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Menander

1 work in the library, 0 with an English translation.

Athenian playwright of New Comedy, born at Kephisia. From Wikidata; Wikipedia.

Lived
4th–3rd c. BC

The work

The road of the text

Follow the text from Menander's own day to the book in your hands. The gaps are the long silences between one mark and the next.

Before you read. Little numbers like 1 are footnotes. Tap one and it jumps to the source at the bottom of the page, so you can check us. Debated among scholars The evidence allows more than one reading, and specialists disagree. Ancient tradition / legend This is what ancient writers told; it may not be what happened. No label? Then the sources simply state it as fact.

  • The author
  • Copies
  • Print and editions
  1. 342 BCThe authorBorn at Athens, of the village of Cephisia, in 342/1 BC (some modern accounts say 344/3)3,4 Debated among scholars
  2. 20 years later322 BCThe authorProduces his first play while still an ephebe, a young man in training (322 BC)3
  3. 5 years later317 BCThe authorHis friend Demetrius of Phalerum sets laws in Athens (317/16)10,11
  4. 1 year later316 BCThe authorThe Dyskolos wins first prize at the Lenaea3,18
  5. 14 years later302 BCThe authorThe Imbrians, written for the Dionysia of 302/1, is not staged then because of the tyrant Lachares (it was acted later by Callippus)3
  6. 10 years later292 BCThe authorDies aged fifty-two (292/1); buried by the road from Piraeus to Athens3,13
  7. about 590 years laterc. AD 300CopiesThe Bodmer codex of the Samia, Dyskolos and Aspis is copied, between the early third and the late fourth century16 Debated among scholars
  8. about 50 years laterc. AD 350CopiesA parchment book of his plays is written in the fourth century17
  9. about 100 years laterc. AD 450CopiesThe Cairo codex, with large parts of three comedies and pieces of two more, is copied14,15
  10. about 440 years laterAD 886CopiesThe leaves of that fourth-century book, washed clean, are reused for Syriac sermons in a book dated 88617
  11. about 1,020 years later1905CopiesThe Cairo codex is found in Egypt (the year of publication, 1907, is also given)14,15 Debated among scholars
  12. 2 years later1907Print and editionsGustave Lefebvre publishes the Cairo codex (revised, with photographs, in 1911)14,15,31
  13. 14 years later1921Print and editionsF. G. Allinson's single-volume Loeb Menander12,15
  14. 37 years later1958Print and editionsVictor Martin publishes the Dyskolos from the Bodmer papyrus16,18
  15. 3 years later1961Print and editionsManfred Ullmann publishes the Arabic tradition of the Sententiae, with the Greek lines (the text in the reader)20
  16. 8 years later1969Print and editionsRodolphe Kasser and Colin Austin publish the Samia and the Aspis from the same book16
  17. 3 years later1972Print and editionsF. H. Sandbach's Oxford Classical Text (second edition 1990)32,33
  18. 7 years later1979Print and editionsW. G. Arnott's three-volume Loeb begins (completed in 2000)12,35
  19. 19 years later1998Print and editionsKassel and Austin's edition of the testimonia and quoted fragments, Poetae Comici Graeci VI.236
  20. 5 years later2003CopiesAbout 400 lines of Menander are announced from a Syriac palimpsest in the Vatican1,17

Life and work

Checked against sources · 7 October 2026

Menander was the best-known writer of Athenian New Comedy, the comedy of everyday family life that came after the age of Aristophanes.1,2 He was the son of Diopeithes, from Cephisia, a village of Athens.3,4 He is said to have written 108 plays, but he won the prize only eight times.4,5,6 In antiquity he was one of the most popular and admired of all poets. Then his plays were lost, and most of what we can read of them today was found on papyrus in Egypt in the twentieth century.1

