person
also known as Menippus
The Greek satirist, c. 220 BC, whose name the whole tradition carries. In Bob's dialogue 24 telling, Menippus was "outrageous" because he mixed poetry and prose "meant to be separate" — a transgression Bob reads proleptically as McLuhan's injunction to "mix your media." Preserved by Varro and retrieved centuries later as Menippean satire, Menippus is the origin point of the genre-history the dialogue reconstructs.
Across the dialogues
24
Enters as the eponym — the outrageous ~220 BC satirist whose mixing of poetry and prose Bob reads as a first "mix your media"
Menippus is the founding transgressor — the mixing of poetry and prose that scandalized early phonetic Greek culture is, in Bob's reading, the first instance of the media-mixing McLuhan would later prescribe.
"Menippus was outrageous, and he lived about 220 B.C."
Connections
origin ofMenippean Satire
The genre bears his name — his mixing of poetry and prose is its founding gesture.