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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Menander Biography MENANDER (Lat., from Gk. Menandros) (342-c.291 B.C.). One of the greatest poets of the Attic New Comedy, born at Athens, of a distinguished family. By his uncle, Alexis, the eminent poet of the Middle Comedy, he was initiated into the dramatist's art; his philosophical education he received from association with Theophrastus and Epicurus. He was intimate also with Demetrius. He was handsome and fond of luxury. The greater part of his time he spent at his villa in the Piraus with his beloved mistress Glycera. When Ptolemy Soter gave him a flattering invitation to his court Menander declined, preferring his native city and easy independence to royal favor. About 291 B.C. he was drowned while swimming in the harbor of the Piraeus. Menander is said to have won a victory on the comic stage at the age of 21. Yet during his lifetime be was less a favorite than his contemporary Philemon (q.v.). Of his 105 or 108 plays but eight won the highest place. After his death, however, he became the favorite above all other comic poets of his time and was much read and quoted far into the Christian era. Copies of his plays were known to Suidas and Eustathius; 23 of his plays, it is said, were known in Constantinople in the sixteenth century. A well-known statue in the Vatican has been regarded by some scholars as a statue of Menander and has been identified by them with the statue of his known to have been set up in the theatre at Athens; another statue of Menander is in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. (Consult R. Delbrück, Antike Porträts, Tafel 20, Bonn, 1912.) According to ancient critics he was distinguished for his wit, the refinement and perfection of his language, and his ingenious plots, his analysis of emotions, and his penchant for moral maxims. Until recently scholars were obliged to form their opinions of his comedies chiefly from the adaptations of them by the Roman comic writers Plautus and Terence, even though they had over 1000 fragments of his plays, about 1650 verses, and a considerable collection of gnomes attributed to him. The latter collection has, however, suffered greatly from additions. The fragments are best published by Kock, Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta, vol. iii (Leipzig, 1888). Within the last 20 years, however, our knowledge of Menander has greatly increased. Two leaves of papyrus containing new fragments were published by Nicole, Le laborateur de Ménandre (Basle, 1898), and by Grenfell and Hunt (Oxford, 1898). In the Oxyrhnchus Papyri, vol. iii (London, 1903), 100 more verses from one play were given by Grenfell and Hunt. In 1906 a papyrus fragment, giving in all 1200 lines from four plays, among them 500 from each of two plays, was unearthed by Gustave Lefebvre, and was published in 1907, at Cairo, as Fragments d'un manuscrit de Ménandre. This discovery has given rise to an immense number of editions and of papers in the learned periodicals. For the earlier and more important part of this literature, as for these fragments themselves, consult E. Capps, Four Plays of Menander (Boston, 1910). Through the fragments the plots of two of the plays at least can be made out quite clearly. On the whole the fragments have been disappointing: they hardly by themselves explain Menander's great reputation in antiquity. For a translation of the fragments of one play, consult C. II. Weller, "Menander's Arbitrants," in The Classical Journal, vol. viii, pp. 275-280 (Chicago, 1912-13). A complete translation of the fragments of Menander, by F. N. Allinson, is to appear in the Loeb Classical Library. Consult: W. C. Wright, A Short History of Greek Literature (New York, 1907); Christ-Schmid, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur, vol. ii, part i (5th ed., Munich, 1911); J. W. Cohoon. "Rhetorical Studies in the Arbitration Scene of Menander's Epitrepontes," in the Transactions of the American Philological Association, vol. xlv (Boston, 1915). The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XV (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 388. |