Debated among scholars His dates come from a Greek inscription found at Rome: born in the year of the archon Sosigenes, 342/1 BC, died aged fifty-two in the year of Philippus, 292/1.3 Modern accounts differ by a year or two: one standard handbook puts his birth in 344/3, and some writers place his death about 290.1,4

A young man of Athens

An ephebe was a youth who had come of age, at Athens about eighteen years old.7 Strabo reports the story that the philosopher Epicurus served his time in Athens, and “that Menander the comic poet became an ephebus at the same time”.8 An ancient short history of comedy says that Menander spent a long time with the comic poet Alexis and seems to have been taught by him, and that “He produced his first play as an ephebe”, in the year of the archon Philocles, 322 BC.3

He moved among philosophers and statesmen. Diogenes Laertius reports, from a lost book by the scholar Pamphila, that Theophrastus, who took over Aristotle's school, “taught Menander the comic poet”.9 Menander was also a friend of Demetrius of Phalerum, the philosopher who “set laws in Athens” in 317/16 according to the Parian Marble, a chronicle carved in stone.10,11 When Demetrius himself came under attack in Athens, Menander “was very nearly brought to trial for no other cause than that he was a friend of Demetrius”, until Demetrius' nephew begged him off.11

Prizes and rivals

At the festival of the Lenaea in the winter of 316 BC his Dyskolos won first prize: a production note copied at the head of the play in an ancient book says so, and names his leading actor, Aristodemus of Scarphe.3,12 The Parian Marble dates his first victory to 316/15; the two records do not quite agree.10 Not every play was staged when planned: another note says that he wrote The Imbrians for the Dionysia of 302/1, but the performance did not take place because of the tyrant Lachares; the actor Callippus put it on later.3

Ancient tradition / legend His rival Philemon often beat him, by bribery and favour, says the Roman writer Aulus Gellius. Meeting him once, Menander is supposed to have asked: “Pardon me, Philemon, but don't you blush when you defeat me?”5,6 Gellius quotes the chronicler Apollodorus: 105 plays, of which only eight won.5,6

Ancient tradition / legend A note on a poem of Ovid says that he drowned while swimming in the harbour of Piraeus.3 Pausanias saw his grave by the road from Piraeus to Athens: «Μενάνδρου τοῦ Διοπείθους», “that of Menander, son of Diopeithes”.13

What survives

No one copied his plays in the Middle Ages, or no such copy survives: there are no Byzantine manuscripts of them.3 Until the end of the nineteenth century he was known only from lines quoted by other writers.1 Then papyri began to turn up in Egypt. A book of his plays copied in the fifth century AD gave large parts of three comedies: The Arbitration (Epitrepontes), The Girl with her Hair Cut Short (Perikeiromene) and The Girl from Samos (Samia).14,15 In 1958 came the great prize, the Dyskolos, from a papyrus book said to have been bought in Egypt for the collector Martin Bodmer.16,17 Of about 969 lines only about nine are missing, so it is the one comedy of Menander, and of the whole of New Comedy, that we can read almost whole.18 The same book has also given us large parts of the Samia and about half of The Shield (Aspis), published in 1969.1,16

Then there is the collection called the Sententiae, or One-line maxims: several hundred single lines of moral advice that went about under his name.15,19 The reader's Greek text of it is printed from Manfred Ullmann's book on the Arabic versions of these “so-called” sayings of Menander,20 and many of the lines are not his at all.15,21

Reading Menander

The Dyskolos opens with the god Pan coming out of his shrine at Phyle, a village of Attica some thirteen miles north-west of Athens, and telling the audience about his neighbour (our translation from the Greek text on Wikisource): “Knemon, a thoroughly inhuman human being, and bad-tempered towards everyone”.18,22 The play's title is that last word, δύσκολος, which the great Greek dictionary of Liddell, Scott and Jones explains as, properly, “hard to satisfy with food”, and so in general “hard to please, discontented, fretful, peevish”.7 In the fourth act Knemon falls into his own well and is rescued by his stepson Gorgias, whom he had always kept at arm's length, and by the young lover Sostratos; then, in a long speech, he admits his mistake (our translation): “One thing, perhaps, I got wrong: I thought that I alone of all men was sufficient to myself and would need nobody.”22

