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 After the Macedonian conquest,
Greek comedy moved away from the daring personal and political
satire of Aristophanes. Lacking complete
political independance, writers of this New Comedy found themselves
moving towards safer more mundane subject matter. They found
their inspiration in the daily life of Athens. Their characters
were drawn from the cooks, merchants, farmers and slaves of the
city. According to ancient report, the most gifted of these new
writers was Menander.
Menander, the child of a distinguished family, wrote more
than 100 plays during a career that spanned about thirty-three
years. He was known for the delicacy and truthfulness of his
characterizations, and his poetic style was often mentioned in
the same breath as Homer's. Although he won first prize at only
eight festivals, he did much to move comedy towards a more realistic
representation of human life.
Menander's characters spoke in the contemporary dialect and
concerned themselves not with the great myths of the past, but
rather with the everyday affairs of the people of Athens. His
plots revolved around young boys in love with young girls, parents
concerned with the misbehavior of their children, unwanted pregnancies,
long-lost relatives, and all sorts of sexual misadventures. His
first play, The Self Tormentor, was written at the age
of twenty. And he won his first victory with a play entitled
Anger in 316 B.C.
Menander's plays held a place in the standard literature of
western Europe for over 800 years. At some point, however, his
manuscripts were lost or destroyed, and what we now know of the
poet is based primarily on ancient reports, a few manuscripts
which have been recovered in the last hundred years, and adaptations
by the Roman playwrights Plautus and
Terence. There is only one complete
play--Dyskolos (The Grouch)--which was not rediscovered
until 1957. A few long fragments have survived as well from such
plays as The Arbitration, The Girl from Samos, The Shorn Girl,
and The Hero.
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