Back when we were students, I once dragged my wife up to Oxford to see a production of Dyskolos. During the second act-break, as Pan pranced across the stage to the notes of an off-key flute, she turned to me and whispered, “You’re writing your dissertation about this?” Maybe that was a bit ungenerous, but if the rediscovery of Menander had ended with Dyskolos, we might still be wondering what all the ancient fuss was about. Happily, it did not end there. After Dyskolos came meaningful portions of Sikyonios (1964) and Misoumenos (1965, 1968), soon followed by some hundred lines of Dis Exapaton (1968). The Bodmer codex containing Dyskolos then added much of Aspis and Samia (1969).[1] With the appearance of F. H. Sandbach’s OCT (1972) and then the magisterial Gomme-Sandbach Commentary (1973), Menander once again became an author to be reckoned with. And even that was hardly the end, which is why Geoffrey Arnott needed three volumes and twenty years to update Menander for the Loeb series (1979-2000), why even that advance is overshadowed by Alain Blanchard’s recent Budé volumes (2009-2016), and why a quarter century separates the first volume of PCG dedicated to Menander (VI.2: Testimonia et Fragmenta apud scriptores servata) from this second one dedicated to the plays and fragments coming direct from antiquity.[2]
The new volume’s success in representing the current state of knowledge makes advances possible on multiple fronts. Students of reception will find even its front matter substantive, with lists of editions and commentaries and of all papyri providing not just keys to the following apparatus, but encouragement to consider the very nature and history of the corpus. Count up the fourteen ancient witnesses to Epitrepontes, for example, and the seventeen (plus eight book fragments) of Misoumenos, and the popularity of these plays quickly becomes evident, though poor attestation hardly proves the opposite. PSI 126, published in 1912, remained the unknown Comoedia Florentina until publication of the Bodmer codex identified it as Aspis, and seven discrete fragments of Dyskolos can now be recognized from their overlap with the Bodmer text. More fragments among the many current incerta doubtless remain to be identified this way.[3] There is also a helpful description of the major sources (De quibusdam libris potioribus), viz. the Cairo and Bodmer codices, the Oxyrhynchus fragments of Misoumenos, and the Sorbonne cartonnage of Sikyonios to help explain Menander’s routes to survival. The plays follow, nineteen of them from Aspis to Phasma and then the one still unidentified play in the Cairo codex, each preceded by the relevant testimonia, a list of dramatis personae, and the souces. Thus Sikyonios includes the colophon of the Sorbonne papyrus, references to the wall-painting at Ephesus and mosaic in Crete, and mentions of the play in four written sources.[4] The Paris text is then followed by ten book fragments and three unplaced scraps from Oxyrhynchus attributed to the play.
So complete, clear, and authoritatively edited a reference text is invaluable, however relative and time-dated “complete” and “authoritative” must necessarily be. The most obvious missing piece here is the Vatican palimpsest containing lines of Dyskolos and what may be Titthe announced some twenty years ago; it remains unpublished and beyond the reach of PCG.[5] More typical of the cooperation so characteristic of Menandrean studies is inclusion before formal publication of a fragment from Leipzig containing additional bits of Georgos (PLip. 402). Even more substantive is PCG’s integration of the fragments of the bookroll from Karanis (M) that fill significant gaps in our understanding of Epitrepontes, a play that has aroused great interest since Gustave Lefebvre published the Cairo codex in 1907.[6] The Cairo text breaks off at line 759, a dramatically critical moment as Smikrines urges his daughter to leave her seemingly wayward husband. M’s text fills much of the lacuna before C resumes at 853. We can now be sure that Menander had Pamphile, unlike the similarly wronged wife of Terence’s Hecyra, speak for herself in a highly articulate, point-by-point rejoinder to her father demonstrating both “filial piety and independence of mind” (Furley 2021: 35).
The sequential revelations of M also show how precarious conjectural restoration can be and how important it is for students of Menander to keep up to date. At 786, for example, as Smikrines warns his daughter that a wife stands little chance in competition with a mistress, the original publication gave us only this:
γυναῖ]κ’ ἐπιβο̣[
ἥ δια]β̣αλεῖ ϲε λυ̣[μανεῖταί τ’
. . . το]ῦ̣τ’ ἐνέγκα̣[ι . . . . . . .. . . ]σα δ[ὲA woman infiltrator [. . .
who’ll tell tales about you, damage your reputation. . . ] to endure [ . . . while in comfort (Furley 2009: 65)
Additions a few years later began to fill out the passage.
