Menander

For other people named Menander, see Menander (disambiguation).

Bust of Menander.

Menander (ca. 342–291 BC) (Greek: Μένανδρος), Greek dramatist, the chief representative of the New Comedy, was born in Athens. He was the son of well-to-do parents; his father Diopeithes is identified by some with the Athenian general and governor of the Thracian Chersonese known from the speech of Demosthenes De Chersoneso. He presumably derived his taste for the comic drama from his uncle Alexis.

He was the friend, associate, and perhaps pupil of Theophrastus, and was on intimate terms with Demetrius of Phalerum. He also enjoyed the patronage of Ptolemy Soter, the son of Lagus, who invited him to his court. But Menander, preferring the independence of his villa in the Peiraeus and the company of his mistress Glycera, refused. According to the note of a scholiast on the Ibis of Ovid, he was drowned while bathing, and his countrymen built him a tomb on the road leading to Athens, where it was seen by Pausanias. A well-known statue in the Vatican, formerly thought to represent Marius, is now generally supposed to be Menander, although some archaeologists dispute this, and it has also been identified with his statue in the theatre at Athens, also mentioned by Pausanias.

Menander was the author of more than a hundred comedies, but only won the prize at Lenaia eight times. His rival in dramatic art (and in the affections of Glycera) was Philemon, who appears to have been more popular. Menander, however, believed himself to be the better dramatist, and, according to Aulus Gellius, used to ask Philemon: "Don't you feel ashamed whenever you gain a victory over me?" According to Caecilius of Calacte (Porphyry in Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica) Menander was guilty of plagiarism, his The Superstitious Man being taken from The Augur of Antiphanes. But, although he attained only moderate success during his lifetime, he subsequently became the favorite writer of antiquity. Copies of his plays were known to the compiler of the Suda and to Eustathius (10th and 11th centuries), and twenty-three of them, with commentary by Michael Psellus, were said to have existed at Constantinople in the 16th century. He is praised by Plutarch (Comparison of Menander and Aristophanes) and Quintilian (Institutio Oratoria), who accepted the tradition that he was the author of the speeches published under the name of the Attic orator Charisius.

A great admirer and imitator of Euripides, 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 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.

Menander found many Roman imitators. The Eunuchus, Andria, Heautontimoroumenos (The Self-Tormentor) and Adelphi of Terence (called by Caesar "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. The original of Terence's Hecyra (as of the Phormio) is generally supposed to be, not by Menander, but Apollodorus of Carystus. The Bacchides and Stichus of Plautus 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, Luscius Lavinius, Turpilius and Atilius 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 the fragments collected by Augustus Meineke (1855) and Theodor Kock, Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta (1888). They consist of some 1650 verses or parts of verses, in addition to a considerable number of words quoted expressly as from Menander by the old lexicographers.

Twentieth century discoveries

In 1907, the Cairo Codex was discovered, containing large parts of the Girl from Samos, the Perikeiromene,, and the Arbitration, a section of the Hero, and an unidenrified fragment. 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 1960's, more of the Sikyonian play was found as filling for two more mummy cases; this proved to be the same manuscript as the discovery in 1906, which had clearly been thoroughly recycled.

Other fragments have been found in individual papyri; and some fragments of plays have been found which may or may not be Menander.

Works

• Aspis ("The Shield"; about half)
• Georgos ("The Farmer")
• Dis Exapaton ("Double Deceiver")
• Dyskolos ("Old Cantakerous" or "The Grouch") the only play that survives in its entirety)
• Encheiridion ("Handbook")
• Epitrepontes ("The Arbitration"; most)
• Heros ("The Hero")
• 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 suggested Rape of the Locks, afteer Alexander Pope
• Perinthia ("Girl from Perinthos")
• Plokion ("The Necklace")
• Pseudherakles ("The Fake Hercules")
• Samia ("Girl from Samos"; four out of five sections)
• Sikyonioi or Sikyonios ("Sicyonian(s)"; about half, )
• Synaristosai("Those who eat together at noon"; "The Ladies Who Lunch")
• Phasma ("The Phantom")
• Theophoroumene ("The Possessed Girl")
• Trophonios ("Trophonius")

See also

• The archaeological site in Oxyrhynchus.

External links

• Wikipedia - Theatre of ancient Greece
• An English translation of the Dyskolos.
• Menander: Monosticha / Sententiae / Einzelverse Sentences from Menander's work in the original Greek and translated in Latin and German

References

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)