Perikeiromene menander biography
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there is no need to assume that this action was performed on stage, since the title of Apollodorus’ Epidikazomenos, which is also a present participle, refers to an off-stage action completed before the play began, as Terence’s Phormio, modelled on Apollodorus’ play, clearly shows. Such an opening, with the silent entry of a distraught character in an unusual situation (possibly attempting to conceal the loss of her locks), would provide the audience with puzzling circumstances designed to grasp their attention even before a word was spoken, as commonly in Greek comedy.2 Glykera would have been followed on to the stage, either immediately or at some interval, by Polemon and Sosias.
We cannot gauge what was then said, but doubtless expository information would have been included. The audience might have learnt that Polemon and Sosias had just returned from campaigning abroad (499 f; cf. 182, implying that the slave too had been away), that Sosias had
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Menander
Athenian comic playwright (c. 342/41 – c. 290 BC)
For other uses, see Menander (disambiguation).
Menander (; Ancient Greek: ΜένανδροςMenandros; c. 342/41 – c. 290 BC) was a Greek dramatist and the best-known representative of Athenian New Comedy.[1] He wrote 108 comedies[2] and took the prize at the Lenaia festival eight times.[3] His record at the City Dionysia is unknown.
He was one of the most popular writers and most highly admired poets in antiquity, but his work was considered lost before the early Middle Ages. It now survives only in Latin-language adaptations by Terence and Plautus and, in the original Greek, in highly fragmentary form, most of which were discovered on papyrus in Egyptian tombs during the early to mid-20th-century. In the 1950s, to the great excitement of Classicists, it was announced that a single play by Menander, Dyskolos, had finally been rediscovered in the Bodmer Papyri intact enough to be performed.
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The comedian Menander (342-490 BC), remains one of ancient Greece’s most influential playwrights. He was the leading representative of New Comedy, a teatralisk form that originated in Athens. Plays of this kind focused on the struggles of everyday life, from issues concerning marriage, to money. Despite writing over one hundred plays during his lifetime, only one of Menander’s plays – Dyskolos ‘The Grouch’ survives nearly intact. Considerable sections of his other works, including Samia ‘The Girl from Samos‘, Aspis ‘The Shield‘, Epitrepontes ‘The Arbitration‘ , Misoumenos ‘The Man She Hated‘, and Perikeiromene ‘The Girl with the Shaven Head‘, were discovered in a papyrus book at Aphroditopolis, Egypt in 1905. However, many of his plays exist as fragments, from ‘The Widow’ and ‘Cousins‘, to ‘Olynthus‘ and ‘The Girl from Messene&