Both during his lifetime, and markedly in the decades after his death, the conduct of Minas was criticised. Points raised relate to how he obtained manuscripts and then allowed access to them; how he collated materials without detailed provenance; and the attribution of copies.
Standards The manuscripts Minas took away from Mount Athos are now described as "bought or stolen". He gained a reputation during his lifetime for sharp practice, and possible smuggling, in his manuscript hunting.
Joseph-Michel Guardia wrote an extended review in 1858 of the editions of the Philostratus work by Minas and by
Charles Victor Daremberg. He put emphasis on the secretive conduct of Minas.
Minas and the "pseudo-Babrius" affair After his death suspicions of forgery or fraud by Minas relating to some alleged manuscript copies of Babrius were widely accepted. Modern scholarship labels some post-1850 Babrius material purportedly copied by Minas as by "pseudo-Babrius".
George Cornewall Lewis advised the
British Museum in London to purchase such pseudo-Babrius texts. An account of the 1857 transaction between Minas and the British Museum was given by the
Marquis de Queux de Saint-Hilaire, in an obituary of George Wyndham (1813–1875), a British Hellenist who had been a pupil of Minas in Paris in the 1820s. Wyndham acted as interpreter for Minas in London. In his account as related by the Marquis, the main transaction was the purchase of the
codex from Minas, which was the original of the Boissonade edition (made from a copy by Minas). Babrius, a poet of the
Second Sophistic, was in his own period a successful pedagogic author. Minas had already shown the contentious material in France to
Johann Friedrich Dübner and
Émile Egger, among others. Lewis was aware that the "pseudo-Babrius" material was not of comparable quality to the codex, but it was bought from Minas also, for a small sum. Lewis then published it, "for what it was worth". It was widely rejected, as giving credibility to the authorship of Babrius, when internal evidence told strongly against: Lewis died in 1863.
Carel Gabriel Cobet and Dübner condemned the manuscript L papers as forgery; there was some dissent at the time, from
Hermann Sauppe and
Theodor Bergk.
Davies and Eberhard James Davies, a friend of Lewis, published in 1860 a metrical translation in English of Babrius, from Lewis's text, including fables from the "pseudo-Babrius" manuscript L. He later wrote an 1874 review
The Greek Fool in ''
Blackwood's Magazine, in which he called Minas "a Greek well known to European libraries and museums as a manuscript hunter of somewhat unreliable habits and antecedents". He cited also the opinion of Alfred Eberhard, whose edition of the Philogelos'' he was reviewing, in Latin: "homo Graecus tot libris inventis, corruptis, ablatis, subditis celeber" (He was a Greek who was famous for the number of books he discovered, destroyed, stole, and concealed). Eberhard used a joke manuscript compiled by Minas, but complained that it gave no provenance for the jokes.
British Library Add MS 22807 is described as "Brought by Menas Menoides from Mount Athos, possibly from the Lavra Monastery." Manuscript L is identified as Add MS 22808. ==Works==