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The greatest writer of Greek New Comedy and the founding father of European comedy, Menander (c.341-290 BC) wrote over one hundred plays, of which only one complete play and substantial fragments of others survive. Until the twentieth century he was known to us only by short quotations in ancient authors. Since 1907 papyri found in the sand of Egypt have brought to light more and more fragments and in 1958 the papyrus text of a complete play was published, The Bad-Tempered Man (Dyskolos).His romantic comedies deal with the lives of ordinary Athenian families. This new verse translation is accurate and highly readable, providing a consecutive text by using surviving words in the damaged papyri. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Review of Oxford's Menander
This volume is an excellent collection of all, or almost all, of the known Menander. It includes his sole whole play, Didoskolos, many fragmentary plays, and also many doxai and apocrypha.

The translation is fine, but it it's rarely funny. I feel the fault lies with the fragmentary nature of the subject, not with the translator. So many of the fragmentary plays feel like a collection of characters related in some confusing manner (someone's always in love) and interacting to some unknown end. Humour is occasional, not consistent.

Also, the notation is sparse and at the end of the book. I've read other translations of Greek comedy that take great care to point out puns and double-entendres in the original text. This collection does so rarely.

The Root of All Happy-Ending Art
Whip through a couple of these short plays and fragments by the father of Greek New Comedy, and you'll see just how much our more modern formats are indebted to him: the American sit-com, the romantic comedy, etc.Menander manages much less simplistic resolution at the end of his plays, though, and it's too bad that this trend hasn't endured as well as the penchant for the "happily ever after" that we face at the close of every Julia Roberts movie.

The plays themselves are marvelous.In "Old Cantankerous," the grumpy title character stands in the way of a love between two of the play's characters, until the plot sends him down a well.His rescuer is, of course, the man who wants the old curmudgeon's daughter's hand in marriage, and they make up and all's well."The Girl from Samos" is funnier, with a baby mix-up that leads first to the normal questions of the father's identity, but then to far less normal questions about the mother's identity.

Miller's introduction is exceptional, and I was especially appreciative of it, since I am not a classicist.She provides enough background to initiate even the casual reader, and in a manner that is both humorous and accessible.She explains what can be explained and accounted for, and freely admits to what is pure conjecture; since Menander's plays survive only in fragments, and since we don't know all of the concrete facts of his life, Miller's candor is welcome and helpful.

The only thing I found off-putting was the translation.It is not only VERY contemporary, but VERY British.While I can understand the urge to place things in a more familiar setting--an easy way to remind people that great drama is always timely--some of the dialogue sounds lifted from "Chariots of Fire" or even "Goodbye Mr. Chips."That is, it sounds very early twentieth century British, and I spent a lot of time while reading trying to figure out why (I'm still stumped).Phrases such as "There's a good chap," and explicit references to "Picadilly Circus" just didn't seem to mesh with plays that are Greek and a couple thousand years old.

Still, you could a lot worse than spend $12 on a fine collection and very readable rendition of some of the very foundations of comic form in Western literature.

Menander's plays and fragments
I'm a Classical Civilisations student at Leeds University in England and this book is one of many that I have to read for my course. Menander was said to be "second only to Homer" and it is clear why thisstatement was made in this translation by Norma Miller. This book containsall but two of the fragments found of Menander. Old Cantankerous reallystands out as a superb piece of literary genius, although this isnt to saythat the rest of the book isnt an equally great piece of work. This bookcontains fragments of Menander's work as this is all that has been found ofthis magnificent writers accomplishments, if you are interested inclassical drama then this book is definetley worth considering.

