Menander, Volume 1

by Menander, William Geoffrey Arnott (Translator)

Menander, the dominant figure in New Comedy, wrote over 100 plays. By the Middle Ages they had all been lost. Happily papyrus finds in Egypt during the past century have recovered one complete play, substantial portions of six others, and smaller but still interesting fragments. Menander was highly regarded in antiquity and his plots, set in Greece, were adapted for the Roman world by Plautus and Terence. Geoffrey Arnott's new Loeb edition is in three volumes.

Volume I contains six plays, including the only complete one extant, Dyskolos (The Peevish Fellow), which won first prize in Athens in 317 BCE, and Dis Expaton (Twice a Swindler), the original of Plautus' Two Bacchises .

Volume II contains the surviving portions of ten Menander plays. Among these are the recently published fragments of Misoumenos ("The Man She Hated"), which sympathetically presents the flawed relationship of a soldier and a captive girl; and the surviving half of Perikeiromene ("The Girl with Her Hair Cut Short"), a comedy of mistaken identity and lovers' quarrel.

Volume III begins with Samia (The Woman from Samos), which has come down to us nearly complete. Here too are the very substantial extant portions of Sikyonioi (The Sicyonians) and Phasma (The Apparition) as well as Synaristosai (Women Lunching Together), on which Plautus's Cistellaria was based. Arnott's edition of the great Hellenistic playwright has been garnering wide praise for making these fragmentary texts more accesible, elucidating their dramatic movement.

Genres: Classics

592 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Greek: Μένανδρος
Menander (ca. 342–291 BC), the best-known representative of Athenian New Comedy, was the son of well-to-do parents; his father Diopeithes is identified by some with the Athenian general and governor of the Thracian Chersonese known from the speech of Demosthenes De Chersoneso. He presumably derived his taste for comic drama from his uncle Alexis.

Reviews

[Tyler Horton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review stands for the three volume set.

Unfortunately, these do not make very good reading. The remnants of Menander have increased greatly and though this leaves the earlier Loeb edition dead in the water, most of these plays are still pretty chopped up. Surely someone has done an edition of just the best attested plays and for getting a sense of Menander that would be the place to go. These volumes are still necessary though as combining all that can be probably attributed to Menander and the work it took to do this is impressive. One notable strength to me was the use of mosaics to help fill in the blanks. I would strongly suggest having Goldberg's Making of Menander's Comedy alongside to assist figuring out the plots.

[Raymonds009 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did not realize how incomplete his writings are. Hard to rate, but interesting.

[Arthur Sperry · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a Latin and Classical Greek Major in College, I love to reread some of the Classics.