Menander

Menander (?342-?292 BCE) - pronounced exactly as it is written, with the stress on the second syllable (IPA: /mə'nændə/) - was a Greek comic playwright, the most celebrated of the dramatists of the so-called New Comedy. The adjective from Menander is Menandrian or Menandrean, both pronounced in the same way with the stress on the third syllable (IPA: /mənæn'driːən/).

Menander came from a respected Athenian family and as a young man spent time in the company of Epicurus (342-271 BCE), the founder of the Epicurean school of philosophy. He produced his first play Anger (Ὀργή, Orge) at the age of 21, and in the course of the next 30 years wrote more than a hundred comedies.

Very little of Menander's work has survived, and in fact we have only one comedy in its entirety. This is Dyskolos (Δύσκολος), which was discovered in a papyrus manuscript in 1957, and is often given the English title The Misanthrope, though duskolos actually means 'hard to please' or 'discontented'. Dyskolos concerns a wealthy young man, Sostratus, who is determined to marry the peasant girl with whom he has fallen in love, and eventually succeeds despite the numerous obstacles put in his way by her obdurate and misanthropic father, Knemon, the dyskolos of the play's title.

Apart from Dyskolos we have two-thirds of a second play Epitrepontes (Ἐπιτρέποντες, usual English title The Arbitration), and significantly less than a half of two others. What we know of Menander's plots and dramatic style is thus to some extent a matter of inference from the titles of his comedies (nearly all of which are known), isolated lines and short passages, comments by ancient authors, and the comedies of the Latin comic dramatists Plautus and Terence, whose comedies were in many cases loose adaptations of comedies by Menander. It seems that Menander's comedies, like those of the New Comedy in general, took their plots from everyday life (rather than Greek mythology) and, like Dyskolos, were usually, if not always, concerned with the vicissitudes of love.

Menander's comedies enjoyed great popularity in his life-time, and after his death were revived not only for Athenian but also for Roman audiences. As has already been implied, they exerted a great influence on the Latin comic dramatists Plautus and Terence.

See further Aristophanes.

For AWE's note on a not unknown typing error, see Meander - Menander.