Short lines of his were quoted everywhere. Strabo, describing the island of Ceos, recalls a law there that the old should drink hemlock, and quotes Menander: «ὁ μὴ δυνάμενος ζῆν καλῶς οὐ ζῇ κακῶς», in H. L. Jones's English “Phanias, the law of the Ceians is good, that he who is unable to live well should not live wretchedly”.23 In his comedy The Flute-Girl (also called Arrhephoros), a man warned not to marry answers «ἀνερρίφθω κύβος», “The matter is decided—the die is cast”.24 Plutarch says that Julius Caesar shouted the same two words in Greek when he led his army across the Rubicon; whether Caesar had Menander in mind, Plutarch does not say.25 And Saint Paul, writing to the Corinthians, warns «φθείρουσιν ἤθη χρηστὰ ὁμιλίαι κακαί», “Evil companionships corrupt good morals.”26 The line probably comes from Menander's lost play Thais.1

The Sententiae are easier still. «ἀναφαίρετον κτῆμ᾿ ἐστὶ παιδεία βροτοῖς», “for mortals, education is a possession no one can take away”; «ἄγει δὲ πρὸς φῶς τὴν ἀλήθειαν χρόνος», “time brings the truth to light”; «ἀνδρὸς χαρακτὴρ ἐκ λόγου γνωρίζεται», “a man's character is known from his speech” (our translations).20

Why he matters

Ancient critics gave him the highest praise. Plutarch admired how Menander “so blended his diction that it comports with every nature, disposition, and age”, though he “entered upon his career while still a young man and died at the height of his powers as playwright and poet”. He asks: “For what reason, in fact, is it truly worth while for an educated man to go to the theatre, except to enjoy Menander?”27 For the Roman teacher Quintilian, a careful reading of Menander alone would teach an orator all he needs, “so perfect is his representation of actual life”.28 Pausanias saw his statue in the theatre at Athens among the poets, and notes: “With the exception of Menander no poet of comedy represented here won a reputation”.29

Ancient tradition / legend The scholar Aristophanes of Byzantium is credited with the most famous compliment of all: “O Menander and Life, which of you two imitated the other?” (our translation of the Greek given by Smith's Dictionary).19

Rome learned comedy from him. A papyrus of Menander's Double Deceiver (Dis Exapaton) runs parallel to part of Plautus' Latin Bacchides, and Terence said in his prologues that he had joined two plays of Menander, the Andria and the Perinthia, to make his own Andria.12 Julius Caesar praised Terence in verse, a little backhandedly, as “thou half-Menander”.30 Through Plautus and Terence, the characters and plots of New Comedy, with its young lovers, stern fathers, cunning servants and sudden recognitions, passed into the comedies of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson in England and Molière in France.2

How the words reached us

Manuscripts & transmission

Passed from hand to hand

Read and performed. In antiquity Menander was not only staged. Plutarch says his poetry had become the most widely shared of all the good things Greece produced, in theatres, in discussions and at dinners, “for readings, for instruction, and for dramatic competitions”.27 Later writers quoted him constantly. Athenaeus, for one, quotes play after play by name, among them the passage with “the die is cast”.24 The Bodmer codex may itself have been used in teaching.16

Lost. Yet no medieval copy of a play survives.3 Until the end of the nineteenth century all that was known were the quotations, collected by Augustus Meineke (1855) and Theodor Kock (1888): some 1,650 lines or parts of lines.1 Writing in 1921, Francis Allinson could say that what we have of Menander in connected scenes had come back since 1891, and mostly since 1905.15

