Menas

Menas is known only as a recipient of letters from Isidore of Pelusium, the ascetic and exegete active in the eastern Nile Delta of Egypt in the early-to-mid 5th century. The address honorifics across these letters are notably inconsistent: Isidore variously addresses Menas as a deacon, as Prefect (a governing official whom he urges to mercy toward the poor and justice toward the wronged), and as Scholasticus (an advocate or trained jurist whom he exhorts to make his deeds match his words) - so the letters may be directed to more than one man of this common name, or to one person at different stages, a question the evidence does not resolve. The surviving letters show Isidore in the role of moral counselor: defending Menas against slanderers, urging him toward self-control and peacemaking in a quarrel, warning that an unjust victory in anger or greed breeds lasting shame, and answering an exegetical query about Christ's phrase on the Pharisees broadening their phylacteries (Matthew 23:5). Beyond this correspondence Menas is otherwise unattested.