Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/1046

1032 Gellius (xvii. 21). Respecting the manner of his death, all that we know is that an old commentator on Ovid applies the line (Ibis, 593)

to Menander, and tells us that he was drowned while swimming in the harbour of Peiraeeus; and we learn from Alciphron (Epist. ii. 4) that Menander had an estate at Peiraeeus. He was buried by the road leading out of Peiraeeus towards Athens. (Paus. i. 2. § 2). There are two epigrams upon him in the Greek Anthology: the one an epitaph by Diodorus (Brunck, Anal. vol. ii. p. 188, Anth. Pal. vii. 370, vol. i. p. 413, Jacobs), the other anonymous. (Brunck, Anal. vol. iii. p. 268, Anth Pal. ix. 187, vol. ii. p. 63, Jacobs.)

Notwithstanding Menander's fame as a poet, his public dramatic career, during his lifetime, was not eminently successful; for, though he composed upwards of a hundred comedies, he only gained the prize eight times. (Aul. Gell. xvii. 4; comp. Martial. v. 10.) His preference for elegant exhibitions of character above coarse jesting may have been the reason why he was not so great a favourite with the common people as his principal rival, Philemon, who is said, moreover, to have used unfair means of gaining popularity. (Gell. l. c.)

Menander appears to have borne the popular neglect very lightly, in the consciousness of his superiority; and once, when he happened to meet Philemon, he is said to have asked him, "Pray, Philemon, do not you blush when you gain a victory over me?" (Gell. l. c.; comp. Athen. xiii. p. 594, d.; Alciphr. Epist. ii. 3). The Athenians erected his statue in the theatre, but this was an honour too often conferred upon very indifferent poets to be of much value: indeed, according to Pausanias, he was the only distinguished comic poet of all whose statues had a place there. (Paus. i. 21. § 1; Dion Chrysost. Or. xxxi. p. 628, 13.)

The neglect of Menander's contemporaries has been amply compensated by his posthumous fame. His comedies retained their place on the stage down to the time of Plutarch (Comp. Men. et Arist. p. 854, b.), and the unanimous consent of antiquity placed him at the head of the New Comedy, and on an equality with the great masters of the various kinds of poetry. The grammarian Aristophanes assigned him the second place among all writers, after Homer alone (Brunck, Anal. vol. iii. p. 269). To the same grammarian is ascribed the happy saying, (or, according to Scaliger's correction, ). Among the Romans, besides the fact that their comedy was founded chiefly on the plays of Menander, we have the celebrated phrase of Julius Caesar, who addresses Terence as dimidiate Menander. (Donat. Vit. Terent. p. 754.) Quintilian's high eulogy of him is well known (x. 1).

The imitations of Menander are at once a proof of his reputation and an aid in appreciating his poetic character. Among the Greeks, Alciphron and Lucian were, in various degrees, indebted to his comedies. (Meineke, p. xxxv.) Among the Romans, his chief imitators were Caecilius, Afranius, and Terentius. How much Caecilius was indebted to him may be conjectured from the titles of his plays, of which there are very few that are not taken from Menander. Respecting Afranius we have the well-known line of Horace (Epist. ii. l. 57):—

Plautus was an exception, as we learn from the next line of Horace:—

and his extant plays sufficiently show that the ruder energy of the old Doric comedy was far more congenial to him than the polished sententiousness of Menander, whom, therefore, he only followed in a few instances, one of the most striking of which is in the Cistellaria (i. l. 91; comp. Meineke, Menand. Reliq. p, 208, Frag. Com. Graec. vol. iv. p. 243). With respect to Terence, the oft-repeated statement, that he was simply a translator of Menander, is an injustice to the latter. That Terence was indebted to him for all his ideas and very many of his lines, is true enough; but that from any one play of Terence we can form a fair notion of the corresponding play of Menander, is disproved by the confession of Terence himself (Prolog, in Andr.) that he compressed two of Menander's plays into one; while the coolness with which he defends and even boasts of the exploit, shows how little we can trust him as our guide to the poetical genius of Menander. The one merit of Terence was felicity of expression; he had not the power of invention to fill up the gaps left by the omissions necessary in adapting a Greek play for a Roman audience, and therefore he drew again upon the rich resources of his original. It was this mixing up of different plays that his contemporaries condemned when they said, "Contaminari non decere fabulas," and that Caesar pointed to by the phrase O dimidiate Menander. In the epigram in which that phrase occurs, Caesar expressly intimates that the spirit of the Greek original had greatly evaporated in Terence:—

The following epigram is worth quoting by the side of Caesar's (Burmann, Anth. Lat. vol. i. p. 140):—

Still, the comedies of Terence are a valuable contribution to our knowledge of Menander, especially considering the scantiness of the extant fragments.

Meineke well remarks that the quality which Caesar missed in Terence was what the Greeks call, which Menander had with admirable art united with. And thus the poetry of Menander is described as by Plutarch, in his Comparison of Menander and Aristophanes (p. 853, d.), which is the most valuable of the ancient testimonies concerning our poet. The style of his language is described by an old grammarian as, which may be