This fragment has a double interest for us. The name of Kallimedon in the last line, and the implication that he is still in Athens, dates the play to before 318 B.C., when he was condemned to death in his absence; and it is the only example so far of a direct attack on a contemporary political figure in the works of Menander.
Well, our fortunes and our offerings are very much on a par. Here am I, bringing to the gods a satisfactory little sheep that I bought quite cheaply. While flute-girls and scent and guitar-players, Mendian2 wine, eels, Thasian3 wine, cheese and honey – they come to quite a lot! Returns are in proportion: a small amount of credit if the gods approve our sacrifice, and deduct against that the money spent on these luxuries. That doubles the cost of sacrifice!4 If I were a god, I’d [10] forbid anyone ever to lay the rump on the altar, unless he dedicated his eel too, to secure the death of Kallimedon, one of his relations.
FIRST SPEAKER: Theophilos6 has arrived, from the salty Aegean deep.7 How lucky, Straton, that I am the first to tell you that your son is safe and well, and so is the golden vessel.
STRATON: Vessel? What kind of vessel? You mean the ship?
FIRST SPEAKER: You’re really in the dark, my poor friend.
STRATON: The ship is safe, you say?
FIRST SPEAKER: I do. The ship built by Kallikles, and piloted by Euphranor from Thurii.8
A RETURNED TRAVELLER: O beloved Mother Earth, how holy and valuable you are to men of sense! If any man inherits land from his father and wastes its substance, he should promptly have to go sailing for ever, and never set foot on land, so that he can learn what a blessing he squandered when he had it.
This was Menander’s first play, produced about 321 B. C.9 Note the references to contemporary characters.
HUSBAND [addressing his wife]: Even I was once young, but I did not bathe five times a day: I do now. I didn’t have a fine cloak: but I do now. I didn’t use scent: but I do now. I’ll get my hair dyed and my body-hair removed – oh, yes, I will – and in short order I’ll turn into the monster Ktesippos,10 and like him, I’ll devour even stones wholesale, not just land.
Not a scrap different from Chairephon11 is any man who, invited to a party ‘when the setting sun makes a shadow twelve feet long’,12 sees the shadow cast by the moon and rushes off at cockcrow, thinking he’s late – and arrives at dawn.
Four fragments survive from this play, three of them discussed by Aulus Gellius (2, 23, 5 ff.) and compared with the Roman poet Caecilius’s adaptation of the play. From the fragments, from Gellius’s discussion, and from the Mytilene mosaic (see Introduction, note 5) of the play, an outline of the plot can be reconstructed:
Krobule is an heiress married to a relative (Laches), and she rules her household with a rod of iron. She has a son (Moschion) and a daughter. She has become suspicious of her husband’s relationship with a pretty maidservant, and has made him get rid of her. The necklace may be a recognition token belonging to this girl. Next door to Krouble and Laches live a poor man and his daughter. The girl has been raped, possibly by Moschion, and gives birth to a child in the course of the play. (The necklace may perhaps be connected with her.) Presumably, in the end, Moschion marries the girl, but the details of plot development remain obscure.
LACHES: Now my fine heiress-wife can sleep soundly – on either side. She’s done a mighty deed, won a famous victory: she’s thrown out of the house, as she wanted to, the girl who was worrying her, so that the whole world may look on the face of krobule, and know that my wife is the mistress of this house. And what a face she’s got herself – a donkey among monkeys, as the saying goes. I’ll say nothing about the night that originated dire disaster. I wish I’d never married Krobule: though she brought a [10] fortune with her, she also brought a nose as long as your arm. And her insolence – it’s quite insupportable, by God it is. The little girl was certainly very attentive, and a quick worker. But let her go. There’s no more to be said.
LACHES: Mine’s an heiress, a real vampire. I’ve never told you this.
ELDERLY FRIEND: No, you haven’t.
LACHES: She’s mistress of the house and the land and everything…
ELDERLY FRIEND: God, how difficult.
LACHES: It’s insupportable! She’s a perfect plague, and not only to me. It’s worse for her son and daughter.
ELDERLY FRIEND: It’s a hopeless situation you’re describing.
LACHES [gloomily]: I know.
LOYAL SERVANT: Not a chance has the man who marries poor and starts a family. How foolish he is who fails to keep watch over his nearest and dearest when, if he has bad luck, he can’t use money to cover it up, as far as his public life is concerned. No, when the storm breaks, his life is exposed and vulnerable, he has his share of every misery, but of benefits – nothing. My concern is for one man, but my warning for all.
SERVANT: Any man who’s poor and chooses to live in town,13 is only likely to increase his depression. For when he looks at someone who lives soft and at leisure, then he can see what a wretched life he has. My master made a great mistake. When he lived in the country, he was never really put to the test, for he belonged to the class that has no standing, and he had open space to protect him.
(?)SERVANT: The dinner party is to entertain a visitor.
