Menander

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Menander

Menander (Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
: , Menandros; ca. 342–291 BC), Greek dramatist, the best-known representative of Athenian New Comedy, was the son of well-to-do parents; his father Diopeithes

Diopeithes

Diopeithes was an Athens general, probably father of the poet Menander, who was sent out to the Thracian Chersonese about 343 BC, at the head of a body of Athenian settlers or ????o??o?....
is identified by some with the Athenian general and governor of the Thracian Chersonese

Thracian Chersonese

The Thracian Chersonese was the ancient name of the Gallipoli peninsula, in the part of historic Thrace that is now part of modern Turkey.The peninsula runs in a south-westerly direction into the Aegean Sea, between the Hellespont and the bay of Melas ....
known from the speech of Demosthenes

Demosthenes

Demosthenes was a prominent Greeks statesman and orator of History of Athens. His oratorys constitute a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual prowess and provide an insight into the politics and culture of ancient Greece during the 4th century BC....
De Chersoneso. He presumably derived his taste for comic drama from his uncle Alexis

Alexis

Alexis was a Greece comedian poet of the Middle Comedy, born at Thurii and taken early to Athens, where he became a citizen, of the deme Oion , and the tribe Leontides....
.

Life and work
Menander was the friend, associate, and perhaps pupil of Theophrastus

Theophrastus

Theophrastus , a Greek native of Eressos in Lesbos Island, was the successor of Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. His interests were wide-ranging, extending from biology and physics to ethics and metaphysics....
, and was on intimate terms with the Athenian dictator Demetrius of Phalerum

Demetrius Phalereus

Demetrius Phalereus , also known as Demetrius of Phaleron was an Athens orator originally from Phalerum, a student of Theophrastus and one of the first Peripatetics....
.

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Life and work

Menander was the friend, associate, and perhaps pupil of Theophrastus

Theophrastus

Demetrius Phalereus

Demetrius Phalereus , also known as Demetrius of Phaleron was an Athens orator originally from Phalerum, a student of Theophrastus and one of the first Peripatetics....
. He also enjoyed the patronage of Ptolemy Soter, the son of Lagus

Lagus

Lagus from Eordaea was the father, or reputed father, of Ptolemy I Soter, the founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty. He married Arsinoe of Macedonia, a concubine of Philip II of Macedon, king of Macedon, who was said to have been pregnant at the time of their marriage, on which account it is told that the Macedonians generally looked upon Ptolemy...
, who invited him to his court. But Menander, preferring the independence of his villa in the Peiraeus and the company of his mistress Glycera

Glycera (courtesan)

Glycera was a popular name often used for Hellenistic hetaerae, held by:#The daughter of Thalassis and the mistress of Harpalus and Menander....
, refused. According to the note of a scholiast on the Ibis of Ovid

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso was a Roman Empire poet known as Ovid to the English language-speaking world, who wrote about love, seduction, and Roman mythology transformation....
, he drowned while bathing, and his countrymen honored him with a tomb on the road leading to Athens, where it was seen by Pausanias

Pausanias (geographer)

Pausanias was a Roman Greece traveller and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius....
. Numerous supposed busts of him survive, including a well-known statue in the Vatican

Vatican City

Vatican City , officially the State of the Vatican City , is a Landlocked country sovereignty city-state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome, the Capital of Italy....
, formerly thought to represent Gaius Marius

Gaius Marius

Gaius Marius was a Roman Republic general and politician elected consul an unprecedented seven times during his career. He was also noted for his dramatic Marian Reforms of Roman legion, authorizing recruitment of landless citizens and reorganizing the structure of the legions into separate Cohort ....
.

