious with posterity, admirers, and detractors alike. Varro (opening his Tomb of Menippus) dubbed him Menippus ille, nobilis quidem canis. From the Christian perspective, Tertullian (Apol. 14.9; cf. Ad Nat. 1.10.43, where he is Romani stili Diogenes, NOT Menippus) relishes how Romanus cynicus Varro trecentos Joves, sive Juppiteros dicendum sine capitibus inducit. How would Menippus have flayed the Christians? At the very least, he would have disrelished their supposed agelasticism. Marcus Aurelius (Meditations 6.47) singles him out in a gallery of acerbic philosophers “along with many another such,” possibly an allusion to his contemporary Lucian, who among many invocations presents him (Twice Accused 33) as “a prehistoric dog with loud bark and sharp teeth, a dreadful creature who bites without warning, grinning as he does so.” Eunapius (Lives of the Sophists 454) names Menippus as one of the most prominent Cynics, without reference to his writings, going on to describe:
Lucian of Samosata, who took serious pains to raise a laugh, wrote a Life of the contemporary philosopher Demonax, in which book and a very few others he was completely serious from start to finish.
We can only guess at Eunapian categories of seriousness: the Demonax itself consists largely of a list of his jokes (Cynics being among their targets); this sage himself, otherwise largely unknown (see Jones 1986, 99–100 for the best account), said to resemble Diogenes (not Menippus) in dress and demeanor.
After noting without comment that some unspecified sources claimed Menippus was just the front man for their real authors Dionysius and Zopyrus of Colophon, Laertius asserts that he wrote 13 books in all, listing six by title, the rest irritatingly left as “others” (the Suda is likewise constantly frustrating in its bibliographical listings). Whether this distinction, or the biographer’s ordering, is quite arbitrary, or whether the given titles reflect his most popular and enduring pieces, is not easy to say.
First up, the Necyia. This (or should we say “these”?) may have encompassed visits to both heaven and Hades. Certainly his most influential, in terms of extant followers: Lucian (above all), Julian, Varro, the Apocolocyntosis. Obviously, though, we must look both ways, back to Homer (Odyssey 11), Plato’s Myth of Er (Rep. 620a, described as “tragi-comic”), and Aristophanes’ Frogs and Peace. Laertius (9.55) says Protagoras wrote something called On Those Who Live in Hades. Lucian (Twice Accused 33) blends Cynicism with Old Comedy, crowned in ferocity by the addition of his “excavated” Menippus. Categorization, though, should not be too rigid: Cicero (Ad Att. 9.18.2) says that Atticus’ favorite expression of contempt for the Roman political rabble was Necyia.
Menippus’ Wills (Diathekai) are variously (e.g. Dudley 1937, reprinted 1974, 70) regarded as mock ones of philosophers or “more probably” pieces of comic legislation, a favorite Lucianic device. There is possible correlation here with the last item in Laertius’ list, The Epicureans’ Reverence for the Twentieth Day, a ritual enjoined (Diog. Laet. 10.18) in the Garden sage’s own testament. The versatile Cynic Crates (c. 360–280) penned Wills as well as Letters, Parodies of Homer and Solon, Tragedies, and so on, “essentially inventing new literary forms” (Desmond 2008, 25). On the Roman side, we have in literature the likes of Fabricius Veiento, exiled for ridiculing senators and priests in satirical Codicilli (Tac., Ann. 14.50), and The Will of a Pig, that favorite (Jerome avers) of fourth-century schoolboys,11 whereas in life we have Petronius’ mocking testamentary epistle to Nero (Tac., Ann. 16.19). The latter is not always placed in Roman context. Before the Arbiter, Fulcinius Tiro from his prison cell had assailed Tiberius in his will (Tac., Ann. 6.38.2; Dio. 58.25), a common practice, one protected by Augustus’ veto (Suet., Aug. 56.1) of a proposal to ban it.
One of Varro’s satires was entitled Testamentum, peri diathekon. Of its four surviving fragments, one mentions Menippea haeresis, another simultaneously more and less revealing pronounces venio nunc ad alterum genus testamenti, quod dicitur physicon, in quo Graeci belliores quam Romani sunt. Another suggestive text is Lucian, Nigrinus 30, wherein that worthy appends to his attacks upon mankind in general and philosophers in particular some scornful remarks about those who agitate themselves amphi ten nekuian te kai diathekas. Nor ought we to forget Trimalchio’s will, with its surely Menippean last sentence: “Never Listened to a Philosopher.”
Letters Composed as if from the Gods find a later echo in the divine missives of Lucian, now under the general title Saturnalia. As I long ago demonstrated (1961, cf. 1973, 109–110), these are not mere literary confections, the extreme position maintained by Bompaire (1958; for a more cautious approach, Jones 1983, 87–88), but reflections on contemporary economic and social problems.12 It is a fair bet that the same is true of Menippus’ originals. I confess that my first analysis was conditioned by callow student Trotskyism. Neither Menippus nor Diogenes should be regarded (as they have been) as patron saints of the proletariat: Marxist historians such as Gordon Childe and George Thomson have likewise labeled Prometheus for bringing fire to mankind. Universalizing Cynic scorn meant that neither social reform nor revolution would for them improve anything; “anarchist” is the only modern tag that fits.
The titles pros tous phusikous kai mathematikous kai grammatikous speak largely for themselves, apart from the second class which could denote mathematicians or astrologers. Obvious targets for a Menippus, as for a Lucian and many another epigone.13 Likewise, his pamphlets on Epicurus and disciples. As Athenaeus (220a) quipped, “Most philosophers are by nature even more slanderous than comic poets.” Plato, Democritus,14 and the Epicureans notably fill this deipnosophist bill, hence what we have here is a battle of egg-head comedians, the winner(s) in line from Menander’s (Dyskolos 968, and elsewhere) “Laughter-Loving Nike.”
Oddly, since he mentions it elsewhere (6.29), Laertius’ Menippean bibliography does not cite by title The Sale of Diogenes, an obvious favorite of Lucian;15 he also credits the (to us) utterly obscure Cynic Eubulus with the same title. Subsumed under his concluding “and other works” are Arcesilaus and Symposium, knowledge and fragments of which we owe to Athenaeus, a fact that should (but has not) raise a big question. Lucian (Twice Accused 33) claims to “have dug up” Menippus, which presumably means his works were currently in abeyance (nobody swallows Rudolf Helm’s fanciful reconstructions, but there is much valuable material in his Lucian und Menipp as in his sketch in RE). Do we then take Athenaeus in the next generation (as earlier with Marcus Aurelius) to have been inspired by Lucian to go back to Menippean originals? Or has he taken the snippets second-hand?
Athenaeus (160c) significantly has his Roman host Larensis quote a proverb “perfume in the lentil soup” from “my ancestor Varro, surnamed the Menippean.” An untitled work of the Gadaran is cited (32e) for the description (evidently in verse) of one Mindus as “a salt-water drinker.” The Arcesilaus (rightly equated by, e.g. Dudley and Relihan with the first head of the Middle Academy) is mined (664e) for details of a symposiasts’ menu. Laertius (9.115) says Timon ridiculed Arcesilaus in his Silloi (Lampoons) but praised him in The Funeral Banquet of Arcesilaus. A quotation (629f ) from the Symposium intriguingly mentions a dance called the Ekpyrosis (must have been as wild an affair as, say, 1970s punk slam-dancing), an obvious crack at the equally obvious target of the Stoics:
That most awful of all cosmic phenomena, the ekpurosis of the Stoics, is no more than a mummery. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a—grimace. (Dudley 1937, reprinted 1974, 74)
Lucian, of course, penned a satirical Symposium, in which there is no saltation. It has been inevitably considered one of his Menippean imitations, but the long-standing tradition in both Greek and Latin literature of spoudaiogeloic dinner parties (Plato, Xenophon, Horace, Petronius, et hoc genus omne) should enjoin caution.
