II. The Case of Menander: a Crisis of Identity?

Menander poses intriguing questions of period, canon, and reception. His name stands for the genre of New Comedy, a designation which separates him sharply from the earlier and more "classical" poets of Old and Middle Comedy.^[18] Yet the genre which he represents and the dramatic tradition in which he stands link Menander intimately with the final stage of classical Athens and its literature. Born of Attic parents in 342/1, he was still a toddler and unaware of the momentous course of events when Greece lost its independence to Philip of Macedon. In 323, the year in which Alexander died, Menander reported at age eighteen for military duty as a classmate of Epicurus, whose postclassical cast of

[17] Apollodorus FGrH 244 F 112 = Menander F 323 Körte. Apollodorus is also the source of Philodemus De piet . p. 42 G. = Menander F 841 Körte.

[18] See below, n. 26.

mind is all too conspicuous. One has only to think of Epicurus' indifference to public affairs, his rejection of rhetoric, the gracelessness of his technical prose, and his antimythical and antitragic separation of gods and men. Menander's first play dates from around 321; his last production falls in the initial decade of the third century, at the height of the reign of the first Ptolemy, who may have tried in vain to attract the playwright to Alexandria.

In biographical as well as literary terms, Menander is a truly transitional figure who straddles the fence, no matter where we decide to draw the line that separates the late classical from the early Hellenistic period. His milieu is that of the Athenian city-state, but his outlook is cosmopolitan and his humanity universal; he writes verse that often reads like prose; his idiom is Attic, but every now and then his vocabulary and syntax foreshadow later Hellenistic usage; some of his less conventional characters, never before seen on the dramatic stage, were typical fourth-century figures who could look forward to a bright future in the Hellenistic world. I am thinking in particular of the pairs of young lovers who successfully overcome obstacles and cross social boundaries in their pursuit of personal happiness, of the mercenary soldier who fights in distant lands, and of the goddess Tyche who claims that she is holding everybody's fortune in her hands.^[19]

It is much easier to assess Menander's importance for European literature as a whole than to determine his place in the history of Greek letters. The problems that face us in Menander are intimately connected with the identity of the Hellenistic period, conceived as a coherent literary phenomenon. Historians of Greek literature either include him under the Hellenistic rubric or treat him as a classical author who almost missed the boat.^[20] Eric W. Handley has recently called Menander "a poet of the Hellenistic Age," but, more often than not, New Comedy is ex-

[19] In the Aspis Menander introduces Tyche as the prologue speaker and Kleostratos as a soldier of fortune who returns to Greece with rich spoils from battlegrounds in Asia Minor. Tyche's stage epiphany (97-148) epitomizes her prominent role in New Comedy (e.g., Philemon F 9, 125 Kassel/Austin; Menander F 295, 417, 467f., 637 Körte) and inaugurates her ubiquitous presence in the Hellenistic and Roman world. Cf. Wilamowitz, Hellenistische Dichtung in der Zeit des Kallimachos (Berlin, 1924) 1: 76f.; idem, Der Glaube der Hellenen (Berlin, 1931-32) 2:298-309; M. P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion , (Munich, 1967-74) 2:200-210; F. W. Hamdorf, Griechische Kultpersonifikationen der vorhellenistischen Zeit (Mainz, 1964), 37-39; H. Lloyd-Jones, GRBS 12 (1971): 194f. (reprinted in his Greek Comedy, Hellenistic Literature, Greek Religion, and Miscellanea [Oxford, 1990], 24).

[20] Kassel, Abgratzung des Hellenismus , 16f.: "Eine wirkliche Crux der Periodisierung ist dagegen die Neue Attische Komödie. [Examples for both classifications follow.] Hier bleibt offenbar einiges zu klären, was mit dem literarhistorischen Problem des jeweils größeren oder geringeren Gewichts der Zugehörigkeit zu Zeitalter und Gattungstradition zu tun hat."

cluded from treatments of Hellenistic poetry, a designation that has become virtually synonymous with Alexandrian poetry.^[21] In some ways, it is true, the two poetic traditions lie worlds apart: Menander's plays entertained local Athenian theatergoers, whereas the Alexandrian poets had an audience in. mind whose taste was more exclusive and whose background was more panhellenic. No wonder that Menander tends to suffer by comparison with them. The former Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford, who edited Menander's Dyskolos shortly after its first publication in 1959 and who did much for our understanding of the more recent plays, once said that he would not hesitate to exchange a hundred lines of Menander for one line of Callimachus.^[22] Like attracts like—by combining wit with learning, Callimachus naturally appeals to learned critics who share his virtues. Menander's best strengths lie elsewhere, in his character drawing and humane touch, qualities which were perhaps more at home in Athens than in Alexandria—Callimachus emulates them in the Hekale , the most Attic of his poems.

