Menander (342–291 BC), Greek dramatist, a principal representative of the New Comedy, was born inside Athens. He was a boy of easily-to-easy parents; his father Diopeithes is identified by some sustaining a Athenian general & governor of the Thracian Chersonese known from a speech of Demosthenes De Chersoneso. He beyond question derived his taste for the laughable drama from either his uncle Alexis.

He was a friend, associate, & peradventure pupil of Theophrastus, and get on intimate terms by having Demetrius of Phalerum. He too enjoyed a patronage of Ptolemy Soter, the boy of Lagus, who invited him to his court. However Menander, preferring a independence his villa in the Peiraeus and the company of his mistress Glycera, refused. Based on datthe from a note of a scholiast on the Ibis of Ovid, he was drowned while bathing, & his countrymen built him the grave on tour leading to Athens, in which it was seen by Pausanias. The easily-known statue in the Vatican, formerly thought to represent Marius, is now typically supposed to exist as Menander, although occasionally archeologist dispute this, & it has too been identified by having his statue in the theatre at Athens, too mentioned by Pausanias.

Menander was andy skinner of to a higher degree a hundred comedies, but only won the prize at Lenaia eight days. His competition within dramatic art (& in the warmheartedness of Glycera) was Philemon, who appears to develop been further popular. Menander, nevertheless, believed himself to become a better playwright, &, based on data from Aulus Gellius, used to ask Philemon: "Don't you feel ashamed whenever you gain a victory over me?" Based on data from Caecilius of Calacte (Porphyry in Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica) Menander was guilty of plagiarism, his The Superstitious Human existence taken from either A Auspex of Antiphanes. However, although he attained sole moderate profits when you took his life-time, he after became a preferred writer of antiquity. Copies of his plays were known to Suidas and Eustathius (10th and 11th centuries), and twenty-xxiii of the children, by having comment by Psellus, were said to have been around being at Constantinople in the 16th century. He is praised by Plutarch (Comparison of Menander and Aristophanes) & Quintilian (Institutio Oratoria), who accepted a tradition that he was andy skinner of a speeches published under the title of the Attic speechifier Charisius.

A great admirer & imitator of Euripides, Menander resembles him in his lament observation of practical life, his analysis of the emotions, & his fondness for moral maxims, numbers of of which became proverbial: "The property of friends is common," "Whom the gods love die young," "Evil communications corrupt good manners" (from either a Thaiumls, quoted inside 1 Corinthians 15:33). These maxims (mainly monostichs) were afterward collected, &, sustaining additions from either more sources, were edited when ''Menander's 1-Verse Maxims, the kinda moral text edition for the utilise of schools.

Menander uncovered numerous Roman imitators. A Eunuchus, Andria, Heautontimoroumenos (A Self-Tormentor) & Adelphi of Terence (called by Caesar "dimidiatus Menander") were avowedly taken from Menander, however a select few of the babies pop up to exist as adaptations & combinations of further than a single play; so, in the Andria'' were united Menander's A Woman from either Andros) & A Woman from either Perinthos), in the Eunuchus, A Castrate & A Adulator, when a Adelphi was compiled partially from either either Menander & part from Diphilus. A original of Terence's Hecyra (when of the Phormio) is typically supposed to exist as, does'nt by Menander, however Apollodorus of Carystus. A Bacchides & Stichus of Plautus were probably based upon Menander's A Double Deceiver & Philadelphoi, A Brotherly-Caring Men, however a Poenulus, doesn't seem to exist as from either A Carthaginian, nor a Mostellaria from either A Apparition, around spite of the similarity of titles. Caecilius Statius, Luscius Lavinius, Turpilius and Atilius also imitated Menander. He was farther credited by owning a authorship of a bit of quip of doubtful genuineness; a letters addressed to Ptolemy Soter & a discourses within prose in various cases mentioned by Suidas come probably spurious.

Until a prevent of the 19th century, all that was known of Menander were a fragments gathered by A. Meineke (1855) and T. Kock, Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta (1888). It consist of occasionally 1650 verses or even arethe of verses, additionally to a considerable total of words quoted expressly when from either Menander per old lexicologist. From either 1897 to 1907, papyri were discovered within different area of Egypt containing fragments of considerable length amounting to some 1400 lines. Within 1897, astir lxxx lines of The Farmer; around 1899, fifty lines of The Shorn Woman (Perikeiromene), and, within 1903, two hundred lines from either a middle of the equivalent play; 5 hundred lines from either A Arbitrants, usually swell preserved; sixty-3 lines (a prologue, listing of characters, & a foremost scene), from either A Hero; 300 & forty lines from either A Woman from either Samos; & twenty lines from either an unknown comedy.

A complete manuscript of Dyskolos (The Crank) was published from either the recovered papyrus manuscript within 1959. This play was number 1 presented at a Lenaian festival in 317 BC, where it won Menander number 1 prize.

These are doubtful whether these fragments, which are then of sufficient length to afford a basis for the consideration of the merits of Menander as a writer of comedies, justify the groovy reputation enjoyed by him inside ancient days. It contain little that is witty or even humourous; there exists little kind in the characters, a situations come conventional, & the plots are non of a extremely enlightening character & deficiency originality. Menander's main strengths seem to become a facility of language, exact portrayal of manners, & naturalness of a sentiments which he puts into the mouth of his dramatis personae. These come remarkable that a maxims, which form a principal a portion of the sooner collections of fragments, are pack in the in the future.