Menander was the author of more than a hundred comedies, and took the prize at the Lenaia

Lenaia

The Lenaia was an annual festival with a dramatic competition but one of the lesser festivals of Athens and Ionia in ancient Greece. The Lenaia took place in the month of Gamelion, roughly corresponding to January....
festival eight times. His record at the City Dionysia is unknown but may well have been similarly spectacular. His rival in dramatic art (and supposedly in the affections of Glycera) was Philemon

Philemon (poet)

Philemon was an Athenian Democracy poet and playwright of the New Comedy. He was born either at Soli in Cilicia or at Syracuse, Italy in Sicily but moved to Athens some time before 330 BC, when he is known to have been producing plays....
, who appears to have been more popular. Menander, however, believed himself to be the better dramatist, and, according to Aulus Gellius

Aulus Gellius

Aulus Gellius , Latin author and grammarian, possibly of African origin, probably born and certainly brought up at Rome.He studied grammar and rhetoric at Rome and philosophy at Athens, after which he returned to Rome, where he held a judicial office....
, used to ask Philemon: "Don't you feel ashamed whenever you gain a victory over me?" According to Caecilius of Calacte

Caecilius of Calacte

Caecilius, of Calacte in Sicily, Greek rhetorician, flourished at Rome during the reign of Augustus.Originally called Archagathus, he took the name of Caecilius from his patron, one of the Metelli....
(Porphyry

Porphyry (philosopher)

Porphyry of Tyre was a Phoenician Neoplatonism philosopher. He is important in the history of mathematics because of his Life of Pythagoras and his commentary on Euclid's Euclid's Elements, used by Pappus of Alexandria when he wrote his own commentary....
in Eusebius

Eusebius of Caesarea

Eusebius of Caesarea became the bishop of Caesarea Maritima c 314. He is often referred to as the Father of Church History because of his work in recording the history of the early Christianity church, especially Chronicon and Church_History_....
, Praeparatio evangelica) Menander was guilty of plagiarism

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the use or close imitation of the language and ideas of another author and representation of them as one's own original work.Within academia, plagiarism by students, professors, or researchers is considered academic dishonesty or academic fraud and offenders are subject to academic censure....
, his The Superstitious Man being taken from The Augur of Antiphanes

Antiphanes

Antiphanes, the most important writer of the Middle Attic comedy with the exception of Alexis, lived from about 408 to 334 BCE.He was apparently a foreigner who settled in Athens , where he began to write about 387....
. But reworkings and variations on a theme

Variations on a Theme

Variations on a Theme is David Thomas ' second solo studio album. Like its predecessor The Sound of the Sand, Variations on a Theme features prominent guitar work from Richard Thompson ....
of this sort were commonplace, and the charge is a foolish one. Menander subsequently became one of the favorite writers of antiquity. How long complete copies of his plays survived is unclear, although twenty-three of them, with commentary by Michael Psellus, were said to still have been available in Constantinople

Constantinople

Constantinople was the empire capital of the Roman Empire , the Byzantine Empire , the Latin Empire , and the Ottoman Empire . Strategically located between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara at the point where Europe meets Asia, Byzantine Constantinople had been the capital of a Christendom empire, successor to ancient ancient Greece...
in the 11th century. He is praised by Plutarch

Plutarch

Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. AD 46 ? 120 ? commonly known in English as Plutarch ? was a Ancient Rome historian , biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonism....
(Comparison of Menander and Aristophanes) and Quintilian

Quintilian

Marcus Fabius Quintilianus was a Roman Empire rhetorician from Hispania, widely referred to in Middle ages schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing....
(Institutio Oratoria), who accepted the tradition that he was the author of the speeches published under the name of the Attic orator Charisius

Charisius

Flavius Sosipater Charisius was a Latin grammarian.He was probably an African by birth, summoned to Constantinople to take the place of Euanthius, a learned commentator on Terence....
.

An admirer and imitator of Euripides

Euripides

Euripides was the last of the three great tragedy of classical Athens . Ancient scholars thought that Euripides had written ninety-five plays, although four of those were probably written by Critias....
, Menander resembles him in his keen observation of practical life, his analysis of the emotions, and his fondness for moral maxims, many of which became proverbial: "The property of friends is common," "Whom the gods love die young," "Evil communications corrupt good manners" (from the Thaïs, quoted in 1 Corinthians

First Epistle to the Corinthians

The First Epistle to the Corinthians is a book of the Bible in the New Testament, often referred to simply as 1 Corinthians. The book is a letter from Paul of Tarsus and Sosthenes to the Christians of Corinth, Greece....
15:33). These maxims (chiefly monostichs) were afterwards collected, and, with additions from other sources, were edited as Menander's One-Verse Maxims, a kind of moral textbook for the use of schools.

