By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
1. For over 2,000 years, Menander’s works were lost. Then, in the twentieth century, they were rediscovered.
Menander (c. 342/41 – c. 290 BC) was praised by his contemporaries as a great comic playwright – some even said the greatest, beating even Aristophanes into second place. Yet his work was lost during the Middle Ages and remained so until papyrus scrolls containing several of his plays surfaced, and even then only as incomplete manuscripts.