ABSTRACT
Menander, son of Diopeithes, was born between 343 and 341, and died while swimming off Peiraeus at the age of fifty-one or fifty-two. Between the ages of eighteen and twenty he underwent the two-year course of training in civic virtue and soldiership (the ephebeia) which had been made compulsory in 334; the philosopher Epicurus was an ephebe at the same time. He is said to have produced his first play, Anger (Orge), while still an ephebe, probably in 321; he won first prize at the Lenaea with The Curmudgeon (Dyskolos) in 316 (this may or may not have been his first Lenaean victory), and at the City Dionysia for the first time a year later. In all he won eight victories, which seemed surprisingly few to later generations who regarded him as by far the greatest representative of New Comedy. Possibly he was unpopular for a time because of his friendship with Demetrius of Phalerum, who had been virtually dictator of Athens from 317 to 307; he is said to have been prosecuted, or threatened with prosecution, after Demetrius fell from power. He is reported to have written some 108 plays, many of which must have been produced abroad, but unlike most of his rivals he did not himself visit the courts of foreign monarchs, although there is evidence that he did receive invitations from Ptolemy I of Egypt and Demetrius Poliorcetes of Macedon. Like Euripides, he enjoyed his greatest success posthumously.