The single surviving speech from his early play Drunkenness is an attack on the politician Callimedon, in the manner of Aristophanes

Aristophanes

Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a prolific and much acclaimed comedy playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays have come down to us virtually complete....
, whose bawdy style was adopted in many of his plays.

Menander found many Roman imitators. The Eunuchus

Eunuchus

Eunuchus is a comedy written by the Roman playwright Terence featuring a complex plot of familial misunderstanding....
, Andria (comedy)

Andria (comedy)

Andria is a comedy by Terence, a Roman playwright. It was Terence's first play, and he wrote it when he was approximately 19 years old. Terence adapted through translation from Menander's play, although as he is at pains to point out in his prologue he goes beyond mere translation....
, Heauton Timorumenos

Heauton Timorumenos

Heauton Timorumenos is a play written by Publius Terentius Afer, known in English as Terence, a dramatist of the Roman Republic. The play has presented academics with some problems....
and Adelphi

Adelphi

Adelphi may refer to:...
of Terence

Terence

Publius Terentius Afer , better known as Terence, was a playwright of the Roman Republic. His comedies were performed for the first time around 170–160 BC, and he died young probably in Greece or on his way back to Rome....
(called by Caesar

Julius Caesar

'Gaius Julius Caesar' , July 13, 100 BC ? March 15, 44 BC,) was a Roman Republic military and political leader. He played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
"dimidiatus Menander") were avowedly taken from Menander, but some of them appear to be adaptations and combinations of more than one play. Thus in the Andria were combined Menander's The Woman from Andros and The Woman from Perinthos, in the Eunuchus, The Eunuch and The Flatterer, while the Adelphi was compiled partly from Menander and partly from Diphilus

Diphilus

Diphilus, of Sinop, Turkey, was a poet of the new Attic Ancient Greek comedy and contemporary of Menander . Most of his plays were written and acted at Athens, but he led a wandering life, and died at Izmir....
. The original of Terence's Hecyra (as of the Phormio) is generally supposed to be, not by Menander, but Apollodorus of Carystus

Apollodorus of Carystus

Apollodorus of Carystus in Euboea was one of the most important writers of the Attic New Comedy, who flourished in Athens between 300 and 260 B.C....
. The Bacchides and Stichus of Plautus

Plautus

Titus Maccius Plautus , commonly known as Plautus, was a Ancient Rome playwright. His comedy are among the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature....
were probably based upon Menander's The Double Deceiver and Philadelphoi, The Brotherly-Loving Men, but the Poenulus, does not seem to be from The Carthaginian, nor the Mostellaria from The Apparition, in spite of the similarity of titles. Caecilius Statius

Caecilius Statius

Caecilius Statius, or Statius Caecilius Born 220 BC Died 168 or 166 BC was a Roman comic .A contemporary and intimate friend of Ennius, he was born in the territory of the Insubrian Gauls, and was probably taken as a prisoner to Rome , during the great Gallic war....
, Luscius Lavinius, Turpilius and Atilius

Atilius

Atilius was the nomen of the gens Atilia of ancient Rome.* Marcus Atilius Regulus Calenus, consul 335 BC, the first of the gens to become consul....
also imitated Menander. He was further credited with the authorship of some epigrams of doubtful authenticity; the letters addressed to Ptolemy Soter and the discourses in prose on various subjects mentioned by the Suda are probably spurious.

Until the end of the 19th century, all that was known of Menander were fragments quoted by other authors and collected by Augustus Meineke (1855) and Theodor Kock, Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta (1888). These consist of some 1650 verses or parts of verses, in addition to a considerable number of words quoted from Menander by ancient lexicographers.

Twentieth century discoveries

This situation changed abruptly in 1907, with the discovery of the Cairo Codex, which contained large parts of the Girl from Samos; the Perikeiromene; the Men at Arbitration; a section of the Hero; and another fragment from an unidentified play. A fragment of 115 lines of the Sikyonian(s) had been found in the papier mache of a mummy case in 1906.