The stylistic essence of Menippean Satire was a medley of prose and verse, the relative proportions of which (as with Varro) are unknown: deductions from Julian, Petronius, the Apocolocyntosis, and later exercises may or may not be valid.16 This is explicitly stated by Lucian: “Neither prose nor verse but a strange Centaur-like mixture,” and by Probus (In Verg. Bucol. 6.31): “Menippus polished his satires with multifarious verses,” while tributes range from his fellow-Gadaran Meleager’s poetic praises (Anth. Pal. 7.417–7.418) of “Menippean Graces” to the Byzantine patriarch Photius who (Bibliotheca, cod. 167) remembered him as one of the poets listed by John Stobaeus. “Graces” is self-praise from Meleager who (Athenaeus 157b) quotes him as claiming Homer as a fellow-Syrian from a work of this title (Charites)—a shared ethnic identity might be one reason Lucian chose Menippus as his model.17 The previously mentioned epigrams might possibly signal a book with the same title by Menippus. Athenaeus (502c) cites Meleager’s Symposium for deep toast-drinking (Relihan’s claim, 1993, 230 n. 11, that Meleager’s contest between the porridge and the lentil soup sounds like a Roman verse fable is weakened by Crates’ fr. 6 “Prefer not the Oyster to the Lentil”). More to the bigger point, Meleager himself (Anth. Pal. 7.421.9–7.421.10) claims to link spoude and gelos in his works.
Yet, Diogenes Laertius says not one word about the style. Why not? Relihan’s view of ancient reaction, “That Menippus wrote in a mixture of prose and verse is not important,” at best begs the question. It was obviously of interest to Lucian and Probus. If Menippus really did invent this genre (if a genre it was), why is this not acknowledged here? Perhaps because Laertius is generally cool in attitude, dismissing him as an intellectual lightweight, his humor no way superior to Meleager’s? Or perhaps Menippus was not actually the first prose–verse mixer? As a literary form, it was but a logical development from Aristophanes’ blend of iambic conversations and lyric odes, and the verse quotation-laden dialogues of Plato and Xenophon. The latter’s Symposium has indeed been neglected in this connection (save Halliwell 2008, 139–154; not in, e.g. Relihan 1993, 40), beginning as it does, “I think one should relate not only the serious acts (spoudaia) of the great and good, but also their lighter ones (en tais paidiais).”
There are other strands. Laertius (7.180) mentions that the Stoic Chrysippus in one of his 700-odd treatises copied out almost the whole of Euripides’ Medea, becoming a laughing-stock for this. Then there is the mysterious Rhinthon of Tarentum (c. 323–285), said by John Lydus (On the Magistracies. 1.41) to have been the first to write comedy in hexameter verse, and by the Suda (R 171 Adler) to have devised or developed a genre of burlesque tragedy known as hilarotragodia or phluakographia, terms apparently restricted to his output, though Athenaeus (86a) applies the cognate phluakographos to Sopater for his farce Eubulus the God-Man, a distinctly Menippean-sounding title. Stephen of Byzantium (s.v. Taras) describes him as metarruthmizon eis to geloion (this passage escaped the notice of LSJ ). We know seven of his 38 dramatic titles, of which Herakles stands out in the present context. Apart from various moments in Athenaeus, Rhinthon is vaguely quoted (ut opinor) by Cicero (Ad Att. 1.20) and, more significantly here, by Varro (RR 3.3.9).
Lydus, who was tracing the history of Roman satire (analyzed by Baldwin 2003), does not mention Menippus. Neither does Quintilian when (10.1.95) assessing Varro’s output. Comparing it with that of Lucilius, Horace, and Persius, the polymath’s efforts are vaguely classified as alterum illud etiam prius saturae genus, sed non sola carminum varietate mixtum. This ignoring of Menippus (and Rhinthon) may be to emphasize Latin satirical superiority, albeit (of course) many Hellenes are named in Quintilian’s survey of Greco-Roman literary history.
“The literary importance of Menippus is that he developed for comic purposes two genres previously monopolized by Philosophy—the dialogue and the letter” (Dudley 1937, reprinted 1974, 73). This verdict fits some of Laertius’ titles, though quite where is questionable. Lucian makes his personified Dialogue complain that her previous philosophical dignity and seriousness have been compromised by the satirist’s introduction of Jest (skomma), Satire (iambon), Cynicism, Eupolis, Aristophanes, and (to crown it all) the newly excavated old dog Menippus with his smiling barks and bites. This inventory confirms the metrical medley (a feature of Rhinthon) certified for Varro by Quintilian and earlier Cicero, Acad. 1.9:
You have brought much light to our poets and Latin literature and language also, with a variegated and elegant poesis in almost every meter, and have in many areas attempted philosophic themes, adequate for inspiring your readers, but not sufficient to educate them.
This is in answer to Varro’s foregoing (Acad. 1.8) boast that he had added philosophy and humor to Menippus, a considerable deflation indeed: take away these two ingredients from Menippus and what is he left with? Lucian’s exhumation is perhaps the answer to these Roman put-downs.
Fastening upon the Necyia as Menippus’ quintessential production, the one with greatest influence on later imitators, Relihan (1993, 47), regards Death (his own and others’) as the supreme preoccupation. He admits that this concentration “may seem arbitrary.” It does not indeed cover all of Varro, whose Tomb of Menippus may be a one-off necrological tribute. Also, overall, Petronius is not covered, despite such moments as the skeleton at Trimalchio’s feast (34.8), which was in any case an Egyptian custom (Herod. 2.78; Plut., Mor. 357f ), nor need we believe that the artist who depicted bony reminders of death on the Pompeian Bosco Reale cups took his cue from Menippus. It is harder to find an area of Greco-Roman literature not concerned with the brevity of life and finality of death than otherwise. Even (so the Suda says) Sotades the cinaedologist penned a Descent to Hades. For present purposes, though, Relihan (1993, 48) does provide a bridge to the Apocolocyntosis:
Menippus wrote about his own death and return from the dead. This has some later repercussions. Claudius is a dead fool and travelling naif in the underworld who observes a wholly ridiculous other world.
Lucian’s segregation of Menippus from other Cynics provokes two questions: where does his literary oeuvre stand in relation to theirs, and why did Menippean Satire become THE paradigm instead of (say) Bionean diatribe?
Not all the Cynics put much on paper, but Menippus held no monopoly. Antisthenes (if we consider him as the school’s founder: some do not) composed Socratic dialogues; Athenaeus (534c) quotes from his attack on the “uncultured” Alcibiades (compare e.g. Xenophon’s attack on the politician Pisander, Symp. 2.14). Laertius (6.18) says two chapters in Book ten of his writings were devoted to Heracles. Diogenes, memorably described by Plato as “Socrates Gone Mad” (Laertius 6.54; Aelian, VH 14.33), is credited with 13 dialogues (Curse the fates that robbed us of such titles as Fart and Fish-head!), seven tragedies (tragodaria), perhaps burlesques comparable to Rhinthon’s, a collection of letters, a Republic, plus some signs of poetic activities. Doubts about his authorship of the tragedies in Laertius’ sources persisted down to Julian, who (Orat. 6.186b; Orat. 7.210d) repeats the view that these “shameless tragedies” were really the work of one Philiscus; Laertius (6.73) adds that some thought these the work of one Pasiphon, son of a Lucian. More tellingly, Julian remarks that no serious Cynic works save these existed in his day—the imperial author of the Caesars never mentions Menippus. Monimus of Syracuse produced an Exhortation to Philosophy and “some comic writings laced with covert seriousness” (Dudley 1937, reprinted 1974, 41).
