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Menander (; , ''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.〔Apollodorus: ''Chronicle'', (fr.43 )〕 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. ==Life and work== 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.〔'A Short History of Comedy', (Prolegomena De Comoedia, 3 )〕 He was the friend, associate, and perhaps pupil of Theophrastus, and was on intimate terms with the Athenian dictator Demetrius of Phalerum.〔Phaedrus: ''Fables'', (5.1 )〕 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.〔Alciphron: ''Letters'', (2.3–4 )〕 According to the note of a scholiast on the ''Ibis'' of Ovid, he drowned while bathing,〔Scholiast on (Ibis.591 )〕 and his countrymen honored him with a tomb on the road leading to Athens, where it was seen by Pausanias.〔Pausanias, ''Description of Greece'', (1.2.2 )〕 Numerous supposed busts of him survive, including a well-known statue in the Vatican, formerly thought to represent Gaius Marius. His rival in dramatic art (and supposedly in the affections of Glycera) was Philemon, who appears to have been more popular. Menander, however, believed himself to be the better dramatist, and, according to Aulus Gellius,〔Gellius: ''Noctes Attica'', (17.4 )〕 used to ask Philemon: "Don't you feel ashamed whenever you gain a victory over me?" According to Caecilius of Calacte (Porphyry in Eusebius, ''Praeparatio evangelica''〔Eusebius: ''Praeparatio Evangelica'', (Book 10 ), Chapter 3〕) Menander was accused of plagiarism, as his ''The Superstitious Man'' was taken from ''The Augur'' of Antiphanes, but reworkings and variations on a theme of this sort were commonplace and so the charge is a complicated one. How long complete copies of his plays survived is unclear, although 23 of them, with commentary by Michael Psellus, were said to still have been available in Constantinople in the 11th century. He is praised by Plutarch (''Comparison of Menander and Aristophanes'')〔Plutarch: ''Moralia'', (853–854 )〕 and Quintilian (''Institutio Oratoria''), who accepted the tradition that he was the author of the speeches published under the name of the Attic orator Charisius.〔Quintilian: ''Institutio Oratoria'', (10.1.69 )〕 An admirer and imitator of Euripides, Menander resembles him in his keen observation of practical life, his analysis of the emotions, and his fondness for moral maxims, many of which became proverbial: "The property of friends is common," "Whom the gods love die young," "Evil communications corrupt good manners" (from the ''Thaïs'', quoted in 1 Corinthians 15:33). These maxims (chiefly monostichs) were afterwards collected, and, with additions from other sources, were edited as ''Menander's One-Verse Maxims'', a kind of moral textbook for the use of schools. The single surviving speech from his early play ''Drunkenness'' is an attack on the politician Callimedon, in the manner of Aristophanes, whose bawdy style was adopted in many of his plays. Menander found many Roman imitators. ''Eunuchus'', ''Andria'', ''Heauton Timorumenos'' and ''Adelphi'' of Terence (called by Caesar "dimidiatus Menander") were avowedly taken from Menander, but some of them appear to be adaptations and combinations of more than one play. Thus in the ''Andria'' were combined Menander's ''The Woman from Andros'' and ''The Woman from Perinthos'', in the ''Eunuchus'', ''The Eunuch'' and ''The Flatterer'', while the ''Adelphi'' was compiled partly from Menander and partly from Diphilus. The original of Terence's ''Hecyra'' (as of the ''Phormio'') is generally supposed to be, not by Menander, but Apollodorus of Carystus. The ''Bacchides'' and ''Stichus'' of Plautus were probably based upon Menander's ''The Double Deceiver'' and ''Brotherly-Loving Men'', but the ''Poenulus'' does not seem to be from ''The Carthaginian'', nor the ''Mostellaria'' from ''The Apparition'', in spite of the similarity of titles. Caecilius Statius, Luscius Lavinius, Turpilius and Atilius also imitated Menander. He was further credited with the authorship of some epigrams of doubtful authenticity; the letters addressed to Ptolemy Soter and the discourses in prose on various subjects mentioned by the ''Suda''〔Suda, (M.589 )〕 are probably spurious. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Menander」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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