Menander, Plays and Fragments
I'm a Classical Civilisations student at Leeds University in England and this book is one of many that I have to read for my course. Menander was said to be "second only to Homer" and it is clear why thisstatement was made in this translation by Norma Miller. This book containsall but two of the fragments found of the ancient writer and as such is amarvel to read for anyone interested in classical drama. Old Cantankerousreally stands out as a superb piece of literary work and could take prideof place on anyone's book shelf. Although some of his plays are fragmentaryand are therefore not always complete, Menander's writing style is bothgripping and humerous and keeps the reader enthrawled throughout theirclassical experience. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Menander:The Moliere of the Hellenistic World
The Dyskolos was written by the playwright Menander in Greece during the Hellenistic period(around the time of the worldwide reign of Alexander the Great and his successors), a period which is not easily defined insofar aswhen it begins and ends. However, all scholars tend to agree that theartistic output during the Hellenistic period is characterized by extremepathos, originality, and realism.

Menander's vibrant and funny play,being no exception to the definition above, is a Comedy of Manners, anensemble production with a lot in common with the zany skits of SaturdayNight Live and sharp sitcoms like Seinfeld and Married with Children.Themain character, an old hardworking farmer named Knemon (he is The Dyskolos,which translates from Greek into something like crumudgeon or bad-tempered)is forced to abandon his life of hard-work and solitude when his daughterMyrrine (a Juliet with no lines) falls in love with a rich kid (a buffRomeo) down the corner. What follows is nothing less than a wonderfullyenjoyable screwball comedy. You'll have fun reading it while you giggle.

The nifty colorful style and comfortable feel of the book is also quiteattractive, as it always distinguishes itself from other books on thebookshelf, even though the book, containing text coupled with introductionand endnotes, is only about 100 pages long.

Browsing through Moulton'sother titles, I noticed his special interest in music, and his Dyskolosalso contains postulations describing the type of music the Greeks playedduring the interludes of these plays; Moulton also explains in his prefacewhy he wrote his translation in meter,pointing out in his preface thatMenander was first and foremost a Greek poet who wrote all of his plays inverse, just as the Greek dramatists Aeschlyus, Sophokles, and Euripides haddone so before him.

And Menander,writing in the tradition of those greatGreek writers before him, possesses eloquence equal to the Atheniantragedians, although he seems to have eschewed their lofty and formaldialogue in favor of a more everyday style which seems to mirror thecolloquial diction of the street and marketplace.

Books like this deemthe classics irresistible. ... Read more

Product Description

Spectacular new finds, many of them in Egypt at Oxyrhynchus, have dramatically expanded the extant work of Menander since Allinson's one volume Loeb edition was published in 1921. This new Loeb Menander is three times the size of the Allinson volume. W. G. Arnott, internationally recognized Menander expert, brings us all of the work of the great Hellenistic comic playwright that is now available. A Greek text based on careful study of the discovered papyri faces a skillful translation that fits today's tastes, with full explanatory notes.

Volume II contains the surviving portions of ten Menander plays. Among these are the recently published fragments of Misoumenos ("The Man She Hated"), which sympathetically presents the flawed relationship of a soldier and a captive girl; and the surviving half of Perikeiromene ("The Girl with Her Hair Cut Short"), a comedy of mistaken identity and lovers' quarrel.

So influential in antiquity--his plays were adapted for the Roman stage by Plautus and Terence--Menander's comic art can at last be fully known and enjoyed again. It is a comedy that focuses on the hazards of love and trials of family life--as is typical of New Comedy, a style of which Menander is the leading writer.

Product Description
This is the first of a three-volume analysis of the internationally renowned archaeological site called the Insula of the Menander, a major city block in ancient Pompeii. Volume one deals with the architecture within the block, especially with the House of Menander, the grand villa for which the site was named. Subsequent volumes will consider the decorations and household objects found during excavation. ... Read more

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The ideal single-volume introduction to the greatest masterpieces of ancient comedy