Then there was Bion of Borysthenes, inventor of the Diatribe, author of many hypomnemata and “useful apophthegmata, mingling together every kind of style” (Dio. Laet. 4.57): did these include prosimetra? Laertius quotes an example of his skill in parodying Homer. Bion may or may not have been an influence on Lucilius.18 Horace certainly read him, contrasting (Epist. 2.2.60) those who enjoyed his sermonibus et sale nigro with the carmina and iambi preferred by other Roman readers. There was also a personal bond, if one believes the ancient biographers: both men had fishmonger fathers who wiped their noses on their sleeves.19 Cicero (Tusc. 3.26.62) gives an example of his coarse wit. Some (e.g. A.S. Wilkins in his London 1885 edition; revised 1955, 300) credit his “Love of Money is the Metropolis of all Evil” as the source of St. Paul’s (1 Timothy 6.10) famous equivalent.
One can imagine Lucilius and Horace chuckling over some of Menippus. The former’s mock council of the gods (Book one) might owe a direct debt, though it could equally be seen as a parody of Homeric divine committee meetings. The scholiasts claim that Persius’ opening line O curas hominum, O quantum est in rebus inane is filched from Lucilius, albeit there is obvious Menippean flavor in both its universalizing tone with inane a possible/probable tilt at Epicurean science. Still, in the long run, Horace (at least the Horace of the “Roman Odes”) could not have gone along with the Cynic’s global anarchism, though Epist. 1.1.14, nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri might hark back to a youthful flirtation, whereas the early Satire 1.2 is seen by (e.g.) Wilkins as his one Bionean outburst (whereas Fraenkel 1957, revised ed. 1966, 76–85, emphasizes its debts to Archilochus and Lucilius).
With Bion’s and Horace’s paternal professions in mind, we have to say that Varro was a different kettle of fish. What induced the great Roman scholar to churn out 150 Menippean Satires (“We gasp to reckon that these occasional pieces could have filled well over 1500 Teubner pages”—Relihan)? An early Cynic enthusiasm, as suggested by Cicero’s (Acad. 1.8) putting into his mouth the phrase nostris veteribus (Hirzel 1895, 441, n. 2)? Laertius (8.58) records that Empedocles knocked off 43 tragedies “in his youth” (veon onta). Or simply literary amusements, with no correlation with his own philosophical attitudes? Varro himself is made (Acad. 1) to allow that all sects may be followed either via the Cynic route or conventional Roman practice: habitus et consuetudo. With the possible exception of Petronius, it may be hard to think of any literary Roman who could possibly have sympathized with hard-core Menippeanism—except perhaps Melissus, a grammarian patronized by Maecenas and Augustus, who also penned 150 volumes, in his case joke books, invented a new species of comic play (blending together fabulae togatae with palliatae), and made fun of Virgil’s halting speech (Suet., Gram. 21; Vit. Verg. 16).
About 600 fragments survive.20 Shanzer (1986, 30–4421) estimates that about 75% are in verse. Concerning the poetic element in Menippean satires, a remark by Lina Taub on the Aetna may apply: “Our poet uses poetry to criticise other poets’ use of poetry.”22 Apart from grammarians, there are around 20 other sources, for example Apicius (3.2.4 offers a recipe for Varronian beetroot, possibly from his Peri Edesmaton, a work that might owe as much to Ennius and/or Lucilius as any Greek original), Appian, Arnobius, Athenaeus, Augustine, Tertullian: a tribute to both Christian and pagan interest.
On Cicero’s evidence, Varro attached the Menippean label to himself: et tamen in illis veteribus nostris, quae Menippum imitati, non interpretati… (Acad. 1.8), and so did Probus and Athenaeus, as seen earlier (the latter overlooked by Astbury). Jerome (in the Preface to Origen on Genesis), too, providing the 150 tally and, notably, seeming to distinguish between the Menippeans and four books of other satires (Hendrickson 1911 argued that Varro’s Menippeans were only designated as “saturae” in later times). Elsewhere (Epistles 33), he drew up catalogues of the scholarly works of Varro and Origen (see Wiesen 1964 for possible traces—not many—of Varronian satire in Jerome’s own invectives).
Aulus Gellius provides the fullest testimonial. At 2.18.7, he says that while Varro himself called his satire “Menippean,” unspecified others dubbed them “Cynic.” This distinction may reflect a view (manifest on occasion in Lucian) that Menippus was so extreme as not to even qualify for the sect, a debate perhaps conditioned by the fact that Varro himself wrote a satire entitled The Cynic (fr. 82 is the sole remnant). Gellius himself never uses the latter label. Twice, he refers to and quotes from individual pieces as “Menippean”: 1.18.4, De Officio Mariti, commending a word play between tollere and ferre concerning how to put up with uxorial vitium; 3.18.5, a snippet from Hippokyon concerning back-bench senators (pedarii) and knights, disclosing a specifically Roman theme, thus evidently transmuting “Menippean” into his own terms, most notably in Trikaranos (Three-Headed), which excoriated the First Triumvirate of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus, of which (alas) we have no fragments, merely the title from Appian (BC 2.9). Two further fragments cited by Gellius (1.22.4–6; 6.16) touch on symposiac menus, a third (3.16.13–3.16.14) on wills: Menippean topics par excellence. A final notice (7.5.10) cites a linguistic detail from the proverbially titled Old Men Are Twice Children. In one of the symposium items, Gellius judges the menu to be written up lepide admodum et scite factis versibus. In this especially instructive discussion, Gellius says that Varro satirized gourmets and gourmandise in minutely detailed senarian verses, and furthermore that this particular satire is readily available to anyone wishing to read the whole thing. It is one that would have appealed to Athenaeus, reading as it does like extracts from a Latin Deipnosophists.
Varro’s most obvious homage comes in the title Tomb of Menippus, with its opening compliment Ille nobilis quondam canis / Hic liquit homines omnes in terrae pila. Note, though, that, in the following fragment 517, Diogenes is evoked in equally glowing terms, whereas fragment 519 mentions the Stoics and several local matters by name and details, for instance Rome the city, Romans numberless like grains of sand, and King Numa Pompilius. The other onomastic inclusion of Menippus occurs significantly in The Will: quos Menippea haeresis nutiricata est, followed by an hexameter verse. That Menippus should be credited with a distinctive haeresis is striking, given the apparent controversy over whether he could/should be fitted into any sect. The many Roman allusions (Astbury’s 1985 Index of Proper Names provides a telling bird’s-eye view of Rome, Roman Realien, and great names form Roman history) demonstrate how Varro extended and transmuted his Greek originals, justifying his own claim (Cicero, Acad. 1.8; Gellius 2.18.7) that he “imitated” rather than translated them. Beyond this, in the words of Jennifer Hall (1981, 51):
Attempting to reconstruct any of Varro’s satires is like playing with a kaleidoscope: shake up the pieces and observe the chance order in which they fall, and each time the pattern is different.
(For Varro’s Roman element, see McCarthy 1936, 95–107.)
After Varro, a long Menippean shadow continued to fall across both Greek and Latin literature, in tandem with the vigorous activities of living Cynics at Rome and elsewhere (fully catalogued by Desmond, Dudley, and Relihan). On the Greek side, Lucian was of course the outstanding case; the significance of his “digging-up” should once more be mentioned, as should Relihan’s comparison of him with P.G. Wodehouse: “He views his considerable art as nonart, and his considerable meaning as nonmeaning.”23 Apropos of Julian’s Caesars (Baldwin 1978a, reprinted 1984), the emperor has nothing to say on Menippus, but much about both early and contemporary Cynics. On the Roman side, apart from Petronius and Apuleius (if they are to be Menippeanly classified), the efflorescence of late Christian exemplars: Boethius (O’Daly 1991, 16–22; Shanzer 1986), Ennodius, Fulgentius (Baldwin 1988), Martianus Capella, and a host of other candidates (see especially Shanzer for round-up and detailed assessments, ranging from some supposed lost Menippeae of the poet Tiberianus to the prosimetric autobiography of Acilius Severus reported by Jerome, De vir. ill. 3). Plus, given its frequent verse insertions (Baldwin 1978b), the Historia Augusta comports a Menippean tinge, something that may endorse Syme’s oft-repeated characterization of this mysterious work as a “hoax.” As to these Christian prosimetrists, were they really satirizing anything? Did they think they were? Is it more a question of form than content? Dudley’s final sentence, summing up this late Indian summer, “Cynicism had nothing further to offer mankind,” did not prevent him from allowing the possibility of Byzantine Cynics or from seeing Cynic–Christian asceticism as bridging antiquity to medieval times. Regarding Byzantium, Lucian’s scholiasts24 are alert to Menippus’ own qualities of “great adventures, boundless curiosity, and fantasy” and his “universally glorious reputation,” whereas Diogenes in the Hades of the anonymous twelfth-century Lucianic satire Timarion (see Baldwin 1984a, Timarion 43) is excluded by the top Greek philosophers from their rarified circle because of his rebarbative growlings.
