- published: 05 Feb 2014
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Menander (/məˈnændər/; Greek: Μένανδρος, Menandros; c. 342/41 – c. 290 BC) was a Greek dramatist and the best-known representative of Athenian New Comedy. He was the author of more than a hundred comedies, and took the prize at the Lenaia festival eight times. His record at the City Dionysia is unknown but may well have been similarly spectacular.
One of the most popular writers of antiquity, his work was lost in the Middle Ages and is known in modernity in highly fragmentary form, much of which was discovered in the 20th century. Only one play, Dyskolos, has survived almost entirely.
Menander was the son of well-to-do parents; his father Diopeithes is identified by some with the Athenian general and governor of the Thracian Chersonese known from the speech of Demosthenes De Chersoneso. He presumably derived his taste for comic drama from his uncle Alexis.
He was the friend, associate, and perhaps pupil of Theophrastus, and was on intimate terms with the Athenian dictator Demetrius of Phalerum. He also enjoyed the patronage of Ptolemy Soter, the son of Lagus, who invited him to his court. But Menander, preferring the independence of his villa in the Piraeus and the company of his mistress Glycera, refused. According to the note of a scholiast on the Ibis of Ovid, he drowned while bathing, and his countrymen honored him with a tomb on the road leading to Athens, where it was seen by Pausanias. Numerous supposed busts of him survive, including a well-known statue in the Vatican, formerly thought to represent Gaius Marius.
Menander I Soter (Ancient Greek: Μένανδρος Α΄ ὁ Σωτήρ, Ménandros A' ho Sōtḗr, "Menander I the Saviour"; known in Indian Pali sources as Milinda) was an Indo-Greek King of the Indo-Greek Kingdom (165//155 –130 BC) who established a large empire in North India and became a patron of Buddhism.
Menander was initially a king of Bactria. After conquering the Punjab he established an empire in the Indian subcontinent stretching from the Kabul River valley in the west to the Ravi River in the east, and from the Swat River valley in the north to Arachosia (the Helmand Province). Ancient Indian writers indicate that he launched expeditions southward into Rajasthan and as far east down the Ganges River Valley as Pataliputra (Patna), and the Greek geographer Strabo wrote that he "conquered more tribes than Alexander the Great."
Large numbers of Menander’s coins have been unearthed, attesting to both the flourishing commerce and duration of his realm. Menander was also a patron of Buddhism, and his conversations with the Buddhist sage Nagasena are recorded in the important Buddhist work, the Milinda Panha (“The Questions of Milinda”). After his death in 130 BC, he was succeeded by his wife Agathokleia who ruled as regent for his son Strato I. Buddhist tradition relates that he handed over his kingdom to his son and retired from the world, but Plutarch relates that he died in camp while on a military campaign, and that his remains were divided equally between the cities to be enshrined in monuments, probably stupas, across his realm.
Within the High School Project "Spirit of Anthic Olympism" by Gimnazija Indjija, a group of pupils staged Menander's Grouch. Pan [enters from shrine] Think of this place as a part of Attike Phyle, to be exactand the Nymphs' shrine I've come from belongs to the Phylasians(...) This farmstead — the one here on the right Knemon lives there, a man who shuns other men, grouches at everyone, and dislikes crowds. — Did I say "crowds"? (...)He has gladly talked in his life to no one, has spoken first to no one except — of necessity, since he is a neighbor and passes by — me, Pan. And he immediately regrets it, I'm sure. Anyhow, with a character like this, he still got married. His wife was a widow whose first husband had just di...
The House of the Menander at Pompeii is so-called because of a painting of the Greek playwright. The house lies close to the theatre in central southern Pompeii and is one of the town's biggest though you would never guess from the outside. It is built round key visual axes, one of which is the view from the fauces entrance passageway right through the house and across the peristyle. The house was modified and enlarged over a long period of time and has been the subject of a recent massive programme of analysis and restoration. Despite this, it is still not open to the public and has to be accessed through a special permit from the Soprintendenza. The house is part of the prescribed content for the UK-based OCR examination board's A-level paper in Classical Civilisation called Cities of Ro...
This is another walk-round the House of the Menander at Pompeii, this time starting in the extreme south-west in what are called the farm buildings alongside the slave quarters. Here equipment was stored for farming land outside the city walls. These rooms are not decorated and were accessed via an L-shaped corridor that ran behind the house's tricinlium. A side entrance to the house led to this corridor via a hall and led up to the peristyle. You can see how this enabled slaves to carry food and drink to the house's owners and how it must have felt walking up the narrow corridor to the grand painted rooms that surrounded the peristyle and atrium. The House of the Menander has been expensively restored but is rarely open to the public. This film was shot in October 2010 on one of those rar...
"Menander " the Sage said: ..." These words introduce a collection of wisdom sayings written in the Syriac language. The purpose of the author in drawing up this anthology of maxims was to show his readers how they could best live in a world in which good and evil, misfortune and fortune are mingled in an unpredictable way. Passing through a world of this nature, people need to be provided with direction, and the author gives such guidance by means of various counsels. The work is often designated a florilegium, and this seems to be a fairly good name for the collection, whose maxims have apparently been taken from the current stream of wisdom tradition. The exact number of sayings in the collection is not certain. In the present translation of the Florilegium, I have divided the text in...
Ancient Sumerians/Egyptians/Greeks -- a reconstruction of the few fragments of actual music that survived the ancient world, played on period instruments. Ancient music is music that developed in literate cultures, replacing prehistoric music. Ancient music refers to the various musical systems that were developed across various geographical regions such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, India, China, Greece and Rome. Ancient music is designated by the characterization of the basic audible tones and scales. It may have been transmitted through oral or written systems. Among the Hurrian texts from Ugarit are some of the oldest known instances of written music, dating from c.1400 BC. A reconstructed hymn is replayed at the Urkesh webpage. Kilmer's tentative decipherment of the cuneiform table...