Menander (/məˈnændər/;Ancient Greek:Μένανδρος,romanized: Ménandros; c. 342/341 – c. 290 BC) was a Greek scriptwriter and the best-known representative of AthenianNew Comedy.[1] He wrote 108 comedies[2] and took the prize at theLenaia festival eight times.[3] His record at theCity Dionysia is unknown.
He was one of the most popular writers and most highly admired poets in antiquity, but his work was considered lost before theearly Middle Ages. It now survives only in Latin-language adaptations byTerence andPlautus and, in the original Greek, in highly fragmentary form, most of which were discovered onpapyrus in Egyptian tombs during the early to mid-20th-century. In the 1950s, to the great excitement ofClassicists, it was announced that a single play by Menander,Dyskolos, had finally been rediscovered in theBodmer Papyri intact enough to be performed.
Menander was the son of well-to-do parents; his fatherDiopeithes is identified by some with the Athenian general and governor of theThracian Chersonese known from the speech ofDemosthenesDe Chersoneso. He presumably derived his taste for comic drama from his uncleAlexis.[4][5]
He was the friend, associate, and perhaps pupil ofTheophrastus, and was on intimate terms with the Athenian dictatorDemetrius of Phalerum.[6] He also enjoyed the patronage ofPtolemy Soter, the son ofLagus, who invited him to his court. But Menander, preferring the independence of his villa in thePiraeus and the company of his mistressGlycera, refused.[7] According to the note of a scholiast on theIbis ofOvid, he drowned while bathing,[8] and his countrymen honored him with a tomb on the road leading to Athens, where it was seen byPausanias.[9] Numerous supposed busts of him survive, including a well-known statue in theVatican, formerly thought to representGaius Marius.[4]
His rival in dramatic art (and supposedly in the affections of Glycera) wasPhilemon, who appears to have been more popular. Menander, however, believed himself to be the better dramatist, and, according toAulus Gellius,[10] used to ask Philemon: "Don't you feel ashamed whenever you gain a victory over me?" According toCaecilius of Calacte (Porphyry inEusebius,Praeparatio evangelica[11]) Menander was accused ofplagiarism, as hisThe Superstitious Man was taken fromThe Augur ofAntiphanes,[4] but reworkings and variations on a theme of this sort were commonplace and so the charge is a complicated one.
How long complete copies of his plays survived is unclear, although 23 of them, with commentary byMichael Psellus, were said to still have been available inConstantinople in the 11th century. He is praised byPlutarch (Comparison of Menander and Aristophanes)[12] andQuintilian (Institutio Oratoria), who accepted the tradition that he was the author of the speeches published under the name of the Attic oratorCharisius.[13]
An admirer and imitator ofEuripides, 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 theThaïs, quoted in1 Corinthians 15:33). Thesemaxims (chiefly monostichs) were afterwards collected, and, with additions from other sources, were edited asMenander's One-Verse Maxims, a kind of moral textbook for the use of schools.[4]
The single surviving speech from his early playDrunkenness is an attack on the politicianCallimedon, in the manner ofAristophanes, whose bawdy style was adopted in many of his plays.[citation needed]
Menander found many Roman imitators.Eunuchus,Andria,Heauton Timorumenos andAdelphi ofTerence (called byCaesar "dimidiatus Menander") were avowedly taken from Menander, but some of them appear to be adaptations and combinations of more than one play. Thus in theAndria were combined Menander'sThe Woman from Andros andThe Woman from Perinthos, in theEunuchus,The Eunuch andThe Flatterer, while theAdelphi was compiled partly from Menander and partly fromDiphilus. The original of Terence'sHecyra (as of thePhormio) is generally supposed to be, not by Menander, butApollodorus of Carystus. TheBacchides andStichus ofPlautus were probably based upon Menander'sThe Double Deceiver andBrotherly-Loving Men, but thePoenulus does not seem to be fromThe Carthaginian, nor theMostellaria fromThe Apparition, in spite of the similarity of titles.Caecilius Statius, Luscius Lanuvinus, 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 theSuda[14] are probably spurious.[4]
Most of Menander's work did not survive the Middle Ages, except as short fragments.Federico da Montefeltro's library at Urbino reputedly had"tutte le opere", a complete works, but its existence has been questioned and there are no traces afterCesare Borgia's capture of the city and the transfer of the library to the Vatican.[15]
Until the end of the 19th century, all that was known of Menander were fragments quoted by other authors and collected byAugustus 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.[4]
A papyrus fragment of thePerikeiromene, ll. 976–1008 (P. Oxy. 211 II 211, 1st or 2nd century AD)
This situation changed abruptly in 1907, with the discovery of theCairo Codex, which contained large parts of theSamia, thePerikeiromene, and theEpitrepontes; a section of theHeros; and another fragment from an unidentified play. A fragment of 115 lines of theSikyonioi had been found in thepapier mache of a mummy case in 1906.