The Apocolocyntosis 25 is generally described as the only complete surviving example of classic Menippean Satire. Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. Apart from the undoubted gap in the divine debate (7.5), some find the ending too rushed and postulate a lacuna, needlessly. There is nothing abrupt about it, not in the same league as that famously incomplete last sentence of Sterne’s Sentimental Journey. Claudius is dispatched with a rapid one–two–three set of handovers, and ending up as a clerk achieves a kind of ring composition with the opening cod minutes of heavenly proceedings. In broader terms, this is no more curt a conclusion than (say) those Euripidean stock formula ones or Horace, Satires 1.9.
Nor need we suppose that the author (see later for why I am avoiding the name Seneca) sat down and said, “Now I am going to write a satire in the manner of that Greek chap Menippus.” His inspirations could have been purely native Latin ones: Varro for form plus some content and vocabulary, Lucilius for specifics, for example the Council of the Gods in his first book, though (as earlier said) this could be as much if not more parody of Virgil and epic than anything Menippean. Change Virgil to Homer, and the same might be said for Lucian’s Olympian meetings. This line is taken by MacMullen (1966, 38), placing the piece “in the long line of broad, harsh Roman Satire,” with comparison to the mock imperial cabinet of Juvenal’s Fourth Satire.
As everybody knows, Dio Cassius (61.35.3) says “Seneca wrote a pamphlet (suggramma) entitled Apocolocyntosis, a word formed on the analogy of athanatisis”—a textual variant has apathanatisis; other contenders are apothanatosis (not in LSJ) and plain apotheosis. I also wonder about apotheiosis, a rarity (LSJ cite only the tactician Onosander 10.28) meaning “fumigation,” Heaven thus being seen as purified by getting shut of the farting, self-shitting Claudius. Relihan, often too complex for my taste,26 strays into this territory with his characterization of the piece as representing “a world purged of one great unpleasantness.” (Grosser metamorphoses, apokolokenosis, and aporraphanidosis have tempted some; cf. W.H. Rouse, 432, in the revised version of Heseltine’s Loeb Petronius.)
Less discussed is the “very funny remark” attributed by Dio to Seneca’s brother Lucius Junius Gallio to the effect that “Claudius had been raised to heaven with a hook,” in the manner of an executed person being dragged to the Tiber. Just what is so funny about this? It would be far more amusing and to the point if (as in passages cited by LSJ ) we translate aykistroi as “with a clyster,” thus pointing to the same implement mentioned by Suetonius (Claud. 44.3).
There are two $64,000 questions: is Dio’s Pumpkinification our Latin Ludus? Whether it is or not, did Seneca write the latter? There has been a lot of to-ing and fro-ing over the manuscript title’s (details of the tradition in all editions, especially Roncali’s) Ludus in the sense of “Joke” or “Skit.” Considering such passages (others in OLD, s.v. 5b) as Pliny, Epist. 5.13.10 per ludum ac iocum, and Suetonius, Claud. 8 (where the emperor is the butt), these worries seem groundless, especially if we assume the secondary sense of a gladiatorial show, Claudius being seen as fought over in heaven and hell.
As everybody also knows, Claudius in our Latin pasquinade is neither godified nor gourdified, and thus there is no scope for adducing Linus’ Great Pumpkin from “Peanuts.” So, does this rule out the equation of Dio’s pamphlet with this one?27 Michael Coffey cut the gourdian knot by pronouncing the Greek title “a nonsense word”: if accepted, that stultifies further investigation, which would spoil the fun, hence further canvassing. A Greek title is not very surprising, given the paucity and unsuitability of Latin equivalents for and plays on apotheosis. Also in the light of Suetonius’ mention (Claud. 39.3) of an anonymous pamphlet entitled moron epanastasis that was circulated to discredit the claim that Claudius was not actually stupid but had pretended to be so under Caligula in order to survive. This unexampled Greek title also offers a multitude of punning possibilities: epanastasis (see LSJ for examples and references) can denote such variously different things as getting up to defecate, a swelling on the head, political or military insurrection, or a rising in rhetorical tone.
When Suetonius goes on in his next sentence to describe how people laughed at Claudius’ defects, he takes care to gloss the Latin terms with their Greek ones, oblivionem et inconiderantiam, vel ut Graece dicam, thus supporting a notion of the throwing around of Greek nicknames and epithets.
The supposition that “gourd” in Greek could be a slang term for “idiot” is enhanced not only by the cognate Latin uses of cucurbita, but also by modern idiom. Athanassakis (1973, 2) adduces German, modern Greek, and Italian. I can add that, in Albanian (a language that often throws light on Greek), two words for cucumber, “trangull” and “kastraveç” (the latter also in Romanian) are used to mean “blockhead”28 (Baldwin 1987, 65). Nicely enough, “gourd” was faddishly employed for a while in the so-called Valley-Girl slang of 1980s California in the same way.
According to Pliny (NH 20.14–17), colocynthine recipes for purging and tummy troubles were effective. Suetonius (Claud. 31.44.3) says that the emperor was plagued by excruciating stomach aches, and that the attempted expedients for his fatal dose of mushrooms included an enema. Elsewhere (NH 19.69), Pliny notes that the gourd is fond of manure: this suits both Apocolocytosis 4 where Claudius befouls himself, and the Suetonian claim (Claud. 32) that he had contemplated an edict on the issue of breaking wind at the table (cf. Petronius 47 for jokes on this matter). It is also worth remarking that when Pliny (20.17) recommends colocynth juice for certain suppurations, he used the Greek term apostemata.
Other gourdian applications may or may not help the present enquiry. In Aristophanes’ Clouds 327, someone’s eyes “run with pumpkins.” Juvenal’s cum colocyntha bibit (6.06) comports a sexual allusion, possibly cunnilingus. Possibly, most to the point is Dio Cassius’ anecdote (69.4.2) of Hadrian’s execution of the architect Apollodorus because he had once interrupted the emperor in a discussion of building plans with Trajan by interjecting “Clear off and draw your gourds (tas kolokuntas graphe); you don’t understand any of this.”
Claudius is not turned into a pumpkin. Nor an idiot either—he already was one. The late emperor has two destinies in the satire’s finale. At first, Aeacus decrees that he rattle dice in a perforated dice cup for all time, something that he at once starts to attempt. However, on the intervention of Caligula, he is rescued from this fate and ends up in the position of a cognitionibus to the freedman Menander (Bücheler, followed by Ball, implausibly equates this Menander with the comic playwright). There would be more humor and precision in the title if it had to do with either or both of these Claudian destinies. Rattling dice for eternity suits one who was in life so addicted to that pastime so as to write a book on the subject and have a special traveling dice board in his carriage (Suet., Claud. 33.2). Gourds were widely used as containers, for example as wine jars and bathroom jugs (Pl., NH 19.71). Describing his pirates sailing in pumpkin boats (True History 2.37), Lucian permits himself the comic coinage Kolokunthopeiratai. A gourd as a dice cup is an easy assumption. (For incidental interest, the OED registers an archaic—sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—meaning of “gourd” as being a kind of false dice.)
