Menander

This brief paper began life as the second part of a joint seminar held at the Institute of Classical Studies in December 1991. The first part was contributed by Eric Handley, who gave us a magisterial survey of the types of evidence for Menander’s survival in antiquity: records of production; souvenirs of performances; copies of plays, and derivatives such as excerpts, quotations, translations, imitations, commentaries; references to library lists; evidence of educational use; images of the author. My task was to consider the possible reasons why the work of a writer so triumphantly successful and so widely influential throughout the period of antiquity should have been lost after about the sixth or seventh century AD. I was conscious then that my arguments were speculatively constructed out of more or less insecure pieces of evidence; I am even more conscious of their vulnerability now, when they have to stand alone, unsupported by the erudition of the first half.