Who's Who Ancient Greece: The Arts

Menander (342-290 BC)

Poet & Playwright

This Athenian poet wrote 108 comedies, and many one line aphorisms. He was the chief exponent of the style known as 'New Attic Comedy'.

Only four of his comedies have survived intact, along with some of his aphorisms, such as : 'No just man ever became rich all at once', and
'Whoever the gods love dies young'.

He was born into a wealthy family in Kifissia, a town to the north of ancient Athens (now a wealthy suburb almost continuous with the modern urban Athenian sprawl).

He studied with Theophrastus as a youth, who was head of the Peripatetic School established by Aristotle at that time, and also a friend of Epicurus.

He lived in the country near Piraeus with his lover, a courtesan named Glykera, who was his adored lifetime companion. Though invited to Alexandria many times by Ptolemy I, he declined, not wanting to leave the freedom of the intellectual scene in Athens (and perhaps, he also didn't want to leave his beloved).

He delineation of characters in his plays show a sharp and acerbic insight into human foibles, though not unmixed with affection. In his comedy, 'The Curmudgeon' the woodland god, Pan, causes an aristocratic urbanite to fall in love with a village girl who is a Pan-worshiper, but her mean-spirited father refuses to hear anything about his daughter marrying someone, so the old man's friends arrange for him to fall into a well and to be saved by his daughter's suitor, after which event, the wedding plans proceed apace.