The status of a cognitionibus in Claudius’ time was lowly.29 A joke could, then, turn on this. Hoyos (1991, 141) speculated that Claudius was nicknamed “Gourd” by palace functionaries. However, it may be that the humble civil servant he ends up as was the actual recipient of such soubriquets. Nowadays, bureaucrats are routinely stigmatized as “pointy-headed.” We can be sure the Romans had a choice repertoire of insults for their officials. One of Petronius’ freedman monologists (44.3.13) excoriates aediles as not worth trium cauniarium. Furthermore, the Greek preposition apo is occasionally used to translate Latin a or ab in the titles of officials.30 Hence, the titular point may turn out to repose in either or both of the fates allotted to (as Robert Graves styled him) Claudius the Clod.
Now to grasp the nettle of authorship. Is the Ludus Dio’s Senecan skit? Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona. There were various doubters (enumerated in the editions) before I questioned Seneca’s claims on its historical rather than linguistic/literary content (1964, reprinted 1985). For a season, I seemed to have convinced only myself. MacMullen, for instance (1966, 304 n. 34), dismissed my arguments as “flimsy,” albeit without engaging them. Nowadays, the situation is fluid. For Coffey, “It cannot seriously be doubted that Seneca is the author” (1976, 172), while Relihan takes its genuineness “as a given.” Yet, the latter has to commend Michael Reeve (1984; cf. Bringmann 1971) for “effectively countering a growing trend to deny Senecan authorship,” and Frank Goodyear (1982, reprinted 1983) conceded that “[i]t is not absurd to retain some doubts,” repeating (without acknowledgement) the now unjustly neglected Gilbert Bagnani’s point that there were plenty of Romans able and willing to throw off this kind of comic libellus (Bagnani 1954 produces a list of striking linguistic concordances between our satire and Petronius’, though confessing that these are not conclusive). Indeed, the first men accused of treason under Nero in AD 62 were Antistius Sosianus and Fabricius Veiento for their satirizing of the emperor, senators, and priests (Tac., Ann. 14. 48–50). Also banished rather than liquidated for their insults were the actor Datus and (more significantly here) the Cynic Isidorus (Suet., Nero 39.3). It was Nero who set the pace for lampoons against Claudius with his celebrated “mushroom as food for the gods” crack, his oft-repeated pun on the two morari verbs that Claudius had ceased to play the fool among mortals, and dismissing his words and deeds ut insipientis atque deliri (Suet., Nero 38.1).
Bagnani himself concluded a well-balanced chapter of authorial pros and cons with the arresting “I advance Petronian authorship as a possible, indeed probable, hypothesis.” No one seems to have taken up this notion, congenial and certainly more rational than Léon Herrmann’s characteristic fantasy (1950, 84–98) that the author was the fabulist Phaedrus.
My article examined what is known of the victims of Claudius named in the satire. What strikingly emerged overall was how sympathetic the author was to Messalina, making it hard to believe he was writing to ingratiate himself with Agrippina, and harder still when one considers the great play made over her notable victim Lucius Silanus. Seneca himself had no cause to love Messalina, having been one of her victims charged for adultery with Julia. Who would want the tricky task of whitewashing the former empress? There are one or two hints in Tacitus (Ann. 11.33, 12.42) that Agrippina’s activities were such as to make people regret Messalina’s fall. She may have been no fit candidate for rehabilitation, but the toning down of her misdeeds might, in a negative way, have been a ploy by the partisans of Britannicus, a lad very popular with segments of army and populace, that his chances might not be affected by maternal notoriety. Also pertinent is the case of Publius Suillius in AD 58, during which Nero intervened to protect Claudius’ reputation and Suillius’ own attempts to use Messalina as scapegoat rebounded upon himself. Four years after Claudius’ death, it was unwise to prosecute his memory by impeaching prominent men of his reign. Enmity between Suillius and Seneca dated back to the Messalina–Julia affair. If Seneca was the author, why did he miss the chance to stigmatize his foe as one of the villains of the reign? Against the popular view that it was composed for recitation in the Saturnalia of AD 54, I fancy it could not have safely been made public before 58, possibly circulated as a samizdat pamphlet to aid the promotion of Britannicus, not composed to make Nero laugh.
Association of Seneca with the satire could have been inspired by the speech he wrote for Nero as the official elogium for the late Claudius. Tacitus (Ann. 13.3) describes it as oratio a Seneca composita multum cultus praeferret, ut fuit illi viro ingenium amoenum et temporis eius auribus accommodatum. The historian notes with malice that laughter greeted the references to Claudian providentiam sapientiamque. That could imply that some members of the audience chuckled because they knew of a very different attitude in a Seneca skit, although allusions to Claudius’ birth, ancestral fame, literary works, and absence of disasters during his reign were quietly received, though the satire mocks most of these. Yet, in that case, Tacitus has missed a good chance to exercise his own grim humor and capacity for mordant epigram. Nowhere does he attribute any satire to Seneca. It is, of course, hard to interpret such silences. He hardly mentions the philosopher’s most celebrated works, and notoriously ignores Petronius’ novel. Syme’s formula “Tacitus could not mention Seneca’s pasquinade on Divus Claudius. That was alien to the dignity of history” 31 simply evades the question.
So, let X = the author. Estimates of the satire’s literary quality are equally varied. “Cruel, but very funny,” opined Highet, comparing Byron’s take-off of Southey’s apotheosis of George III in Vision of Judgement. Coffey applauded every aspect of the piece’s comic style. Weinbrot (2005, 46) commends the “skilful mixture of prose and verse,” albeit dubbing it “Seneca’s softened pumpkin” (his attitude to Julian’s Caesars is similar). “Gross, wholly amusing,” declares Hooley (1975, 145). Bagnani, though, despite his Petronian theory, felt that:
Pace most editors, its literary value is not great; the humour strikes me as forced and often feeble, lacking the punch and vigour of really great invectives, such as the Letters of Junius. It would appear to be the work of a youngish man of considerable ability, though not quite as clever as he thinks he is.
For my own money, it’s no comic masterpiece, but amusing enough at different levels: political lampoon, literary parodies of Homer, just as its own Latin verses may themselves be parodic (Baldwin 1984; cf. Byrne 2006); schoolboy jokes about farting and shitting; and the ridicule of Claudius’ physical and mental defects, nowadays inevitably “politically incorrect,” but ubiquitous ancient commonplaces (Garland 1994–1997).
X’s purpose continues to be the subject of largely needless debate. Relihan (1993, 25–27) may stand as quintessence. For him, the satire is “not an attack on Claudius pure and simple,” nor is it (here I agree) “a philosopher’s criticism of apotheosis,” rather “a three-tiered” work, “schematically the most complicated of the Menippean satires; it is therefore not a generic paradigm, but represents many Menippean possibilities rolled into one.” There is something in this long-winded proclamation. We simply do not know to what extent Menippus attacked real contemporaries, living or dead, in this full-blooded manner. X’s in-your-face manner (re-quoting MacMullen 1966) “rather belongs in the long line of broad, harsh Roman satire, here directed at Claudius.” Lucilius, Horace (in the Epodes and early Satires), and Varro are obvious influences. The Apocolocyntosis could have been written, had Menippus not existed, in the sense that X used Roman, not Greek, models. Be that as it may, to me the piece is simultaneously aimed against Claudius and the deification of such a fool, recalling that other mysterious pamphlet mentioned by Suetonius, the Greek-titled Elevation of Fools.
