Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/46

 The slight fragments preserved of Menippus are not enough to enable us to judge of his style; but from sundry notices of him in Lucian we may gather that his Satires were written in prose, that they frequently introduced dialogue, and that they embraced a large variety of topics, including especially the ridicule of false philosophers. Varro's Satires gained the name of Menippea, as Cicero informs us, from their general likeness to those of Menippus in style and subject. Both emploved dialogue, both discoursed on many subjects, and both conveyed instruction in a humorous and playful form.

Varro was the most voluminous of writers (, Cic. Epp. ad Att. xiii. 18); he himself computed that he had written 490 books. Of these it is obvious, from the number of times they are quoted by writers down to the beginning of the fifth century, that the Menippean Satires were the most popular. There seem to have been no less than 150 of them, each in a separate book; the grammarians Aulus Gellius (A.D. 117-180) and Nonius Marcellus (fourth century?) cite fragments of at least 82 of the Satires. The titles, of which many have been xlii