All this changed for good in 1959, when the first complete play of Menander surfaced in a papyrus book of the late third century
A.D. Since then, discoveries of other papyri have restored substantial amounts of his comedy, and for the first time since antiquity Menander can be discussed as a literary figure in his own right.
Details of his life remain sketchy. Menander the Athenian, son of Diopeithes and Hegestrate, from the deme Kephisia, was born in 342-341 B.C. and died in his early fifties. He wrote more than one hundred comedies in that time, beginning with a play called Anger (Orge) in 321. The Grouch (Dyskolos), his one play to survive virtually intact, won first prize at Athens in 316. By about 292-291 he was dead. These facts are fairly certain. Other components of the traditional biography are more dubious. Some are at least credible: that his plays reflect the influence of the older dramatist Alexis (whom some call his uncle); that he studied with the philosopher Theophrastus, Aristotle's successor as head of the Peripatos (the Peripatetic School); and that he had at least social connections with Demetrius of Phaleron, who headed an aristocratic (and pro-Macedonian) regime at Athens from 317 B.C.
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