The aforementioned editors have traced linguistic parallels between our satire and relevant Greek and Latin authors, and gone into most matters of content. So, here are just a few salient points and novelties. The mock preamble promises to record the minutes of the divine meeting of October 13, AD 54, linking secular with holy via the copulation anno novo initio saeculi felicissimi, the latter doubtless designed to remind readers of the farce of Claudius’ own Secular Games dating (Suet., Claud. 21.2; cf. Pl., NH 7.159). These celestial acta may echo Menippean parody, and such things were a favorite of Lucian, but (as said) there could also be influence from Lucilius’ Council of the Gods, or simple parody of Olympian committee meetings in epic poetry (compare Petronius’ recitations of Trimalchio’s domestic Acta and will). Julian’s Caesars, by comparison, describes Romulus’ Saturnalian dinner party, another feature of not only Menippean but regular satire. His opening mini-dialogue both nods toward and pokes fun at the spoudaiogeloion principle: “My dear friend, as I have no talent to amuse or entertain, I must try to avoid mere nonsense. … But, Caesar, would anyone be stupid enough to work hard over his jesting…?” X tags on some parody of historians’ professions of impartiality; Julian offers a mix of fact and fiction, leaving (in Herodotean style) the reader to decide.
Claudius (not yet named) vindicated the proverb “Born king or fool.” Editors note an equivalent Greek saw in Porphyry on Horace, Satires 2.3.188, but Caligula’s parody (Suet., Calig. 37), ad frugi hominem esse oportet ad Caesarem, is more to the point, along with (yet again) the Elevation of Fools. Given Caligula’s final intervention, this emperor has evident relevance.
Livius Geminius, who (Dio 69.11) vouchsafed Drusilla’s ascent to heaven, now confirms Claudius’ baby steps (parodying Virgil, Aen. 2.724) to Olympus. His difficult gait is recalled more forcibly later (Chapter 5), though Suetonius on his weak knees (Claud. 21.6, foeda vacillatio) is nastier. Suetonius also quotes a letter of Augustus on his shambling gait, a point pertinent to the latter’s role in the satire.
Julian gives Claudius short and predictable thrift, Silenus’ mock praises via parody of Aristophanes, Knights 111, being postluded by outright ridicule of his dependence upon Messalina, Narcissus, and Pallas.
Claudius has not yet spoken, and apart from his appeal to Hercules (Chapter 7), is not given all that much to say throughout the piece, though his occasional interjections and (a genuine characteristic) Homeric allusions are reported in the narrative. Though not a precise parallel, I tend to think of the idiot-savant Lucky in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, perhaps because I once played him on stage—typecasting?
October 13 is re-introduced through the first poetic sequence, half a dozen hexameters bearing some resemblance to Propertius 4.20.4, also Petronius’ description of autumn (fragment 38). Then, since “philosophers agree more easily than clocks”—a double dig, the narrator not knowing the exact moment of Claudius’ passing, but in the same breath can pinpoint it between the sixth and seventh hour, the officially announced one (Suet., Nero 8, using the same words)—three more hexameters, describing the sun’s progress, lead into Claudius’ lingering death, with much play, double-entendre, and patent on his famous flatulence, including annus as a pun on anus, with Claudius’ age at death convenient for ancient superstitions (Aulus Gellius 15.7.1) about the dangers of the 63rd year. Other things coming to mind include Diogenes’ burlesque Pordalos and Trimalchio’s disquisitions on defecation and flatulence.
The jokes against astrologers were conditioned by Claudius’ expulsion of the tribe from Italy (Tac., Ann. 12.52; Dio 61.33.3b). By contrast, Trimalchio had complete faith in the stunningly precise predictions of his long life to come. A flurry of diverse jests encompass the Furies and Clotho’s spindles, one unblocking the anus (following Athanassaakis’ notion of a pun on fusus), Claudius’ weakness for block awards of Roman citizenship, and the dooming of Augurinus, Baba, Claudius, perhaps a double-joke on ABC (one–two–three) and the emperor’s short-lived alphabetic innovations. Augurinus (Athanassakis again) may mean “Pissalot,” based on the etymology augeo-urina; Baba is a proverbial fool in Seneca himself (Epist. 15.9). A Virgilian quote on the need to kill one “king” bee if there are two in the hive justifies bumping off Claudius to make room for Nero. The latter is now glorified by Apollo in the last 11 of an 81-hexameter effusion; Lucan on Nero (1.33–1.66) comes irresistibly to mind. Phoebus lauding the artistic Nero in verse is obviously apposite. In Julian, Apollo quickly strips the artistic emperor of his lyre for his bad playing and worse morals. Claudius himself is then sent on his way with a quotation from Euripides’ Cresphontes, one Latinized by Cicero (Tusc. 1.48.115).
Claudius expiring while listening to comic actors is another bow to the official version, perhaps a knowing one by an author showing off his inside knowledge. Suetonius (Claud. 45) says Nero and Agrippina sent in comedians post-mortem to maintain the fiction of a still-breathing emperor. His first words in the satire are his last on earth, a lament (accompanied by a stentorian fart) that he has messed himself. Both events suit someone in the throes of poisoning (Grimm-Samuel 1991). Breaking wind blows through ancient literature: apart from Claudius’ proposed edict on it and Trimlachio’s disquisition, it features in Theophrastus, Characters 20.6, and in a startling anecdote in Suetonius’ Life of Lucan. There might also be an allusion to the curious religious ritual of apotropaic farting.32
The leading role played by Hercules befits his status in Cynic circles, also his frequency in Varronian satire; Julian on the other hand chose Silenus to play the same part. Athanassakis demonstrates how his tragic verse effusion is full of Senecan turns of phrase, especially his Hercules Furens: does this point to Senecan authorship? Or parody thereof?
Athanassakis posits “a considerable lacuna” at the end of Chapter 7, interrupting the debate over Claudius’ application for godship. Not all editors agree. Matters resume with a divinity in full oratorical throttle, lacing his speech with Grecisms describing the petitioner as “having nothing and incapable of giving to others.” Athanassakis’ idea that this suggests impotence does not suit the lustful, much-married Claudius of Suetonius. This Hellenic outburst is postluded by an iambic senarius from Varro, hesitantly attributed by Astbury to his The Stoic. Is our author sending a source signal here? There is later mention of Agatho the lawyer, one of his titular names (also a perfume vendor in Petronius): how many more Varronianisms may lurk in this satire?
Claudius deus vult fieri. Editors do not mention that he already was one on earth in some quarters, being thus addressed in the dedicatory epistle prefixed to the Compositiones of his doctor Scribonius Largus.33 So, an extra sting here at his pre-death pretensions, or his toadies? Editors also fail to find a parallel for the Greek prayer formula morou eilatou theou: there is one in Pap. Petr. 2, p 45, third-century BC, and also cognate expressions in epigraphic and patristic texts. It is notable that, at least until the roll call of his executions, the emphasis is on Claudius’ idiocy rather than his crimes.
In the satire’s speechlets at this point, there is a flurry of expressions also found in Petronius’s freedman monologues: manus manum lavat; mera mapalia; nummularius. After these, Augustus takes over, denouncing Claudius at length, with a copious criminal dossier, and formally proposing his expulsion from heaven. He kicks off with some self-praise couched in terms that are an obvious parody of his Res Gestae. Julian’s Augustus (Caesars 325d–326a) does the same. Just what do these parodies indicate? For Augustus to denounce Claudius as a disgrace to the royal line is logical enough, and he may be presumed upset at the emphasis Claudius placed on his link to Julius Caesar, but it still involves a twist on the kinder things said about him in the Augustan letters cited by Suetonius. In Julian, Augustus cuts a much less impressive figure, no doubt because the emperor’s concern was to boost Marcus Aurelius above all others.
The rest has been largely dealt with earlier. For the finale, it may just be observed that Caligula in Julian is simply an unnamed “fierce monster” from whom the gods avert their eyes until he is swiftly hurled into Tartarus, while Claudius’ initial dice-box punishment may contain a recognizable reversal of Bion’s dictum (Diog. Laert. 4.50) that those in Hades condemned eternally to draw water would suffer more if their vessels were whole instead of pierced with holes.
