Books by Menander

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Menander (?344/3-292/1 BCE), the dominant figure in New Comedy, wrote over 100 plays, of which one complete play, substantial portions of six others, and smaller but interesting fragments have been recovered. The complete play, Dyskolos (The Peevish Fellow), won first prize in Athens in 317 BCE.

The Athenian comedies not only lie at the root of Western drama, they also offer a unique insight into everyday life in Ancient Greece. This selection of plays includes the satirical comic fantasies of Aristophanes and Euripides' ribald satyr play, "Cyclops", the only survivng example of its genre.

For eight centuries after his death Menander was the third most popular poet in the Greek-speaking world, and his plays, through Roman imitations and adaptations, engendered a tradition of European light drama that extends to our own day. But it is only since 1844 that some of the actual texts of Menander's plays have been rediscovered, mostly in Egyptian papyri. Two of these have given us four-fifths of the script of Samia (The Woman from Samos), a play of deception and misunderstanding in which a marriage that everyone desires almost fails to happen, two women and a baby are almost ruined, and a loving father almost loses his only son, because the people at home and the people abroad have both been doing things behind each other's backs - but somehow everything ends happily after all. This is the first full-scale edition with English commentary and is suitable for upper-level students.

Menander was the greatest writer of Attic New Comedy. The plots of his plays are set in contemporary Athens and the surrounding countryside, and are concerned with the private lives of middle-class families. Menander's work is characterized by his sympathetic attitude to his characters. This text contains the extant fragments of Menander's works.

In ancient times Menander (341-290 BC) was the most admired and quoted of the writers of Attic "New Comedy". This verse translation with explanatory notes and introduction attempts to fill some of the gaps with supplements based on the dramatic situation and surviving words in damaged papyri texts.

The comedies of Menander reveal that the oft-employed theme of mistaken identity is as old as the Great Dionysia.

Menander (c. 341-291 BC) was the foremost innovator of Greek New Comedy, a dramatic style that moved away from the fantastical to focus upon the problems of ordinary Athenians. This collection contains the full text of 'Old Cantankerous' (Dyskolos), the only surviving complete example of New Comedy, as well as fragments from works including 'The Girl from Samos' and 'The Rape of the Locks', all of which are concerned with domestic catastrophes, the hazards of love and the trials of family life. Written in a poetic style regarded by the ancients as second only to Homer, these polished works - profoundly influential upon both Roman playwrights such as Plautus and Terence, and the wider Western tradition - may be regarded as the first true comedies of manners.