MENANDER, the name of two Greek writers, (1) the comic dramatist : b. Athea. 342 ac.; d. there, 290 B.C. He was the pupil o: Theophratus, himself the pupil and successor c Aristotle as head of the Peripatetics, and authx of (Characteres,) a somewhat more literary an,1 popular enlargement of some ruling ideas 3: the Nicomachwan Ethics; he was by such a teacher well trained for his dramatic vocation He was, moreover, a friend of Epicurus froc: early life, and may thus have been imbued witi: that bonhommie which rendered him so genii an interpreter of manners. He wrote a hun dred comedies which are distinguished free those of Aristophanes by their refinement. titer freedom from personal and political virulence and their graceful, sometimes beautiful, delinea tion of feminine character. He was, howewt otitrivaled in popular favor by his contemporary Philemon, whose ribaldry was irresistible to the Athenian playgoers. Only some fragments of his works survive in the original, the most im portant of these relics having come to light ic Egypt (1898). He was, however, closely ire
tated by Plautus and Terence, and in the (Bacchides,) (Stichus) and 'Poenulus' of the former, and the (Heal tontimorumenos) and of the latter we have very good representatives of the Greek dramatist's method and spirit. A fine antique statue of Menander is to be seen in the Vatican (2) A Greek rhetorician who flourished in tLe latter. half of the 3d century B.C. He has kit the rhetorical treatise (De Encomiis,) and frcei his analyses of the orations of Demosthenes. most of the scholia on that orator have been compiled. Consult (on Menander the drama tist), Guizot, (Menandre) 1855) - Rorke!. (Lebensweisheit des Komikers Menander' (1857) ; (on Menander the rhetorician), Ritsciil 'Der Rhetor Menander and die Scholien zu Demosthenes) (1883).