γυναῖ]κ’ ἐπιβο̣[υλον λ]οιδορίαι κἀβ̣[ελτ]έ̣ραν
ἥ δια]β̣αλεῖ σ· α̣ἰ̣[του]μ̣ένη μὲν ο[ὖν ἅπ]αν
ἐς τα]ὔ̣τ’ ἐνέγκα̣[σθαι], μετέχουσα δ̣’ [ἐ]ξἴσου. . . a woman attacking you with insults and shameless,
who will badmouth you. She’ll demand everything
be held in common, and that she gets equal shares (Furley 2013: 84)
Further scraps of M, however, show Smikrines pursuing a more colorful and unexpected line of argument,
φάρμακ’ ἐπίβο[υλα λ]οιδορίαι καθ̣’ [ἡμέ]ραν
ὡς ἐκβαλεῖ σε· λη̣[ξο]μ̣ένη μὲν ο̣[ὐδὲ] ἕ̣ν
ἐιϲ τοῦτ’ ἐνέγκα̣[σθαι], μετέχουσα δ̣’ [ἐ]ξἴσου. . . poisonous potions and daily threats
that he’ll throw you out. With no resources of her own
to contribute here, but enjoying an equal share (Furley 2021: 6)
or, with PCG’s slightly different choice of restorations:[7]
φάρμακ’, ἐπιβο̣[υλαί, λ]οιδορίαι κἀθ̣ [’ ἡμέ]ραν,
ὡϲ ἐκβαλεῖ ϲ’. α̣ἰ̣[του]μ̣ένη μὲν ο̣[ὐδὲ] ἕ̣ν
ἐιϲ τοῦτ’ ἐνέγκα̣[ϲθαι,] μετέχουϲα δ̣’ [ἐ]ξἴϲουpotions, plots, and daily abuse,
that he’ll throw you out. Asked for nothing
to contribute here, but enjoying an equal share
The representation of lacunae and the solutions proposed for them is but one of the challenges facing editors. Another is the problem of who is speaking in a dramatic text since ancient indications are often imprecise and of dubious authority. Where possible, PCG reflects an emerging consensus. When Demeas and Nikeratos arrive from Pontos at Samia 96, B attributes lines 96-105 entirely to Demeas, but Sandbach thought the terse grumpiness of 98-101 more appropriate to Nikeratos and reassigned those lines to him. Initial enthusiasm for that suggestion has waned, however, and PCG now relegates it to the apparatus, where it is likely to remain.[8] At other times, though, a solution is elusive and a definitive answer impossible. No consensus has yet emerged, for example, in Act IV of Sikyonios, where Smikrines (if that is his name) enters with someone named Blepes (Sandbach) or Theron (Jacques) or simply an anonymous “Democrat” (Arnott), then engages with a stranger either from Eleusis or actually named Eleusinios, and either does or does not exit at 168 to be replaced (or not) by a woman named Malthake. Here PCG is non-commital and conservative, at 150-68 following the papyrus in showing “Smikrines” in dialogue with an unidentified figure, assigning what follows to Smikrines and Eleusinios, avoiding supplements where line-ends are missing, and relegating published suggestions and interpretive problems to the apparatus, which here, as throughout the volume, is a model of clarity inviting as well as facilitating consultation.[9]
This is especially important since the bond in this corpus between text and apparatus is particularly tight. Reading Menander’s plays closely requires not just respect for the fragility of papyrus texts but a willingness to evaluate the claims of alternative restorations and to cope responsibly with the uncertainties of plot and character that inevitably remain. Those challenges, along with the texts’ tendency to fade out just as interpretive questions become most pressing, can make it difficult for literary criticism to move beyond the descriptive or the jejune. Newcomers are still best advised simply to work through one of these plays with a good guide, and while several such guides are now available, to appreciate Menander’s forest as well as its individual trees is not easy.[10] By presenting what is for now a complete corpus with full attention to its many complexities, PCG offers experienced readers encouragement to think broadly as well as deeply about these texts and an opportunity for them to open Menander’s style of comedy to the wider audience it deserves.
Works Cited
Blume, H.-D. 2010. Menander. Darmstadt.