The Cairo codex. Allinson dates the find of the Cairo papyrus to 1905; other accounts give 1907, the year it was published.14,15 It was found by the French Egyptologist Gustave Lefebvre at Kom Ishgaw in Egypt, where a later owner had used it to stop up a jar of documents; it is now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, which gives it its name.14 Lefebvre published it in 1907, and again in 1911 with photographs.14,15,31 Beside large parts of three comedies it holds about fifty lines from the opening of The Hero (Heros), with a verse summary of the plot and a list of the characters.12

The Bodmer codex. The Bodmer Library received leaves of all three plays in September 1956, said to have been bought in Egypt, and more in October 1956 and September 1957. The book was a single gathering of sixteen sheets folded to make sixty-four pages, holding the Samia, the Dyskolos and the Aspis, of which fifty-two pages and many scraps remain. Its date is argued over: early third century (Martin), fourth century (Turner) or late fourth (Orsini). New acts are marked by the word ΧΟΡΟΥ (“of the chorus”: the chorus sang and danced between the acts), written large.16,18 The Dyskolos came out in 1958, edited by Victor Martin; the Samia and the Aspis in 1969, edited by Rodolphe Kasser and Colin Austin.16

More papyri, and a palimpsest. Many smaller papyri, above all from Oxyrhynchus, have restored parts of other plays, such as the Misoumenos (The Hated Man), pieced together from 1970 to 1994.12 In December 2003 a report in the Vatican's newspaper made known that Francesco D'Aiuto had found about 400 lines of Menander in a Syriac palimpsest, a book whose parchment had been scraped and written over: the Syriac book was dated 886, the Greek beneath it was a Menander of the fourth century AD, and half of the lines were from the Dyskolos, the other half from a comedy then unknown, which Wikipedia now identifies as Menander's Titthe.1,17

Modern editions. F. H. Sandbach's Oxford text appeared in 1972, with a second edition in 1990.32,33 W. G. Arnott's Loeb edition, in three volumes (1979, 1996 and 2000), is based on his own study of the papyri, including the Bodmer and Cairo codices, which he examined himself.12,34,35 Rudolf Kassel and Colin Austin edited the ancient testimonies and the quoted fragments in Poetae Comici Graeci VI.2 (1998); Austin's new Oxford text of the plays was left unfinished at his death.1,36

Textual variants

Where the copies disagree

Who is speaking? Editors do not always follow the speakers' names that the papyri give. In the Samia (lines 96 and after), Demeas and Nikeratos come home from the Black Sea complaining of the life there. The Bodmer papyrus gives the whole speech to Demeas. Sandbach's Oxford text gave lines 98–101 to Nikeratos, who speaks in short jerks and is the poorer of the two; Arnott returned to the papyrus, arguing that Demeas too speaks that way and, after Rudolf Kassel, that the phrase “blessings for the poor” was a proverb anyone could use; Sander Goldberg, reviewing Arnott, was not fully convinced.34

Against the papyrus. At Dyskolos 430 and after, the Bodmer papyrus explicitly gives some lines to the slave Getas; the Oxford text and Arnott both give them to Sostratos' mother instead.34

Debated among scholars Whose line did Paul quote? «φθείρουσιν ἤθη χρηστὰ ὁμιλίαι κακαί» is usually given to Menander's Thais,1 but the ancient writers were not sure. Clement of Alexandria says that here Paul «ἰαμβείῳ συγκέχρηται τραγικῷ», “made use of a tragic iambic line” (our translation),37 and the church historian Socrates took the verse as proof that Paul knew “the tragedies of Euripides”.38 August Nauck's collection of the fragments of tragedy (1889) prints it among those of Euripides, as fragment 1024.39 The wording differs a little too: the New Testament text in the reader writes χρηστὰ in full, while Nauck's line has the shortened χρήσθ’ before ὁμιλίαι.26,39