In 1959, the Bodmer papyrus was published contained Dyskolos, more of the Girl from Samos, and half the Shield. In the late 1960s, more of the Sikyonian was found as filling for two more mummy cases; this proved to be the drawn from same manuscript as the discovery in 1906, which had clearly been thoroughly recycled.

Other papyrus fragments continue to be discovered and published.

Works

Aspis ("The Shield"; about half)
Georgos ("The Farmer")
Dis Exapaton ("Double Deceiver")
Dyskolos
Dyskolos

Dyskolos is an Ancient Greek comedy by Menander, the only one of his plays, or of the whole New Comedy, that has survived in relatively complete form ....
("Old Cantankerous" or "The Grouch") the only play that survives in its entirety
Encheiridion ("Handbook")
Epitrepontes ("Men at Arbitration"; most)
Heros ("The Hero
Hero (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Hero was one of the sons of king Priam mentioned in Fabulae. His mothers name is unknown. Possibly he was killed by Achilles or Neoptolemus....
")
Hypobolimaios ("The Changeling")
Karchedonios ("Carthaginian")
Kitharistes ("The Harper")
Kolax ("The Toady" or "Flatterer")
Koneiazomenai ("Drugged Women")
Leukadia
Methe ("Drunkenness")
Misoumenos ("The Man She Hated")
Naukleros ("The Ship's Captain")
Orge ("Anger")
Perikeiromene ("Girl who has her hair cropped"; George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw, was an Irish people playwright.Although Shaw's first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, his talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays....
suggested Rape of the Locks, after Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope is generally regarded as the greatest England poet of the eighteenth century, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer....
)
Perinthia ("Girl from Perinthos")
Plokion ("The Necklace")
Pseudherakles ("The Fake Hercules
Hercules

Hercules is the Ancient Rome name for the mythical Ancient Greece hero Heracles, son of Zeus and the mortal Alcmene. Early Roman sources suggest that the imported Greek hero supplanted a mythic Italian shepherd called "Recaranus" or "Garanus", famous for his strength....
")
Samia ("Girl from Samos
Samos Island

Samos is a Greece island in the North Aegean sea, south of Chios, north of Patmos and the Dodecanese, and off the Ionian coast of Turkey....
"; four out of five sections)
Sikyonioi or Sikyonios ("Sicyon
Sicyon

Sikyon was an ancient Greece city situated in the northern Peloponnesus between Corinth, Greece and Achaea. The king-list given by Pausanias comprises twenty-four kings, beginning with the autochthonous Aegialeus; the penultimate king of the list, Agamemnon, compels the submission of Sicyon to Mycenae; after him comes the Dorian usurper Pha...
ian(s)"; about half, )
Synaristosai("Those who eat together at noon"; "The Ladies Who Lunch")
Phasma ("The Phantom")
Theophoroumene ("The Possessed Girl")
Trophonios ("Trophonius
Trophonius

Trophonius or Trophonios was a Greek mythology Greek hero cult or daemon or god - it was never certain which one - with a rich mythological tradition and an oracular cult at Livadeia in Boeotia....
")

Standard Editions

The standard edition of the least-well-preserved plays of Menander is Kassel-Austin, Poetarum Comicorum Graecorum vol. VI.2. For the better-preserved plays, the standard edition is now Arnott's 3-volume Loeb; a complete text of these plays is now being prepared by Colin Austin of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, for the Oxford Classical Texts

Oxford Classical Texts

Oxford Classical Texts , or Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis, is a series of books published by Oxford University Press. It contains texts of ancient Greek and Latin literature, such as Homer's Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid, in the original language with a critical apparatus....
series.

External links

An of the Dyskolos
Dyskolos

Dyskolos is an Ancient Greek comedy by Menander, the only one of his plays, or of the whole New Comedy, that has survived in relatively complete form ....
.
Sentences from Menander's work in the original Greek and translated in Latin and German

Menander

Life and work

Twentieth century discoveries

Works

Standard Editions

See also

External links