COOK: Where does he come from? The Cook has to take that into account. For instance: these visiting types from the islands, brought up on all kinds of fresh fish – they’re not at all taken by salt fish, they just pick it up in passing: but savoury stuffings and spicy sauces – that’s what they go for. Your Arcadian, on the other hand, who knows nothing of the sea, is grabbed by the fishy dishes. A [10] plutocrat from Ionia? Thick soup’s what I give him, a savoury casserole – fine aphrodisiac dishes for fags.
I maintain, Parmenon, that the happiest man is the one who, after happily viewing these impressive phenomena – the sun which is there for all, the stars, the rain, the clouds and the lightning – soon returns to the place from which he came. Whether you live to be a hundred, or have a short life, you will never see these things change, and you will never see anything more impressive.
Think of this time I speak of as a public festival, a visit to this world. Crowds, stalls, thieves, gambling – a sheer waste of time. If you leave early, you’ll get better lodgings; if you’ve still got funds, you’ll have no enemies when you go. The man who stays on grows weary, loses what he had, grows old and miserable and poor as he drifts around, makes enemies, falls prey to plotters, and has a miserable end when he finally departs.
You can stop applying your mind, human wit gets nowhere. Luck’s quite different, whether Luck’s divine or not. Luck controls every- thing, both upsetting and preserving, but human forethought is mere smoke and nonsense. Take my word for it, and you’ll never say I’m wrong. Every thought or word or action – sheer Chance: we just append our signatures.
From The False Herakles [Pseudherakles]
FIRST SPEAKER: Cook, I think you’re quite sickening. ‘How many tables are we to set?’ That’s the third time you’ve asked me! One little pig we’re sacrificing; setting tables, eight, two, one, what’s it to you? Put it down here.
COOK: It isn’t possible to make a savoury casserole, nor the usual rich sauce to go with it (with honey, fine wheat-flour and eggs). Everything’s upside down nowadays. The chef makes cakes in a mould, bakes flat-cakes, makes porridge and brings it in after the [10] smoked fish, followed by a fig-leaf and bunches of grapes. While the kitchen-maid posted opposite him roasts pieces of meat and thrushes – as dessert. When the diner’s had his dessert, and put on his scent and his garland,14 then he’s served dinner all over again – honey-cakes with roast thrushes.
We should all – God, how we should – go about marrying as we go about shopping, not asking pointless questions like ‘Who was the girl’s grandfather? Her grandmother?’, while never asking about or investigating the character of the woman you’re going to spend your life with. It’s folly to rush off to the bank with the dowry-money (so that the manager can assure you it’s not counterfeit), when it’s not going to stay in the house for more than a few months. But to ask no [10] questions about the temperament of the woman who’s going to settle down in your house for the rest of her life, and thoughtlessly to acquire a wife who’s silly and quick-tempered and difficult, and a talker into the bargain! I’ll parade my own daughter all round the city – ‘All potential suitors for this girl, come and talk to her, find out beforehand what sort of pest you’ll be marrying.’ A woman’s bound to be a pest, but happy the man who gets the most tolerable pest.
SON:15 ‘Family’ will be the death of me. If you love me, Mother, don’t talk about ‘his family’ every time I mention a man. It’s people without any good qualities of their own who rush for support to memorials and ‘family’, and number off their grandfathers. But everybody’s got grandfathers! They couldn’t have been born if they hadn’t. If they can’t name them, because they’ve moved or lost [10] their friends, they’re not necessarily worse than those who can. A man with a good character is a ‘noble’ man, Mother, even if he comes from darkest Africa. ‘A Scythian? Oh, dear!’ But Anacharsis16 was a Scythian!
The whole animal kingdom is happier – and has more sense – than humankind. To start with, just consider the donkey: he’s a poor creature, we all agree – but none of his misfortunes is his own fault, they’re all gifts of Nature. But we, quite apart from our inevitable troubles, bring extra troubles on ourselves. We’re hurt if we’re ignored, angry if we’re slandered: a bad dream terrifies us, and an [10] owl’s cry frightens us into fits. Worries, fancies, ambitions, conventions–all these troubles are gratuitous additions to Nature’s gifts.
OLD SERVANT or EX–TUTOR: My dear young man, if, when your mother bore you, you were to be the only man to do as you liked throughout your life, and always to be happy, and if some Divine Power made this bargain with you, then you are right to be aggrieved, for the Power has deceived you and done you down. But if you ‘drew the air which all men share’ – to quote a phrase from tragedy – on the same terms as the rest of us, then you must bear this trouble more courageously, and be reasonable. The nub of the matter is this: you’re a human being, and no living thing [10] swings more quickly between the heights and the depths. And quite right too. We are weak creatures, but we manage great affairs. When we fall, we bring a lot that’s good down with us. Now you, young sir, haven’t lost superlative blessings: your present troubles are quite ordinary ones. So put up with the pain which is also, presumably, ordinary.