Menander continues to divide students of Greek literature. In their passing comments on him, Gelzer and Parsons seem to disagree on his place in Hellenistic poetry. Parsons mentions Menander as the sole surviving representative of Hellenistic drama and as an example of rapid communication between Athens and Alexandria under the first Ptolemies—the plays of Menander "reached Egypt with relative speed.^[23]

[21] Handley in Cambridge History of Classical Literature 1:423. Wilamowitz, "Die griechische Literatur des Altertums," in Die griechische und lateinische Literatur und Sprathe , 3d ed., Die Kultur der Gegenwart 1.7 (Leipzig and Berlin, 1912), first published in 1905, treated Menander under the rubric "Hellenistic Period (320-30 BC )"; two decades later, however, he considered him too "remote from the new spirit" of Alexandria for inclusion in his Hellenistische Dichtung (l:168). In his Griechisthe Literaturgesechichte of 1967 (2d ed., Munich, 1991), Albrecht Dihle discussed Menander and Philemon as Hellenistic drama-fists. By contrast, the author of the most recent book on Hellenistic poetry follows the example of Wilamowitz and excludes Menander; for G. O. Hutchinson, Menander is neither classical nor Hellenistic—he belongs in a postclassical twilight zone, and his comedies "do not assist us greatly" (Hellenistic Poetry [Oxford, 1988], 10).

[22] Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones made this remark more than twenty years ago under the fresh impression of a papyrus fragment of Callimachus newly discovered in the collection of the University of Michigan and subsequently induded, with a significant new reading, by him and Peter Parsons in their Supplementum Hellenisticum as no. 250. His comments on three of Menander's best plays suggest that he would part with some lines more readily than with others: GRBS 7 (1966): 131-157 (Sikyonios ); GRBS 12 (1971): 175-195 (Aspis ); and YClS 22 (1972): 119-144 (Samia ) (reprinted in Greek Comedy , 7-25, 31-76). He eloquently defends "the great poets of the third century" against modern critics of Alexandrianism in his "Hellenistic Miscellany," SIFC 77 (1984): 52-72 (reprinted in Greek Comedy , 231-249).

[23] The earliest known text of Menander, the Sikyonios papyrus, was penned in Egypt within a generation or two of the poet's death. If this is what Parsons means by "relative speed," the pace of dissemination was yet too fast for the skills of that particular scribe—his copy abounds with serious mistakes (see the critical apparatus of R. Kassel's standard edition: Menandri Sicyonius , Kleine Texte 185 [Berlin, 1965]).

The reception of Menander outside Attica and in the Hellenistic world is indeed a crucial aspect of his literary identity, which hovers intriguingly between his dual role as the last heir of Attic comedy and the trail-blazer of a new form of European comedy. Like Parsons, Gelzer recognizes Menander's importance, but he does not recognize him as a Hellenistic poet. As defined by Gelzer, Hellenistic poetry is the exclusive domain of the "new poets" of Alexandria, who created "the new poetry."

Novelty is a crucial element in Gelzer's definition; oddly enough, he excludes from Hellenistic poetry the Menander along with the rest of New Comedy.^[24] Three of Gelzer's four witnesses for the "crisis of poetry," Aristophanes, Antiphanes, and Xenarchus, were poets of Old and Middle Comedy who routinely bragged about their "new" poetic strategies, .^[25] Yet their innovations hardly changed the nature of the genre; it was rather Menander whom the Alexandrians themselves recognized as the true innovator. Compared to his predecessors, Menander represents indeed a "new" and more refined form of comedy.^[26] But if one compares him, as Gelzer implicitly does, with the poetae noui of the Alexandrian and neoteric canon—poets who came after him and whose repertoire included every conceivable genre except drama—he looks inevitably like a poet from an earlier age. Novelty is a relative quality in poets, as well as an elusive criterion in literary studies. Whether a poet is considered innovative or not depends not only on the "originality" of his work, but also on the expectations of his audience and the judgment of his critics.

[25] See above, n. 9.

