Books about Menander from Amazon.com

The greatest writer of Greek New Comedy and the founding father of European comedy, Menander (c.341-290 BC) wrote over one hundred plays, of which only one complete play and substantial fragments of others survive. Until the twentieth century he was known to us only by short quotations in ancient authors. Since 1907 papyri found in the sand of Egypt have brought to light more and more fragments and in 1958 the papyrus text of a complete play was published, The Bad-Tempered Man (Dyskolos). His romantic comedies deal with the lives of ordinary Athenian families. This new verse translation is accurate and highly readable, providing a consecutive text by using surviving words in the damaged papyri..
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This book provides a detailed analysis of the conventions and techniques of performance characteristic of the Greek theatre of Menander and the subsequent Roman theatre of Plautus and Terence. Drawing on literary and archaeological sources, and on scientific treatises, David Wiles identifies the mask as crucial to the actor's art, and shows how sophisticated the art of the mask-maker became. He also examines the other main elements which the audience learned to decode: costume, voice, movement, etc. In order to identify features that were unique to Hellenistic theatre he contrasts Greek New Comedy with other traditions of masked comedy, and shows how different Roman conventions of performance rest upon different underlying assumptions about religion, marriage and class. David Wiles offers theatre historians and classicists a radical new approach to reading play texts. His book will also be useful to archaeologists seeking to understand what masks mean and how Greek and Roman theatres were used..
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The Penn Greek Drama Series presents original literary translations of the entire corpus of classical Greek drama: tragedies, comedies, and satyr plays. It is the only contemporary series of all the surviving work of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Menander

The translations in this volume are by Sheila D'Atri, Palmer Bovie, and Richard Elman.

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This volume completes the Loeb Classical Library's new edition of the leading writer of New Comedy. W. G. Arnott, an internationally recognized Menander expert, provides a Greek text based on careful study of recently discovered papyri, a facing translation that is lucid and fits today's tastes, and full explanatory notes.

So influential in antiquity--his plays were adapted for the Roman stage by Plautus and Terence--Menander's comic art can now be fully known and enjoyed. It is a comedy that focuses on the hazards of love and trials of family life. This volume 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's Cistellaria (The Casket Comedy) was based. The volume also includes a selection of papyrus fragments attributed to Menander.

Arnott's edition of the great Hellenistic playwright has been garnering wide praise for making these fragmentary texts more accessible to readers, elucidating their dramatic movement. In the words of David Konstan (writing in Scholia Reviews): "An excellent guide to Menander...Arnott has given us fine texts, clear translations, brief and useful introductions.".
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Plutarch (Plutarchus), ca. 45–120 CE, was born at Chaeronea in Boeotia in central Greece, studied philosophy at Athens, and, after coming to Rome as a teacher in philosophy, was given consular rank by the emperor Trajan and a procuratorship in Greece by Hadrian. He was married and the father of one daughter and four sons. He appears as a man of kindly character and independent thought, studious and learned.

Plutarch wrote on many subjects. Most popular have always been the 46 Parallel Lives, biographies planned to be ethical examples in pairs (in each pair, one Greek figure and one similar Roman), though the last four lives are single. All are invaluable sources of our knowledge of the lives and characters of Greek and Roman statesmen, soldiers and orators. Plutarch's many other varied extant works, about 60 in number, are known as Moralia or Moral Essays. They are of high literary value, besides being of great use to people interested in philosophy, ethics and religion.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of the Moralia is in fifteen volumes, volume XIII having two parts.

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This book documents the origins of modern comedy by examining the evolution of "New Comedy," the Greek genre of which the works of Menander are the only surviving example. It looks at the quiet domestic dramas of Menander, the farces of Plautus, and the comedies of Terence. An authoritative Introduction sets the papers, which are by leading experts in their field, in context and explores connections between them thus examining the legacy for modern comedies. All Latin and Greek is translated..
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This book contains catalogues, analyses, photographs and drawings of some 2,000 archaeological artifacts excavated from the Insula of the Menander in Pompeii. The catalogues, and analyses are organized by provenance--buildings, rooms, and location within rooms--so that the reader can understand the artifacts as household assemblages. The functions of artifacts and groups of artifacts are discussed, as are the Latin names which are often given to these artifacts, and the relationships of these assemblages to the state of occupancy of the buildings in the Insula during the last years of Pompeii. This study, therefore, provides a wealth of information, not only on the range and use of artifacts in Pompeian houses but also on Roman artifacts, and Roman society, more generally..
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This is the first of a three-volume analysis of the internationally renowned archaeological site called the Insula of the Menander, a major city block in ancient Pompeii. Volume one deals with the architecture within the block, especially with the House of Menander, the grand villa for which the site was named. Subsequent volumes will consider the decorations and household objects found during excavation..
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