“Clowns and idiots laugh on all occasions”
—William Hazlitt
“How energetic they always are, these self-avowed cynics and désabusés, bristling with passionate estimates and beating their breasts in a jemenfoutiste and jusquauboutiste frenzy”
—Samuel Beckett
1 Dudley 1937; reprinted 1974, 69, not disclosing that Duff 1936, 251 had just made the same comparison.
2 Its history is exhaustively traced by Relihan 1984, 226–229, revamped in his Ancient Menippean Satire (1993, 3–11), re-addressed via “Menippus in Antiquity and the Renaissance” (1996, 265–3).
3 Thanks to Dieter Fuchs, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (Wurzburg, 2006); cf. Geert Lernout’s review, James Joyce Quarterly 45.2 (2008) 369–372.
4 Humphrey Carpenter, A Great, Silly Grin: The British Satire Boom of the 1960s (London-New York, 2000, originally titled That Was the Satire That Week).
5 Cf. Highet’s various remarks elsewhere here and in The Classical Tradition (Oxford, 1949). Neither Hadas nor Highet appear in (e.g.) Relihan.
6 Spotlighted in Baldwin, “Is Wittiness Unchristian?” and “The Fun of God,” Presbyterian Review, June 2005, 25, and July 2005, 32.
7 Baldwin, “Aspects of the Suda,” Byzantion 76 (2006) 11–31. Menippus is absent from Adler’s author and proper name indices.
8 Meleager’s life and works are amply covered by Desmond, Dudley, and Relihan; he and Menippus were not in fact contemporaries.
9 Stephen does not mention Diogenes in his Sinope notice. Meineke’s edition (Berlin, 1849) has been twice reprinted: Graz, 1958; Chicago, 1992. A new one by Margarethe Billerbeck (Berlin and New York, 2006–) is under way.
10 IG 1:2(8).87: “Date récente,” L. Robert, Opera Minora 1 (Amsterdam, 1969), 689–90.
11 Baldwin, “The Testamentum Porcelli,” in Studi in onore di Cesare Sanfilippo (Catania, 1982), 41–52.
12 The Byzantine Alexios Makrembolites, who read and wrote on Lucian, composed (1342–1344) a Dialogue between the Rich and the Poor, ed. I. Sevcenko (Belgrade, 1960); cf. Baldwin, “Recent Work (1930–1990) on some Byzantine Imitations of Lucian,” ANRW, II.34.2: 1400–1404.
13 Albeit pros cannot automatically be taken as adversative, as maintained by Alan Cameron, “Wandering Poets: a Literary Movement in Byzantine Egypt,” Historia 14 (1965) 505–506, refuted by Baldwin, “Book Titles in the Suda,” JHS, 103 (1983) 136–137.
14 This “laughing philosopher” hails from Abdera, whose inhabitants were bywords for their stupidity in (e.g.) the ancient joke book Philogelos (tr. Baldwin, Amsterdam, 1983); cf. Halliwell, 2008, 332–371. Neither Menippus nor Diogenes is here named by Athenaeus.
15 Of Menippus’ Sale of Diogenes, A.M. Harmon remarked in his Loeb edition, vol. 2, 449: “Lucian may have read it and took a hint from it; he could not have taken more.” Harmon also felt (2, 267) that the Icaromenippus was “freely borrowed,” and (5, 67, on The Runaways 11) that Zeus’ presumed familiarity with the Cynic implies a current mania for his writings occasioned by Lucian’s exhumation of him. It may be added that Lucian’s Greek here, Menippos houtos, recalls the Varronian title Allos houtos Herakles.
16 Prosimetrum has no classical pedigree. It apparently entered English in 1656, via Thomas Blount’s Glossographia: “Prosimetrical, consisting partly of prose, partly of meter or verse.”
17 When I first suggested this (1973, 105 n. 24), I was unaware of having been anticipated in the Bipontine edition (Amsterdam, 1743) of T. Hemsterhuys and J.F. Reitz, vol. 2, p. 394 n. on Dialogues of the Dead 1.
18 Fiske 1920; reprinted 1970, for full but exaggerated (in the manner of Helm on Lucian and Menippus) exposition.
19 Fraenkel (1957, reprinted 1966, 6–7) believed the Horatian pedigree was simply a reproduction of Bion’s. The latter’s mother was allegedly a prostitute; Horace never mentions his. As to Bion’s influence on Horace, see Fraenkel, 92–94, both developing and condemning Heinze’s (1889) De Horatio Bionis Imitatore; cf. Weinbrot, 2005, 111 n. 9.
20 The two best editions of Varro are now the 13-volume affair of J-P. Cèbe (Rome, 1972–1999), and R. Astbury’s Teubner (2nd rev. ed. Munich & Leipzig, 2002); cf. the bibliography suffixed to Regine May’s review of Astbury (BMCR 2003.5), also Y. Lehmann, Varron Théologien et Philosophe romain (Brussels, 1997), and Charles Marston Lee’s “Varro’s Menippean Satires” (Diss. Univ. Pittsburg, 1937).
21 Shanzer provides an excellent sketch of Roman Menippean satire from Varro to late antiquity; cf. my review in MLatJb, 23 (1988) 309–12.
22 Aetna and the Moon: Explaining Nature in Ancient Greece and Rome (Corvallis, Or., 2008).
23 “Plum” would have appreciated this compliment. He frequently asserted that his classical studies at Dulwich was “the best form of education I could have had as a writer” (fellow-Dulwichian Raymond Chandler expressed the same sentiment), also recalling “I did reams of Greek and Latin verse, and enjoyed it more than any other work.” For the full story, R. McCrum, Wodehouse (London, 2004; reprinted New York, 2006) 25–40.
24 Ed. H. Rabe (Stuttgart, 1906; reprinted 1971) 135.25; cf. Baldwin 1980/1981, 219–34, reprinted 1985, 394–411. The quality of their information is debatable. Relihan (1993, 254 n. 7) mocks one who dated Menippus to the reign of Augustus, whereas Rabe takes the Greek kata Sebaston to allude to Marcus Aurelius’ (a popular author with Byzantines) previously noted mention of him.
25 Apart from R. Roncali’s Teubner (1990), I have consulted the editions of A.P. Ball (London & New York, 1902; reprinted 1978), A. Athanassakis (Lawrence, Kansas, 1973), and P.T. Eden (Cambridge, 1984). Others include O. Weinrich (Berlin, 1923) and C.F. Russo (4th ed., Florence, 1964). The piece is also added to Bücheler’s Petronius and the Loebs of Heseltine and Warmington; Robert Graves appended an English version to Claudius the God.
26 Though Relihan is simplicity itself compared to the theoretical bafflegab of O’Gorman 2005, 95–108, comporting her weird, self-aggrandizing claim that “there are few pieces exclusively devoted to the Apocolocyntosis.” Look no further than the massive bibliographies assembled by Michael Coffey, Lustrum, 6 (1961) 239–271 and 309–11, and K. Bringmann, ANRW, II.32.2: 885–914.
27 This is an epitome of my fuller 1993 exposition, there amiably supplementing Hoyos’ detailed and thought-provoking 1991 round-up.
28 Baldwin, “Greek and Arabic Cucumbers: An Ancillary Suggestion,” Byzantion, 57 (1987) 414, reprinted Roman and Byzantine Papers (Amsterdam, 1989) 361.
29 J.A. Crook, Consilium Principis (Cambridge, 1955; reprinted New York, 1975) 100.
30 H.J. Mason, Greek Terms for Roman Institutions (Toronto, 1974) 141.
31 R. Syme, Tacitus (Oxford, 1958), 539 n. 1; cf. Baldwin, “Syme’s Petronius,” PSN, 34 (2004) 3.
32 R.W. Daniel, “Laughing stones,” ZPE, 161 (1985) 127–130.
33 Baldwin, “The career and work of Scribonius Largus,” RhM, 135 (1992) 74–81; F. Römer, “Zum Vorwort des Scribonius Largus,” WS, 100 (1987) 126–132.
Astbury, R. 1985. M. Terenti Varronis Saturarum Menippearum Fragmenta. Leipzig: Teubner.