Modern critics are free to choose the perspective that suits their agenda. Gelzer justifies his choice by insisting on the difference between poetry composed for performance and poetry composed for reading. The genuine Hellenistic poets, he argues, belonged to a "culture of the written word" and wrote with a reading public in mind, whereas Menander's plays were intended for performance before a live audience.^[27] But not every scholar is prepared to deny Menander a place in Hellenistic literature on these grounds as long as the relevance of such criteria as performance, recitation, and reading aloud or silently is open to discussion.^[28] The classification of Menander by period is likely to remain controversial, precisely because he exemplifies the transition. There is a growing awareness, however, that his art, if not Alexandrian, is nevertheless "Hellenistic."^[29]

The problematic nature of the criteria invoked to fit Menander into one period or another brings up a second question: the literary and poetic issues raised by our attempts to define his poetry, and how these issues in turn are vitally affected by our understanding of Hellenistic aesthetics. For a proper appreciation of Menander's art it hardly matters whether he is labeled classical or Hellenistic as long as it is understood that his plays contain features which fit both descriptions. The overall continuity of the dramatic form, which connects Menander with Euripides and the drama of the fourth century, must carry the same weight in the literary classification of his plays as his various innovations in dra-

[27] Here too Gelzer echoes Wilamowitz, who defined Hellenistic poetry as "Rezitati-onspoesie, die zur Lesepoesie wird" (Hellenistische Dichtung 1:149, cf. 52). But unlike Wilamowitz, Gelzer makes no allowance for recitation.

[28] Gelzer acknowledges that dramatic poetry continued to flourish on a reduced scale during the Hellenistic period. Much of the best nondramatic Alexandrian poetry was in all probability also intended for initial recitation to small groups of fellow poets, patrons, or friends before it was circulated in written form; this was true as well for the many less familiar types of poetry—cultic, lyric, mimetic—that were performed before very mixed audiences throughout the Hellenistic period. Callimachus' first Iambus envisages a Hipponax redivivus dictating one of his fables to an assemblage of Alexandrian scholars (F 191 Pfeiffer)—a sarcastic fiction, no doubt, but one that has all the more bite if it was inspired by actual poetry readings in Alexandria. Cf. B. Gentill, Poetry and Its Public in Ancient Greece: From Homer to the Fifth Century (Baltimore and London, 1988), 169-176 (on patronage, recitation, and performance in the postclassical period); and A. W. Bulloch, Callimachus: The Fifth Hymn , Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries 26 (Cambridge, 1986), 8 ("dearly written for recitation before an educated audience associated with the royal court at Alexandria"). D. Obbink, "Hymn, Cult, Genre" (forthcoming), recognizes "performance" as an essential feature of hymnic poetry, including the extant corpus of Hellenistic hymns; performance can entail ritual enactment (as in various cult hymns) or literary evocation (as in Callimachus Hymns 5 and 6).

[29] I take it to be symptomatic that Gehrke opens his recent survey of Hellenistic literature with Menander (Geschichte des Hellenismus ).

matic technique, narrative structure, or character drawing. What is more important, but also closely linked to the question of the period to which Menander belongs, is his quality as a playwright.

Menander's deceptive simplicity, moralizing stance, and predictable plots have not been universally admired. Modern literary criticism of Menander began on a decidedly negative note around 1800, when Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel pronounced their verdict; this was a century before the sands of Egypt released his first plays. According to the Schlegel brothers, the tragedies of Euripides are filled with telltale signs of literary and cultural decline which foreshadow the "mixed and derivative" genre of New Comedy and set the stage for Menander, who is urbane and philosophically inclined but whose plots and characters are "monotonous."^[30] In more recent times, one of Menander's harshest detractors, a historian of Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic period, described him as "the dreariest desert in literature."^[31]

Even his most sympathetic readers are less than lavish with praise. Wilamowitz, still Menander's most brilliant interpreter, admired the "uniformity and purity" of his style but castigated the provincialism of the social milieu from which his characters are drawn.^[32] His target was not so much Menander per se as the Athenian society depicted in his

[30] F. yon Schlegel, Studien des klassischen Altertums , Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe 1 (Paderborn, 1979), esp. 12, 14f., 33, 60-68. A. W. yon Schlegel touched upon Euripides, New Comedy, and Menander in his Berlin lectures of 1802/1803, published by Jacob Minor as Vorlesungen über schöne Litteratur und Kunst (Heilbronn, 1884) 2:105 ("mixed and derivative") and 358; his more detailed comments can be found in the Vienna lectures of 1808: "Vorlesungen üer dramatische Kunst und Literatur, Erster Tell," in Kritische Schriften und Briefe , E. Lohner, ed. (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1962-67) 5:100-110, 115-130, 156-168. The Schlegel brothers disagreed on the period of Greek literature to which Menander belonged. Whereas Friedrich Schlegel regarded the poets of New Comedy as the representatives of the last and "weakest" stage of Attic literature, his brother assigned them to the Hellenistic period, which he described as "learned and artificial"; cf. Kassel, Abgrenzung des Hellenismus , 16f. Both Schlegels dearly considered New Comedy second-rate, but like Winckelmann before him, Friedrich Schlegel appreciated the best qualities of Menander insofar as they could be gleaned from the scarce fragments or from his Roman imitators.

