In both the original Greek text and its English translations, Appian cites Menenius for the first and only time in Civil Wars, Book IV, Chapter 44 (IV, 44). 

Key Details About the Citation:

• No Earlier Mention: Appian's 24-book comprehensive history (Rhomaika) covers Roman history chronologically and by region. The early books covering the regal period and the early Republic—where famous ancient ancestors like Agrippa Menenius Lanatus would have appeared—are lost or exist only in scattered fragments. 
• The Only Textual Record: In the surviving material, the name "Menenius" appears exclusively in this singular anecdote regarding the proscriptions of 43 BC. 
• The Greek Entry: In the standard Greek text, he is introduced directly as Μενηνίου (Meneniyou, the genitive form of Menenius) at the very beginning of the sentence.
• The English Entry: In the standard Loeb Classical Library English translation by Horace White, he is cited directly by his nomen as Menenius. 

If you are tracking how the name "Menenius" appears in other Roman historians, I can pull up references to the family in Livy or Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Would you like to compare their accounts?

L'AI può commettere errori, quindi verifica le risposte 

sì appian is presupposing his readers know? "Μενηνίου δὲ τὴν οἰκίαν καταλαβόντων ὁπλιτῶν, θεράπων ἐς τὸ τοῦ δεσπότου φορεῖον ἐνέβη καὶ ὑπὸ τῶν ὁμοδούλων συνεργούντων ἐξεφέρετο, ἕως ὅδε μὲν ὡς Μενήνιος ἑκὼν ἀνῄρητο, Μενήνιος δὲ ἐς Σικελίαν διέφυγεν." Wikisource.org

Sì, absolutely. The grammatical construction of that sentence is a textbook example of an author presupposing that their audience already knows who the person is, or at least that the name itself requires no formal introduction.

Analyzing the Greek syntax reveals exactly how Appian structures this assumption:

1. The Use of the Genitive Absolute

The sentence opens immediately with a genitive absolute: "Μενηνίου δὲ τὴν οἰκίαν καταλαβόντων ὁπλιτῶν..."

• Instead of saying "There was a man named Menenius, and when soldiers seized his house...", Appian drops the reader straight into the action: "And when soldiers seized the house of Menenius..."
• By positioning the name Μενηνίου as the very first word, it assumes "Menenius" is a recognizable entity within the context of the proscription lists.

2. The Abrupt Use of the Pronoun "ὅδε"

Later in the sentence, Appian writes: "...ἕως ὅδε μὲν ὡς Μενήνιος ἑκὼν ἀνῄρητο..." ("...until this one, having been willingly killed as Menenius..."). 

• The demonstrative pronoun ὅδε (this one here) is used to point back to the slave (θεράπων) who was just mentioned.
• Appian is treating the narrative like a fast-paced slide show or an anecdote the reader has likely heard variants of before. He rushes past identity details because the action (the substitution in the litter) is the focus. 

Why does Appian do this?

• A Common Literary Source: Appian did not invent these stories. He compiled them from earlier, lost Roman memoirs and histories (like those of Gaius Asinius Pollio or Messalla Corvinus). For a Roman or a Greek intellectual reading Appian in the 2nd century AD, "The Proscription Lists" were a famous historical trope. The names on the lists were treated like household historical trivia.
• The "Name-Drop" Technique: Throughout Book IV, Appian frequently drops names in the genitive absolute (e.g., "Of Vinius...", "Of Lucretius...") because he is essentially reading off an index of famous escapes and deaths. He treats the names like headers in a catalog rather than characters needing deep character development. 

Would you like to look at the very next sentence in that Wikisource text—the story of Vinius (Οὐίνιον)—to see how Appian repeats this exact same grammatical pattern?

and Is it good Greek to use M. twice in the same sentence without giving value to reader as who he was? When the soldiers made a descent upon the house of Menenius, one of his slaves got into his master's litter and procured himself to be carried by his fellow-slaves, and in this way allowed himself to be killed for Menenius, who thereby escaped to Sicily."

Sì, from a stylistic standpoint, it is considered clumsy or "low-style" prose, but contextually, it is highly effective administrative Greek for what Appian is trying to achieve.

In classical Attic Greek (like that of Thucydides or Plato), repeating a proper noun twice in the exact same breath without introducing the character would be frowned upon as redundant. However, Appian is writing in Imperial Koine Greek during the 2nd century AD, where the rules and priorities of prose changed.

Analyzing the Greek sentence structure reveals why this repetition is used and why it functions well for his audience:

1. The Legalistic Need for Explicit Clarity

The end of the sentence reads:

"...ἕως ὅδε μὲν ὡς Μενήνιος ἑκὼν ἀνῄρητο, Μενήνιος δὲ ἐς Σικελίαν διέφυγεν."
(...until this man [the slave], on the one hand, was willingly killed as Menenius, while Menenius, on the other hand, escaped to Sicily.) 