D’Aiuto, F. 2003. “Graeca in codici orientali della Biblioteca Vaticana (con i resti di un manoscritto tardoantico delle commedie di Menandro),” in L. Perria, ed. Tra Oriente e Occidente: Scritture e libri greci fra le regioni orientali di Bisanzio e l’Italia. Rome. 227–296.
Favi, F. 2019. “The Title(s) of Menander’s Sikyonioi,” Mnemosyne 72: 335-39.
——. 2021. “The Staging of Menander’s Sikyonioi,” CCJ 67: 51-65.
Furley, W. D. 2009. Menander, Epitrepontes. BICS Supplement 106. London.
——. 2013. “Pamphile regains her voice. On the recently published fragments of Menander’s Epitrepontes.” ZPE 185: 82–90.
——. 2021. New Fragments of Menander’s Epitrepontes. London: An open access publication of the University of London Press: https://humanities-digital-library.org/index.php/hdl/catalog/book/new-fragments-menander
Handley, E. W. 2011. “The Rediscovery of Menander,” in D. Obink and R. Rutherford, eds. Culture in Pieces. Essays on Ancient Texts in Honour of Peter Parsons. Oxford. 138-59.
Ireland, S. 2010. “New Comedy,” in G. Dobrov, ed. Brill’s Companion to the Study of Greek Comedy (Leiden) 333-96.
Netz, R. 2020. Scale, Space and Canon in Ancient Literary Culture. Cambridge.
Reckford, K. J. 1961. “The Dyskolos of Menander,” SP 58: 1-24.
Römer, C. 2015. “News from Smikrines and Pamphile: Two New Fragments of Epitrepontes 786-803 and 812-820 Sandbach-Furley,” ZPE 196: 49-54.
Sommerstein, A. 2013. Menander, Samia. Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics. Cambridge.
Notes
[1] The story of Menander’s return is well told by Blume 2010: 16-45; good summary discussion by Ireland 2010: 346-48. As for Dyskolos, reasons to take the play seriously have continued to grow along with the corpus. Reckford 1961 seems in hindsight to have had it right: “not immature, just less ambitious” (11).
[2] Cf. BMCR 1997.10.01, 2001.05.16 (Arnott); 2014.04.58, 2017.10.15 (Blanchard). OCT lacks the 34 half-lines of Encheiridion, which Sandbach thought parum intellegenda, and Leukadia, published in 1994. Both are in Arnott. Significant additions since his last Loeb volume include Georgos (POxy. 4937), Kitharistes (POxy. 4642), and significant additions to Epitrepontes from Karanis (M). A new, inclusive OCT begun by Colin Austin and Peter Parsons is now in the hands of Lucia Prauscello.
[3] The methodological difficulty inherent in inferring ancient popularity from the record of survival is noted by Netz 2020: 124-25.
[4] Its preferred title remains unclear. The plural form, found in the earliest witnesses, is hard to understand since Stratophanes is the only (putative) Sicyonian in the extant text, but see Favi 2019. PCG prints “Ϲικυώνιοϲ vel Ϲικυώνιοι.”
[5] Vat. Sir. 623 is a ninth-century parchment codex composed of leaves salvaged from earlier books. One of these was an edition of Menander, whose Greek text is visible under ultraviolet light. It was described by D’Aiuto 2003: 266-83 (with illustrations) and presented at the British Academy in December 2007. Nothing since. Handley 2011: 140-41 hints at its possible significance.
[6] New fragments of M were first presented in 1995 by Ludwig Koenen and Traianos Gagos. Others followed, notably in a series of articles by Cornelia Römer and sequential versions of a coherent text by William Furley, whose editions and translations are cited below.
[7] PCG largely follows Römer 2015, the alternative proposals of Furley 2021 apparently coming too late for consideration.
[8] For the arguments see Sommerstein 2013: 133, who endorses the text of B.
[9] The issues are particularly fraught here in Sikyonios, where much remains unresolved. See most recently Favi 2021.
[10] Anglophone readers are particularly well served by Sommerstein 2013. For those not distracted by facing translations, Aris and Phillips volumes can be useful, as can the Loeb and Budé editions. In 2021 the Bloomsbury Ancient Comedy Companions published helpful volumes on Epitrepontes (A. H. Sommerstein) and Samia (M. Wright).