Menander
Athenian playwright of New Comedy · Writers · Lived 340 BC to 290 BC · aged 50
Menander is read about 241 times a day, in 70 languages.
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Something wrong?He wrote 108 comedies that made him the most admired poet in the ancient world, then vanished so completely that for centuries he survived only as scraps and Roman rewrites. Until 1950s papyrus hunters pulled one full play from an Egyptian tomb.
Also in Deutsch
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In their own words 1
, W. G. Arnott, Menander's Dyskolos or The Man who Didn't Like People (University of London, Athlone Press, 1960)
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Menander worked in Athens around 342-290 BC as the leading voice of New Comedy, writing domestic plots that replaced the old political satire. He took eight prizes at the Lenaia festival across his 108 plays, becoming antiquity's most popular playwright. But his Greek originals disappeared after the early Middle Ages, leaving only Latin adaptations by Terence and Plautus to carry his reputation. Papyrus fragments began surfacing in Egyptian tombs during the early 20th century, offering tantalizing pieces. Then in the 1950s came the shock: Dyskolos, a complete Menander play, emerged from the Bodmer Papyri intact enough to stage - the first time in over a millennium his actual words could be performed as written.
Writers born in the 340s BC 3
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