In 1959, theBodmer papyrus was published containingDyskolos, more of theSamia, and half of theAspis. In the late 1960s, more of theSikyonioi was found as filling for two more mummy cases; this proved to be drawn from the same manuscript as the discovery in 1906, which had clearly been thoroughly recycled.[16]
Other papyrus fragments continue to be discovered and published.[17]
Menander. Roman copy, after original by Kephisodotos the Younger and Timarchos, sons of Praxiteles, 4th century B.C. Marble.The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
In 2003, apalimpsest manuscript, in Syriac writing of the 9th century, was found where the reused parchment comes from a very expensive 4th-century Greek manuscript of works by Menander. The surviving leaves contain parts of theDyskolos and 200 lines of another piece by Menander, so far unpublished, titledTitthe.[18][19][20]
"He who labors diligently need never despair, for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor." — Menander
"Ἀνερρίφθω κύβος" (anerriphtho kybos), best known in English as "the die is cast" or "the die has been cast", from the mis-translated Latin "iacta alea est" (itself better-known in the order "Alea iacta est"); a correct translation is "let the die be cast" (meaning "let the game be ventured"). The Greek form was famously quoted byJulius Caesar upon committing his army to civil war by crossing the RiverRubicon. The popular form "the die is cast" is from the Latiniacta alea est, a mistranslation bySuetonius, 121 AD. According toPlutarch, the actual phrase used by Julius Caesar at the crossing of theRubicon was a quote in Greek from Menander's playArrhephoros, with the different meaning "Let the die be cast!".[24] See discussion at "the die is cast" and "Alea iacta est".
He [Caesar] declared in Greek with loud voice to those who were present 'Let the die be cast' and led the army across. (Plutarch,Life of Pompey, 60.2.9)[25]
Lewis and Short,[26] citing Casaubon and Ruhnk, suggest that the text of Suetonius should readJacta alea esto, which they translate as "Let the die be cast!", or "Let the game be ventured!". This matches Plutarch's third-person perfect passive imperativeἀνερρίφθω κύβος (anerrhiphtho kybos).
According to Gregory Hayes' Translation ofMeditations by Marcus Aurelius, Menander is also known for the quote/proverb: "a rich man owns so many goods he has no place to shit." (Meditations, V:12)[27]
Another well known quote by Menander is "Whom the gods love dies young".[28]
Menander's comedies were very different from the Old Comedies of Aristophanes. New Greek Comedies usually would have two lovers, a blocking character, and a helpful servant. They typically ended with a wedding or happy ending. They were much more of a "higher brow" comedy than Old Greek comedy. They were also more realistic.
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 for theOxford Classical Texts series was left unfinished byColin Austin at the time of his death;[29] the OCT edition ofHarry Sandbach, published in 1972 and updated in 1990, remains in print.[30]
^F. D’Aiuto:Graeca in codici orientali della Biblioteca Vaticana (con i resti di un manoscritto tardoantico delle commedie di Menandro), in:Tra Oriente e Occidente. Scritture e libri greci fra le regioni orientali di Bisanzio e l’Italia, a cura di Lidia Perria, Rom 2003 (= Testi e studi bizantino-neoellenici XIV), S. 227–296 (esp. 266–283 and plates 13–14)
^Miles, Sarah (2014) 'Menander. C. Austin (ed.) Menander. Eleven Plays. (Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, Supplementary Volume 37.) Pp. xviii + 84. Cambridge : The Cambridge PhilologicalSociety, 2013. Paper, Classical review., 64 (02). pp. 409–411.
Cox, Cheryl Anne. (2002). "Crossing Boundaries Through Marriage in Menander’sDyskolos."Classical Quarterly 52: 391–394.
Csapo, E. (1999). "Performance and Iconographic Tradition in the Illustrations of Menander."Syllecta Classica 6: 154–188.
Frost, K. B. (1988).Exits and Entrances in Menander. Oxford: Clarendon.
Glazebrook, Allison. (2015). "A Hierarchy of Violence? Sex Slaves, Parthenoi, and Rape in Menander's Epitrepontes."Helios, 42(1): 81–101.
Goldberg, Sander M. (1980).The Making of Menander’s Comedy. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
Gutzwiller, Kathryn, and Ömer Çelik. (2012). “New Menander Mosaics from Antioch.”American Journal of Archaeology 116:573–623.
Nervegna, Sebastiana. (2013).Menander in Antiquity: The Contexts of Reception. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Papaioannou, Sophia and Antonis K. Petrides eds., (2010).New Perspectives on Postclassical Comedy. Pierides, 2. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Traill, Ariana. (2008).Women and the Comic Plot in Menander. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Walton, Michael, and Peter D. Arnott. (1996).Menander and the Making of Comedy. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
