dramatists, of the middle period of Greek Comedy preceding him and the
New Comedy, who devoted their wit chiefly to the abuse, and for a
diversity, to the eulogy of extra-mural ladies of conspicuous fame.
Menander idealized them without purposely elevating. He satirized a
certain Thais, and his Thais of the Eunuchus of Terence is neither
professionally attractive nor repulsive; his picture of the two Andrians,
Chrysis and her sister, is nowhere to be matched for tenderness. But the
condition of honest women in his day did not permit of the freedom of
action and fencing dialectic of a Celimene, and consequently it is below
our mark of pure Comedy.

Sainte-Beuve conjures up the ghost of Menander, saying: For the love of
me love Terence. It is through love of Terence that moderns are able to
love Menander; and what is preserved of Terence has not apparently given
us the best of the friend of Epicurus. [Greek text] the lover taken in
horror, and [Greek text] the damsel shorn of her locks, have a promising
sound for scenes of jealousy and a too masterful display of lordly
authority, leading to regrets, of the kind known to intemperate men who
imagined they were fighting with the weaker, as the fragments indicate.

Of the six comedies of Terence, four are derived from Menander; two, the
Hecyra and the Phormio, from Apollodorus. These two are inferior in
comic action and the peculiar sweetness of Menander to the Andria, the
Adelphi, the Heautontimorumenus, and the Eunuchus: but Phormio is a more
dashing and amusing convivial parasite than the Gnatho of the last-named
comedy. There were numerous rivals of whom we know next to
nothing--except by the quotations of Athenaeus and Plutarch, and the
Greek grammarians who cited them to support a dictum--in this as in the
preceding periods of comedy in Athens, for Menander's plays are counted
by many scores, and they were crowned by the prize only eight times. The