Menander Loeb Classical Library 3 Volume set

Menander, W.G. Arnott (translator and editor)

ISBN 10: 0674991478 / ISBN 13: 9780674991477

Published by Harvard University Press, 1979

About this Item

16mo, 17 cm x 11.5 cm, Volume I: 526 pp. Loeb No. 132, Volume II: 501 pp. Loeb No. 459, Volume III: 639 pp. Loeb No. 460, This is a three volume Loeb Classical Library set and contains both English and Greek text. Volume I has some wear on the top and bottom of the dust jacket spine and the top right corner of the cover. Volume II has a "new translation" sticker on the cover of the dust jacket and Volume III has some minor chipping on the bottom of the dust jacket spine. Volume I: Fine, Volume II: Fine, Volume III: Fine Volume I: Fine, Volume II: Near fine, Volume III: Fine.

Seller Inventory # 92676

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Menander Loeb Classical Library 3 Volume set
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication Date: 1979
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674991478
• ISBN 13: 9780674991477
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: Loeb Classical Library.
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Ancient History
  • Philosophy

About this title

Synopsis

The master of New Comedy.

Menander (?344/3–292/1 BC) of Athens, the leading playwright of the New Comedy, wrote more than 100 plays. Many of his comedies were adapted by Roman dramatists. By the middle ages, however, his works were lost. Then, at the end of the nineteenth century, papyrus texts, preserved from antiquity by the dry heat of Egypt, began to be discovered. These have yielded so far one play virtually complete (Dyskolos), large continuous portions of four more (Aspis, Epitrepontes, Perikeiromene, Samia), and sizable chunks of many others. Menander remains a paradox: artificial plots based on unlikely but conventional coincidences, enlivened by individualized characters, realistic situations, and at times deeply moving dialogue.

Volume I of Geoffrey Arnott’s three-volume edition of Menander contains six plays, including Dyskolos (The Peevish Fellow), which won first prize in Athens in 317 BC, and Dis Exapaton (Twice a Swindler), the original of Plautus’ Two Bacchises. Ten plays are in Volume II, among them the recently published fragments of Misoumenos (The Man She Hated), which sympathetically presents the flawed relationship of a soldier and a captive girl; and the surviving half of Perikeiromene (The Girl with Her Hair Cut Short), a comedy of mistaken identity and lovers’ quarrel. Volume III begins with Samia (The Woman from Samos), which has come down to us nearly complete. Here too are the very substantial extant portions of Sikyonioi (The Sicyonians) and Phasma (The Apparition), as well as Synaristosai (Women Lunching Together), on which Plautus’ Cistellaria was based.

About the Author

William Geoffrey Arnott, FBA (1930–2010) was Professor of Greek Language and Literature at the University of Leeds.