Athanassakis, A. 1973. Apocolocyntosis Divi Claudii (The Pumpkinification of Claudius). Lawrence, Kan.: Coronado Press.
Bagnani, G. 1954. Arbiter of Elegance: A Study of the Life and Works of C. Petronius. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Baldwin, B. 1975. “The epigrams of Lucian.” Phoenix, 29: 311–335.
Baldwin, B. 1978a. “The Caesares of Julian.” Klio, 60: 449–465.
Baldwin, B. 1978b. “Verses in the Historia Augusta.” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 25: 50–59.
Baldwin, B. 1980/1981. “The scholiasts’ Lucian.” Helikon, 20/21: 219–234.
Baldwin, B. 1984a. Studies on Late Roman and Byzantine History, Literature, and Language. Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben.
Baldwin, B. 1984b. “Trimalchio and Maecenas.” Latomus, 43: 402–403.
Baldwin, B. 1988. “Fulgentius and his sources.” Traditio, 44: 37–57.
Baldwin, B. 2003. “John Lydus on Petronius,” Petronian Society Newsletter, 33: 2: 1–3.
Bompaire, J. 1958. Lucien Ecrivain. Paris: Bibliothèque des Ecoles Françaises d’Athènes et de Rome.
Branham, B.R. 1989. Unruly Eloquence: Lucian and the Comedy of Traditions. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bringmann, K. 1971. “Senecas Apocolocyntosis und die politische Satire in Rom.” Antike und Abendland, 17: 56–69.
Byrne, S.N. 2006. “Petronius and Maecenas: Seneca’s calculated criticism.” In Ancient Narrative: Authors, Authority, and Interpretations in the Ancient Novel, edited by J. Alvares, S.N. Byrne, and E.P. Cueva. Ancient Narrative Supplementum 5. Groningen: Barkhuis Publishing: Groningen University Library, pp. 83–111.
Coffey, M. 1976. Roman Satire. London: Methuen.
Desmond, W. 2008. Cynics. Stocksfield: Acumen.
Dudley, D.R. 1937. A History of Cynicism from Diogenes to the 6th Century A.D. London: Methuen. Reprint, New York: Gordon Press, 1974.
Duff, J.W. 1936. Roman Satire: Its Outlook on Social Life. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Archon Books.
Fiske, G.C. 1920. Lucilius and Horace. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Reprint, Westport: Greenwood Press, 1970.
Fraenkel, E. 1957. Horace. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Reprint 1966.
Garland, R. 1994–1997. “The mockery of the deformed and disabled in Graeco-Roman culture.” In Laughter Down the Centuries, edited by S. Jäkel et al., vol. 1. Turku: Turun Yliopisto, pp. 71–84.
Goodyear, F.R.D. 1982. “Apocolocyntosis Divi Claudii.” The Cambridge History of Classical Literature II.4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 137–138. Reprint 1983.
Grimm-Samuel, V. 1991. “On the mushroom that deified the Emperor Claudius.” Classical Quarterly, 41: 178–182.
Hadas, M. 1929. “Oriental elements in Petronius.” American Journal of Philology, 1: 378–385.
Hadas, M. 1931. “Gadarenes in pagan literature.” Classical World, 25.4: 25–30.
Hadas, M. 1954. Ancilla to Classical Reading. New York: Columbia University Press.
Hall, J. 1981. Lucian’s Satire. New York: Arno Press.
Halliwell, S. 2008. Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Heinze, R. 1889. De Horatio Bionis Imitatore. Bonn: University of Bonn.
Hendrickson, N.G.L. 1911. “Satura—the genesis of a literary form.” Classical Philology, 6: 129–143.
Herrmann, L. 1950. Phèdre et ses fables. Leiden: Brill.
Highet, G. 1962. The Anatomy of Satire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Hirzel, R. 1895. Der Dialog, ein literarische Versuch. Leipzig: S. Hirzel.
Hoyos, D. 1991. “Gourd God! The meaning of Apocolocyntosis.” Liverpool Classical Monthly, 16.5: 142–143.
Jones, C.P. 1986. Culture and Society in Lucian. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kirk, E. 1980. Menippean Satire: An Annotated Catalogue of Texts and Criticism. New York: Garland Pub.
Lee, C.M. 1937. “Varro’s Menippean satires.” Diss. University of Pittsburg.
Lehmann, Y. 1997. Varron Théologien et Philosophe romain. Brussels: Latomus.
MacMullen, R. 1966. Enemies of the Roman Order. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
McCarthy, B.P. 1936. “The form of Varro’s Menippean satire.” In Philological Studies in Honor of Walter Miller, edited by R. Pearson. Columbia: University of Missouri, pp. 95–107.
O’Daly, G. 1991. The Poetry of Boethius. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press.
O’Gorman, E. 2005. “Citation and authority in Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis.” In The Cambridge Companion to Roman Satire, edited by K. Freudenburg. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 95–108.
Reeve, M.D. 1984. “Apotheosis…per saturam.” Classical Philology, 79: 305–307.
Relihan, J.C. 1984 “On the origin of ‘Menippean satire’ as the name of a literary genre.” Classical Philology, 79: 226–229.
Relihan, J.C. 1993. Ancient Menippean Satire. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Relihan, J.C. 1996. “Menippus in antiquity and the renaissance.” In The Cynics: The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and its Legacy, edited by R. Bracht Branham and M.-O. Goulet-Cazé. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, pp. 265–293.
Roncali, R. 1990. Apocolocyntosis. Leipzig: Teubner.
Shanzer, D. 1986. A Philosophical and Literary Commentary on Martianus Capella’s De Nuptiiis Philologiae et Mercurii Book 1. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.
Weinbrot, H.D. 2005. Menippean Satire Reconsidered: From Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Wiesen, D. 1964. St. Jerome as Satirist. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Baldwin, B. 1961. “Lucian as social satirist.” Classical Quarterly, 11: 199–208.
Baldwin, B. 1964. “Executions under Claudius: Seneca’s Ludus de Morte Claudii.” Phoenix, 18: 39–48.
Baldwin, B. 1973. Studies in Lucian. Toronto: Hakkert.
Baldwin, B. 1985. Studies on Greek and Roman History and Literature. Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben.
Baldwin, B. 1989. Roman and Byzantine Papers. Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben. NB: This triad of collected studies reprints the majority of the articles listed above, also most of the cognate items mentioned in footnotes.
Baldwin, B. 1993. “The meaning of Apocolocyntosis: More gourd ideas.” Liverpool Classical Monthly, 18.9: 142–143.
Branham, B.R. and M.-O. Goulet Cazé, eds. 1996. The Cynics: The Cynic Movement on Antiquity and its Legacy. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.
Helm, R. 1906. Lucian und Menipp. Leipzig & Berlin: Teubner. Reprint, Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1967.
Helm, R. 1931. “Menipp.” Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, 15.1, cols. 888–893.
Hooley, D.M. 2007. Roman Satire. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Wiseman, T.P. 2009. “Marcopolis.” In Remembering the Roman People. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 131–152.
In the preceding bibliography, only articles and books bearing on the principal topics appear. Incidental and peripheral items are omitted, likewise (with a few exceptions) editions of ancient texts and modern reference manuals; those mentioned are fully referenced in the notes. Nothing published after April 2009, when this chapter was completed, is taken into account. By the time it is out, there will doubtless be much more, especially from Acta of conferences on the ancient novel. Annual Petronian Society Newsletter listings are the best way to keep up. Meanwhile, readers who wish to cut to the chase should hasten to the books by Desmond, Dudley, Halliwell, Relihan, and Weinbrot, plus the Branham & Goulet-Cazé volume. Directions to the mass of secondary literature on the Apocolocyntosis are provided by the bibliographies of Bringmann and Coffey. Electronic sources should not be despised. Menippus (suitably) enjoys a rich existence (nearly 60,000 sites) in cyber-space—I fancy he would have enjoyed blogging.