OP ARTS AND SCIENCES. 377 



the style of Menander than to that of the other comic poets, so far 

 as we can judge by the Fragments that have been preserved. 



" I may add, that the works of Menander were favorites among the 

 Greeks of Egypt and at the court of the Ptolemies, and that he was 

 invited by the king himself to take up his abode in Alexandria. 



" Menander was born B. C. 342, the same year with Epicurus, and 

 died B. C. 291. His father, Diopeithes, was an Athenian admiral, 

 whose fame chiefly depends on his having been defended by Demos- 

 thenes when brought to trial in an Athenian court upon the complaints 

 of King Philip. Menander wrote from a hundred to a hundred and ten 

 plays, and fragments fi'om about ninety have been preserved, with 

 some five hundred unplaced fragments. They vary in length from 

 one word to twenty or thirty lines, giving a sufficiently accurate 

 notion of his general style, and of the tone of that department of 

 Greek poetry to which his works belong. 



" His plays were universally esteemed as models of grace, urbanity, 

 and elegance, and they continued to be played at least down to the 

 time of Plutarch, — perhaps much later. 



" He declined King Ptolemy's invitation. This circumstance was 

 seized upon by Alciphron, a writer of the second century, and author 

 of an agreeable series of fictitious letters, among which is one from 

 Menander to|^Glycera,\his Athenian mistress, in which he tells her of 

 the king's invitation, and his refusal of it, with a great many expressions 

 of ardent affection. ' I have received,' he writes, ' from Ptolemy, the 

 king of Egypt, a letter, in which he makes all sorts of requests, and, 

 like a king, promises, as the saying is, every blessing on earth to me 



and to Philemon Philemon will do as he pleases. But I cannot 



endure the project ; for, by Athena, you Glycera have always been, 

 and shall still be, to me. Intellect, Council of Areopagus, Heliastic 

 Court, — all in all I have not the least idea of making a voy- 

 age to Egypt, — so distant a kingdom, — by the Twelve Gods, not I. 

 If Egypt were in the neighboring island of jEgina, I should never 

 think of quitting my kingdom, which is thy love, to behold, alone in 

 such a multitude of Egyptians, without my Glycera, nothing but a 

 peopled solitude {eprnxiau TroXvavdpanou opav). I would not exchange 

 the dramatic festivals, the exercises of the Lyceum and the sacred 

 Academy, for all the gilded splendors of courts. I would rather be 

 crowned with the ivy of Bacchus than the diadem of Ptolemy, my 

 Glycera sitting in the theatre and looking on. Where, in Egypt, shall I 



VOL. III. 48 