Whose sayings? The One-line maxims were never a fixed book. Allinson calls them gnomic verses “loosely attributed” to Menander, and notes that various other Byzantine anthologies were current.15 A Syriac collection of sayings of “Menander the Wise” is probably a translation from a lost Greek original,21 and Ullmann's book on the Arabic versions calls them the “so-called” sentences of Menander.20 The reader has three Greek texts from Ullmann's book: two follow two versions of the Arabic collection, and the third follows lines in a poem of Gregory of Nazianzus (his Carmen morale 30).20

Books to read it in

  • M. Ullmann, Die arabische Überlieferung der sogenannten Menandersentenzen (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1961), pp. 17–59, 64–73 and 77–80.20 The Greek lines in the reader, printed beside the Arabic tradition.
  • V. Martin, Papyrus Bodmer IV. Ménandre: Le Dyscolos (Cologny-Genève: Bibliotheca Bodmeriana, 1958).16 The first edition of the one nearly complete play.
  • F. H. Sandbach, Menandri Reliquiae Selectae (Oxford Classical Texts, 1972; second edition with a new appendix, 1990).32,33,34 The Greek text of the plays; the first edition had eighteen of them.
  • A. W. Gomme and F. H. Sandbach, Menander: A Commentary (Oxford University Press, 1973).40 A commentary in English on the plays.
  • W. G. Arnott, Menander, 3 vols (Loeb Classical Library 132, 459, 460; Harvard University Press and Heinemann, 1979–2000).12,34,35 Greek text and facing English translation of the plays and the papyrus fragments.
  • R. Kassel and C. Austin, Poetae Comici Graeci VI.2: Menander, Testimonia et Fragmenta apud scriptores servata (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1998).1,36 The ancient testimonies and the lines quoted by other writers.
  • S. Jaekel, Menandri Sententiae; Comparatio Menandri et Philistionis (Leipzig: Teubner, 1964).21,41 The Greek text of the one-line maxims.
  • N. Miller (trans.), Menander, Plays and Fragments (London: Penguin, 1987).42 An English translation of the plays and fragments.