• Avoiding Pronoun Confusion: In Greek, if Appian had used a pronoun like autos (he) instead of repeating "Menenius" the second time, the sentence would become structurally ambiguous. The reader would have to guess whether he meant the slave or the master.
• The Chiasmus of Fate: By repeating the name "Menenius" back-to-back with the μὲν / δὲ (on one hand / on the other hand) particle construction, Appian sets up a sharp, ironic contrast. He is explicitly balancing the fake Menenius who dies against the real Menenius who lives.

2. The Nature of Imperial Bureaucratic Prose

Appian was a high-ranking Roman imperial procurator (an administrator and lawyer). His Greek style reflects his day job.

• He writes like someone reading aloud from an official government ledger or court document.
• In Roman proscription lists, names were legal and financial markers. To an administrator, "Menenius" isn't a character to develop with backstory; he is an asset line-item. One line item was targeted, a proxy was destroyed, and the original line item moved to Sicily.

3. Why the Reader Gained No "Value" on His Identity

To a classical reader, Appian is giving value, just not biographical value. He is treating the proscriptions as a massive, sweeping national trauma where individual identities matter less than the universal breakdown of Roman society.

By leaving Menenius as just a blank name, Appian universalizes the story. It doesn't matter if this Menenius was a good politician or a bad one. What matters to the reader is the moral lesson: the world turned so upside down that a man's name could be detached from his body, allowing a slave to die under that name while the master fled into exile.

If you look at the very next sentence in that Wikisource text, he does the exact same thing with Vinius("Οὐίνιον δὲ ἀπελεύθερος αὐτοῦ Οὐινίου..."). Would you like to break down that sentence to see how he repeats Vinius's name twice for the exact same administrative clarity? 

L'AI può commettere errori, quindi verifica le risposte 

so M. appears only three times in Roman historiography in only one sentence? commentators expanded or tried to identity this M?

The Occurrence of the Name "Menenius"

To be precise, the name appears exactly three times across the entirety of Appian's surviving 24 books—and yes, all three appearances occur within that single, continuous sentence in Civil Wars 4.44:

1. Μενηνίου (Meneniyou) – "Of Menenius..."
2. Μενήνιος (Meneniyos) – "...killed as Menenius..."
3. Μενήνιος (Meneniyos) – "...while Menenius escaped..." 

Outside of this individual sentence, the name "Menenius" completely vanishes from the surviving pages of Appian.

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Have Commentators Tried to Identify Him?

Yes, modern historical commentators and prosopographers (scholars who track ancient family networks) have thoroughly investigated this passage, but they have hit a brick wall.

The definitive, authoritative consensus comes from François Hinard in his seminal masterwork on Roman proscriptions, Les proscriptions de la Rome républicaine: 

"On ne peut rien savoir de ce Menenius : il est le seul personnage de ce nom attesté pour la fin de la République."
("We can know nothing about this Menenius: he is the only person of this name attested for the end of the Republic.") 

Commentators over the centuries have noted several critical points about this enigmatic figure:

• The Dead Family Line: The aristocratic Gens Menenia was immensely famous during the early Republic (notably Agrippa Menenius Lanatus, who gave the famous "belly and limbs" fable to the plebeians in 494 BC). However, the family completely disappeared from the consular records after the 4th century BC. This proscribed Menenius is the lone ghost of his family name appearing hundreds of years later. 
• The "C. Menenius" Connection: The only tiny clue scholars have found regarding a late-Republic Menenius is an inscription from the Aegean island of Samothrace dating to the 70s–60s BC, which lists a "C. Menenius" as a Roman initiate. Some commentators speculate that our proscribed Menenius could be this Gaius Menenius, or perhaps his son, meaning the family had transitioned into wealthy eastern traders (negotiatores) rather than Roman politicians. 
• The Sulpicius Galba Hypothesis: Some early textual commentators wondered if Appian made an error or misread his Latin source. In Valerius Maximus’s historical anecdote book (which covers similar proscription tales), a very similar story of a slave switching places in a litter is told about a man named Sulpicius Galba. However, because the details don't align perfectly, modern commentators accept that Menenius was a real, distinct individual whose wealth simply made him a target. 

Ultimately, because Appian used this name three times in a single sentence just to highlight the slave's loyalty, Menenius remains one of the great historical mysteries of the Triumviral proscriptions.

Would you like to examine how other historians like Livy or Dionysius of Halicarnassus treated the legendary, early ancestors of this Menenius family?