Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/1047

Rh with another writer's description of the diction of Philemon, as. (Meineke, pp. xxxvi, xxxvii.)

To criticise the poetry of Menander is to describe the whole spirit and genius of the New Comedy, of which his plays may be safely taken as the normal representatives. This has been done with a most masterly hand by Schlegel, in his seventh lecture, from which the following passage is quoted:—"The New Comedy, in a certain point of view, may indeed be described as the Old Comedy tamed down: but, in speaking of works of genius, tameness does not usually pass for praise. The loss incurred in the interdict laid upon the old, unrestricted freedom of mirth, the newer comedians sought to compensate by throwing in a touch of earnestness borrowed from tragedy, as well in the form of representation, and the connection of the whole, as in the impressions, which they aimed at producing. We have seen how tragic poetry, in its last epoch, lowered its tone from its ideal elevation, and came nearer to common reality, both in the characters and in the tone of the dialogue, but especially as it aimed at conveying useful instruction on the proper conduct of civil and domestic life, in all their several emergencies. This turn towards utility Aristophanes has ironically commended in Euripides, (Ran. 971—991.) Euripides was the forerunner of the New Comedy; the poets of this species admired him especially, and acknowledged him for their master. Nay, so great is this affinity of tone and spirit, between Euripides and the poets of the New Comedy, that apophthegms of Euripides have been ascribed to Menander, and vice versa. On the contrary, we find among the fragments of Menander maxims of consolation, which rise in a striking manner even into the tragic tone." (It may be added, that we have abundant testimony to prove that Menander was a great admirer and imitator of Euripides. An elaborate comparison of the parallel passages is instituted by Meineke in an Epimetrum to his Trag. Com. Graec. vol. iv. p. 705.)

"The New Comedy, therefore, is a mixture of sport and earnest. The poet no longer makes a sport of poetry and the world, he does not resign himself to a mirthful enthusiasm, but he seeks the sportive character in his subject, he depicts in human characters and situations that which gives occasion to mirth; in a word, whatever is pleasant and ridiculous."

Menander is remarkable for the elegance with which he threw into the form of single verses, or short sentences, the maxims of that practical wisdom in the affairs of common life which forms so important a feature of the New Comedy. Various "Anthologies" of such sentences were compiled by the ancient grammarians from Menander's works, of which there is still extant a very interesting specimen, in the collection of several hundred lines (778 in Meineke's edition), under the title of. Respecting the collection entitled, see.

The number of Menander's comedies is stated at a few more than a hundred; 105, 108, and 109, according to different authorities. (Suid. s.v.; Anon. de Com. p. xii.; Donat. Vit. Ter. p. 753; Aul. Gell. xvii. 4.) We only know with certainty the date of one of the plays, namely, the, which was brought out in B. C. 321, when Menander was only in his twenty-first year. (Clinton, F. H. sub ann.; Meineke, p. xxx.) We have fragments of, or references to, the following plays, amounting in all to nearly ninety titles:— (imitated by Terence, who, however, has mixed up with it the of Diphilus),  not  (mixed up with the  in the Andria of Terence),,  (copied by Terence),  (the plot of which was similar to that of the Hecyra of Terence),  (imitated by Terence, but with a change in the dramatis personae),  (translated into Latin by Lucius Lavinius),  (from which Plautus probably took his Poenulus),  (partly followed in the Eunuchus of Terence),  (perhaps better ),  (reckoned by Phrynichus the best of all Menander's comedies, Epit. p. 417),  (another of his best plays, Liban. Orat. xxxi. p. 701),. There are also about 500 fragments which cannot be assigned to their proper places. To these must be added the, some passages of the (or ) , and two epigrams, one in the Greek Anthology (quoted above), and one in the Latin version of Ausonius (Epig. 139). Of the letters to Ptolemy, which Suidas mentions, nothing survives, and it may fairly be doubted whether they were not, like the so-called letters of other great men of antiquity, the productions of the later rhetoricians. Suidas ascribes to him some orations,, a statement of which there is no confirmation; but Quintilian (x. 1. § 70) tells us that some ascribed the orations of Charisius to Menander.

Of the ancient commentators on Menander, the earliest was Lynceus of Samos, his contemporary and rival []. The next was the grammarian Aristophanes, whose admiration of Menander we have spoken of above, and whose work, entitled, is mentioned by Eusebius (Praep. Evan. x. 3), who also mentions a work by a certain Latinus or Cratinus,. Next comes Plutarch's Comparison of Menander and Aristophanes: next Soterides of Epidaurus, who wrote a (Eudoc. p. 387; Suid. vol. iii. p. 356); and lastly Homer, surnamed Sellius, the author of a work entitled. (Suid.