Where this comes from

Sources (42)
  1. Wikipedia, Menander (dates, the Sententiae, the 1 Corinthians line and the Thais, the fragments known before the papyri, the papyrus finds, the standard editions and Austin's unfinished Oxford text)
  2. Wikipedia, Ancient Greek comedy: New Comedy and its influence
  3. Attalus.org, ancient lives of Menander in English: the anonymous history of comedy (Prolegomena de comoedia 3), the summary of two plays (P.Oxy. 1235), the production note of the Dyskolos (P.Bodmer 4, translated by W. G. Arnott), the inscription IG 14.1184, and the note on Ovid, Ibis 591
  4. Suda On Line, mu 589 (Menander), translated by D. G. J. Shipley, with the note on his dates after the Oxford Classical Dictionary
  5. Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 17.4, Latin text, on LacusCurtius
  6. Attalus.org, Apollodorus of Athens, Chronicle, fragment 43 (Aulus Gellius 17.4 in English)
  7. Liddell–Scott–Jones, Greek–English Lexicon, the entries ἔφηβος and δύσκολος (read in the site's copy; also on the Perseus Digital Library)
  8. Strabo, Geography 14.1.18, in the reader (Epicurus and Menander ephebes together)
  9. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 5.36, in the reader (Theophrastus taught Menander)
  10. Attalus.org, Greek Chronicles: the Parian Marble, section B 13–14 (Demetrius' laws, 317/16; Menander's first victory, 316/15)
  11. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 5.79, in the reader (Menander nearly tried as Demetrius' friend)
  12. Bryn Mawr Classical Review 1997.10.07, W. Anderson on W. G. Arnott, Menander, vol. 2 (Loeb Classical Library 459, 1996) (read in the Internet Archive's copy)
  13. Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.2.2, in the reader (the grave on the road from Piraeus)
  14. Wikipedia, Cairo Codex (Menander)
  15. F. G. Allinson, Menander: The Principal Fragments (Loeb Classical Library; London: W. Heinemann; New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1921), introduction (the transmission, the Cairo papyrus found in 1905, Lefebvre's editions of 1907 and 1911, the gnomic verses), Internet Archive
  16. Bodmer Lab (University of Geneva), the Bodmer Menander codex, P.Bodmer 25 + 4 + 26: contents, date, acquisition, structure and editions
  17. Dieter Harlfinger, “Warten auf Menander im Vatikan. 400 griechische Komödienverse in einer syrischen Palimpsest-Handschrift entdeckt”, Forum Classicum 1/2004 (Internet Archive copy)
  18. Wikipedia, Dyskolos (the Lenaea of 316, the papyrus, publication in 1958, about 969 lines with about nine missing, the plot)
  19. Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1849), Menander (the one-line maxims; the saying ascribed to Aristophanes of Byzantium), on Perseids
  20. Menander (pseudo-Menander), Sententiae, in the reader; the file headers name the source, M. Ullmann, Die arabische Überlieferung der sogenannten Menandersentenzen (Wiesbaden, 1961), pp. 17–59, 64–73 and 77–80, and the catalogue titles name the three versions
  21. Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage, electronic edition: Menander, Syriac sentences of
  22. Greek Wikisource, Menander, Δύσκολος (the Greek text: Pan's prologue, lines 1–7; Knemon's speech, lines 713–714)
  23. Strabo, Geography 10.5.6, in the reader (the law of Ceos)
  24. Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 13.8, in the reader (Menander's Arrhephoros: “the die is cast”)
  25. Plutarch, Pompey 60.2, in the reader (Caesar at the Rubicon)
  26. 1 Corinthians 15.33–34, in the reader
  27. Plutarch, Summary of a Comparison between Aristophanes and Menander 2–3, in the reader
  28. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 10.1.69–72, translated by H. E. Butler, on LacusCurtius
  29. Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.21.1, in the reader (the statue in the theatre)
  30. Suetonius, Life of Terence, translated by J. C. Rolfe, on LacusCurtius (Caesar's verses on Terence)
  31. Internet Archive, G. Lefebvre, Fragments d'un manuscrit de Ménandre découverts et publiés (Le Caire: Institut français d'archéologie orientale, 1907)
  32. University of Patras Library, record of F. H. Sandbach (ed.), Menandri reliquiae selectae (Oxford Classical Texts, Oxford, 1972)
  33. The Classical Review 41.1 (1991), W. G. Arnott's review of F. H. Sandbach (ed.), Menandri reliquiae selectae, second edition with new appendix (Oxford, 1990)
  34. Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2001.05.16, S. Goldberg on W. G. Arnott, Menander, vol. 3 (Loeb Classical Library 460, 2000) (read in the Internet Archive's copy): Samia 96 ff. and Dyskolos 430 ff.
  35. CiNii Books, record of W. G. Arnott, Menander (Loeb Classical Library 132, 459–460; Harvard University Press and Heinemann, 1979–2000)
  36. AbeBooks, record of R. Kassel and C. Austin, Poetae Comici Graeci VI.2: Menander, Testimonia et Fragmenta apud scriptores servata (De Gruyter, 1998)
  37. Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies (Stromata) 1.14.59, in the reader (Greek only)
  38. Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History 3.16, translated by A. C. Zenos (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), on New Advent
  39. Euripides, fragment 1024 in A. Nauck, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (Teubner, 1889), in the reader
  40. Internet Archive, library record of A. W. Gomme and F. H. Sandbach, Menander: A Commentary (London: Oxford University Press, 1973)
  41. ELTE University Library (Budapest), record of S. Jaekel (ed.), Menandri Sententiae; Comparatio Menandri et Philistionis (Leipzig: Teubner, 1964)
  42. Internet Archive, library record of Menander, Plays and Fragments, translated by N. P. Miller (London and New York: Penguin, 1987)

We checked every statement above against these sources on 7 October 2026. Where they disagree, we say so. What we could not confirm, we left out.

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