On the Reception of Menander in the Imperial Period

A large number of mosaics and school papyri from the early centuries of our era testify to the popularity of Menander in that period, at least up to the eighth century. ¹ The poet’s work is constantly used in schools at all levels, whether for drawing up lists of two-or three-syllable words using the titles of his comedies, or to work on agônes with the rhetoric-teacher—not to speak of the sententiae, of course, whose eventual fate was exceptional. ² And yet, notwithstanding the favour he enjoyed, ‘the glory of Menander, immense throughout antiquity, did not prevent the poet’s work from disappearing’. ³ In fact, starting in the fourth century, for a number of reasons, there was a reversal that gave Aristophanes a new supremacy, especially in education. ⁴