From the fifth to the second century B.C., theatrical comedy flourished in Greece and Rome. This new anthology brings together four essential masterworks of the genre: Aristophanes’ bold, imaginative The Birds; Menander’s The Girl from Samos, which explores popular contemporary themes of mistaken identity and sexual misbehavior; and two later Roman comic plays—Plautus’s The Brothers Menaechmus, the inspiration for Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors; and Terence’s bawdy yet sophisticated double love plot, The Eunuch. Together, these four plays capture the genius of classical comedy for students, theatergoers, actors, lovers of satire, and anyone interested in the ancient world. ... Read more

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This book provides a detailed analysis of the conventions and techniques of performance characteristic of the Greek theatre of Menander and the subsequent Roman theatre of Plautus and Terence. Drawing on literary and archaeological sources, and on scientific treatises, David Wiles identifies the mask as crucial to the actor's art, and shows how sophisticated the art of the mask-maker became. He also examines the other main elements which the audience learned to decode: costume, voice, movement, etc. In order to identify features that were unique to Hellenistic theatre he contrasts Greek New Comedy with other traditions of masked comedy, and shows how different Roman conventions of performance rest upon different underlying assumptions about religion, marriage and class. David Wiles offers theatre historians and classicists a radical new approach to reading play texts. His book will also be useful to archaeologists seeking to understand what masks mean and how Greek and Roman theatres were used. ... Read more

Product Description
These comedies by Greek dramatist Menander reveal that the oft-employed theme of mistaken identity is as old as the great Dionysus. The Penn Greek Drama Series presents original literary translations of classical Greek drama. The aim of the series is to make both the works and their interpretations accessible to the reading public. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

a new approach to Menander
The editors wanted to make the comic drama come alive for a new audience....the goal was to use the complete Dyskolos (Grouch) and reconstruct the fragments of survivng plays by using as models copies by Terence and Plautus and fragments of other plays by Menander to give the sense of what New Comedy wasand how it influenced the comedy of generations to come.

The translation is too modern to be any good.
This book, following the modern trend towards "relating to thepeople" loses all overview of Menander.Upon reading this book, onedoes not ask himself the age-old question, "Does Menander imitatelife, or does life imitate Menander?" ... Read more

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Reproducing Athens examines the role of romantic comedy, particularly the plays of Menander, in defending democratic culture and transnational polis culture against various threats during the initial and most fraught period of the Hellenistic Era.

Menander's romantic comedies--which focus on ordinary citizens who marry for love--are most often thought of as entertainments devoid of political content. Against the view, Susan Lape argues that Menander's comedies are explicitly political. His nationalistic comedies regularly conclude by performing the laws of democratic citizen marriage, thereby promising the generation of new citizens. His transnational comedies, on the other hand, defend polis life against the impinging Hellenistic kingdoms, either by transforming their representatives into proper citizen-husbands or by rendering them ridiculous, romantic losers who pose no real threat to citizen or city.

In elaborating the political work of romantic comedy, this book also demonstrates the importance of gender, kinship, and sexuality to the making of democratic civic ideology. Paradoxically, by championing democratic culture against various Hellenistic outsiders, comedy often resists the internal status and gender boundaries on which democratic culture was based. Comedy's ability to reproduce democratic culture in scandalous fashion exposes the logic of civic inclusion produced by the contradictions in Athens's desperately politicized gender system.

Combining careful textual analysis with an understanding of the context in which Menander wrote, Reproducing Athens profoundly changes the way we read his plays and deepens our understanding of Athenian democratic culture. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume completes the Loeb Classical Library's new edition of the leading writer of New Comedy. W. G. Arnott, an internationally recognized Menander expert, provides a Greek text based on careful study of recently discovered papyri, a facing translation that is lucid and fits today's tastes, and full explanatory notes. So influential in antiquity--his plays were adapted for the Roman stage by Plautus and Terence--Menander's comic art can now be fully known and enjoyed. It is a comedy that focuses on the hazards of love and trials of family life. This volume begins with Samia (The Woman from Samos), which has come down to us nearly complete. Here too are the very substantial extant portions of Sikyonioi (The Sicyonians) and Phasma (The Apparition) as well as Synaristosai (Women Lunching Together), on which Plautus' Cistellaria (The Casket Comedy) was based. The volume also includes a selection of papyrus fragments attributed to Menander. Arnott's edition of the great Hellenistic playwright has been garnering wide praise for making these fragmentary texts more accessible to readers, elucidating their dramatic movement. In the words of David Konstan (writing in Scholia Reviews): "An excellent guide to MenanderArnott has given us fine texts, clear translations, brief and useful introductions." ... Read more

