SOURCE: Handley, E. W. “Menander and the Dyskolos.” In The “Dyskolos” of Menander, pp. 3-74. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965.

In the following excerpt, Handley discusses how Menander dealt with the traditions of both comedy and tragedy, Menander's views regarding drama, and the changing popular and critical evaluations of him over the centuries.

‘Menander, son of Diopeithes, of the Kephisian deme, was born in the archonship of Sosigenes’: that is, in the Athenian year 342/1 b.c. The year 321, in which he produced his first play, the Orge, happens to mark the centenary of Aristophanes' Peace; the Dyskolos, produced in 316, is separated from the Plutus of 388 by nearly three-quarters of a century, or rather more than two generations. These three dates in Menander's life are among those generally accepted, though each is the subject of learned dispute; if we think of him first as a writer of Greek comedy...