[31] W. W. Tarn and G. T. Griffith, Hellenistic Civilization , 3d ed. (London, 1952), 273.

plays—its "provincial confinement," the "dreariness and frivolity" of the "Athenian philistines" with their "narrow conventions" and "misery of life."^[33] He treated the characters of Menander as real-life Athenians and took them severely to task for their lack of higher motivation: "The entire genre is diminished by the fact that the life so faithfully mirrored by Menander was so narrow and philistine and the people so totally deprived of ideas, solely attentive to the pursuit of common pleasures in their youth, and of common profit in their old age."^[34] But literary realism is not the same thing as historical reality, and the notion that the plays of Menander constitute a mirror image of Athenian society during the last quarter of the fourth century is no longer tenable. The new plays have given us a better idea of what Aristophanes of Byzantium might have had in mind when he said that Menander "imitated life."^[35] The breastfeeding that takes place offstage in the Samia (265ff.) and the discovery of the decomposed corpse along with the battered shield reported in the Aspis (68ff.) are fine examples of a realism capable of generating enormous dramatic momentum that keeps the action going until the various confusions are resolved. The soldier believed to have died on the battlefield eventually returns home alive (Aspis 491ff.), and the wet nurse who has been mistaken for the baby's mother is replaced by the true mother in a mirror scene that sets the record straight and prepares the happy resolution and closure (Samia 535ff.).

Does Menander rank as a classic? Given his tremendous influence on Roman comedy, not to mention tile subtle Menandrean echoes in Catullus, he surely ranked as a classic in antiquity.^[36] But such value judgments

[33] Wilamowitz, Kleine Schriften 1:229, 269.

[34] Wilamowitz, "Griechische Literatur des Altertums," 196. His verdict was inspired by Theodor Mommsen's biting condemnation of New Comedy (Römische Geschichte , 9th ed. [Berlin, 1902-4] 1:889ff.); cf. R. Kassel, "Wilarnowitz über griechische und römische Komödie," ZPE 45 (1982): 271-300, esp. 294.

[35] Syrianos In Hermog . 2.23 Rabe = Menander test. 32 Körte = Aristoph. Byz. test. 7 Slater; cf. Nesselrath, Mittlere Komödie , 181 n.92. On Menander's realism see E. W. Handley, The Dyskolos of Menander (London, 1965), 12-14, who reminds us that reading Menander as if his plays were a mirror of real life amounts to the documentary fallacy ("his plays are plays and not documentary records"). Despite the caution urged by Handley, the traditional literal reading of Aristophanes' dictum looms large in G. Zanker, Realism in Alexandrian Poetry: A Literature and Its Audience (London and Sydney, 1987), 11of., 145, 149: Menander was preoccupied with "the representation of everyday life" and "portrayed the lives of people in Aristotle's 'average citizen' category" (cf. Aristotle, Poetica 1448a4ff.). Zanker ultimately echoes Wilamowitz (see Menander, Das Schiedsgericht [Berlin, 1925], 164; "Griechische Literatur des Altertums," as quoted in the text above at n. 34).

[36] See E. W. Handley's inaugural lecture, Menander and Plautus: A Study in Comparison (London, 1968), which opened a new era in the study of Roman comedy by comparing for the first time scenes from Plautus with their Greek original; E. Fantham, "Roman Experience of Menander in the Late Republic and Early Empire," TAPhA 114 (1984): 299-309; R. E Thomas, "Menander and Catullus 8," RhM 127 (1984): 308-316.

are never cast in stone; they tend to change, not only over time but also from person to person. Literary taste, personal preference, and special pleading play as important a role in these matters today as they did in antiquity. In the eyes of Aristophanes of Byzantium, Menander ranked second only to Homer; by contrast, the Atticists of the imperial period preferred the purity of Attic diction in the comedies of Aristophanes to the alleged "anomalies" of Menander's Greek.^[37] His name disappeared from the ancient canon of school authors at some time in late antiquity, but the reasons for his declining fortunes remain obscure.^[38] His plays were no longer copied after the seventh century; Byzantium ignored him. Beginning in 1898, successive papyrus finds have put the criticism of the poet and his art on a new foundation. The modern revaluation of Menander which they inaugurated is still in progress. His enhanced status is reflected in the number of new editions, commentaries, and monographs that have appeared in recent years. He is also one of the few Greek authors with less than impeccable classical credentials included in many graduate reading lists. After more than a millennium of inaccessibility, misappreciation, and mixed reviews Menander appears to have finally rejoined the exclusive circle of "canonical" authors.

In important respects, the distinctive quality of Menander is hardly in doubt—his name is permanently attached to Athenian drama, New Comedy, and five-act plays in which domestic conflicts dominate. We cannot, however, easily assign him a niche in periodizing schemes of literary history; the crisis of his Hellenistic identity is likely to remain.