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This book contains catalogues, analyses, photographs and drawings of some 2,000 archaeological artifacts excavated from the Insula of the Menander in Pompeii. The catalogues, and analyses are organized by provenance--buildings, rooms, and location within rooms--so that the reader can understand the artifacts as household assemblages. The functions of artifacts and groups of artifacts are discussed, as are the Latin names which are often given to these artifacts, and the relationships of these assemblages to the state of occupancy of the buildings in the Insula during the last years of Pompeii. This study, therefore, provides a wealth of information, not only on the range and use of artifacts in Pompeian houses but also on Roman artifacts, and Roman society, more generally. ... Read more

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This volume is the second in a series offive on the Insula (city block) of the Menander at Pompeii. The first (on the structures) and the fourth (on the silver treasure) have already been published; the third (on the objects) and the fifth (on the graffiti) are in preparation. The Insula of the Menander, approximately 3500 sq. m. in area, derives its name from the House of the Menander, one of the best-known dwellings of the ancient city. This was evidently the property of one of Pompeii's leading citizens. Renowned for its architectural grandeur and for the hoard of 110 pieces of silver plate found in a cellar, it also yielded room upon room of splendid wall-paintings and mosaic pavements, ranging in date from the first century BC to the eve of the eruption of AD 79. In addition to this dominant house, the block contains several smaller houses--notably the House of the Lovers and the House of the Craftsman--most of which contain further paintings and pavements of interest. The present volume publishes these decorations in full for the first time. Its importance lies in the fact that it covers the whole block, rather than concentrating upon isolated houses (as most previous volumes have done). This enables the reader not only to look at questions of chronology and iconography room by room and house by house, but also to observe broad patterns of taste and social differentiation within a particular neighborhood of Pompeii. ... Read more

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

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Text with facing translation, commentary and notes. (Aris and Phillips 1983) ... Read more

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Publisher: Oxford : J. Parker ... Read more

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Webster's bibliographic and event-based timelines are comprehensive in scope, covering virtually all topics, geographic locations and people. They do so from a linguistic point of view, and in the case of this book, the focus is on "Menander," including when used in literature (e.g. all authors that might have Menander in their name). As such, this book represents the largest compilation of timeline events associated with Menander when it is used in proper noun form. Webster's timelines cover bibliographic citations, patented inventions, as well as non-conventional and alternative meanings which capture ambiguities in usage. These furthermore cover all parts of speech (possessive, institutional usage, geographic usage) and contexts, including pop culture, the arts, social sciences (linguistics, history, geography, economics, sociology, political science), business, computer science, literature, law, medicine, psychology, mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology and other physical sciences. This "data dump" results in a comprehensive set of entries for a bibliographic and/or event-based timeline on the proper name Menander, since editorial decisions to include or exclude events is purely a linguistic process. The resulting entries are used under license or with permission, used under "fair use" conditions, used in agreement with the original authors, or are in the public domain. ... Read more

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Ancient schools of rhetoric taught students how to devise arguments in legal and political disputes, and how to express them. Many scholars believe that these techniques increasingly lost their practical relevance under the Roman Empire. This detailed reassessment of the history and social significance of rhetoric in late antiquity shows how it was taught, and why the skills it promoted were still believed to have a direct application in the subsequent careers of the rhetoricians' pupils. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

fabula incerta
I do not write in englis ... Read more

Product Description
Originally published in 1910.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more