Menander
Sign in to saveMenander (; ; c. 342/341 – c. 290 BC) was a Greek playwright and the best-known representative of Athenian New Comedy. He wrote 108 comedies and took the prize at the Lenaia festival eight times. His record at the City Dionysia is unknown.
AI overview
Menander was an ancient Greek playwright who lived around the 4th century BC and became the most famous writer of New Comedy, a style of drama performed in Athens. He wrote over 100 comedies and won major festival prizes multiple times, making him one of the most celebrated playwrights of his era.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Person · Open Library
- Born
- 0342-00-00
- Died
- 0290-00-00
- Works
- 22
Top works
- Plays and Fragments
- Komödien
- Four Plays of Menander - the Hero, Epitrepontes, Periceiromene and Samia
- Neue Menander
- arbitrage
via Open Library + Wikidata
Listeners · Last.fm
- Listeners
- 2
- Total plays
- 8
Article
12 sectionsContents
- Life and work
- Loss of his work
- 20th-century discoveries
- Famous quotations
- Comedies
- More-complete plays
- Only fragments available
- Standard editions
- See also
- Notes
- Further reading
- External links
Menander (; ; c. 342/341 – c. 290 BC) was a Greek playwright and the best-known representative of Athenian New Comedy. He wrote 108 comedies and took the prize at the Lenaia festival eight times. His record at the City Dionysia is unknown.
He was one of the most popular writers and most highly admired poets in antiquity, but his work was considered lost before the early Middle Ages. It now survives only in Latin-language adaptations by Terence and Plautus and, in the original Greek, in highly fragmentary form, most of which were discovered on papyrus in Egyptian tombs during the early to mid-20th century. In the 1950s, to the great excitement of Classicists, it was announced that a single play by Menander, Dyskolos, had finally been rediscovered in the Bodmer Papyri intact enough to be performed.