authenticity; the letters addressed to Ptolemy Soter and the discourses in prose on various subjects mentioned by Suïdas are probably spurious.
Till the end of the 19th century, all that was known of Menander were the fragments collected by A. Meineke (1855) and T. Kock, Comicorum atticorum fragmenta, iii. (1888). They consist of some 1650 verses or parts of verses, in addition to a considerable number of words quoted expressly as from Menander by the old lexicographers. From 1897 to 1907 papyri were discovered in different parts of Egypt, containing fragments of considerable length, amounting to some 1400 lines. In 1897, about eighty lines of the Γεωργός; in 1899, fifty lines of the Περικειρομένη; in 1903, one hundred lines (half in a very mutilated condition) from the Κόλαξ; in 1906, two hundred lines from the middle of the Περικειρομένη, the part previously discovered containing the dénouement; five hundred lines from the Ἐπιτρέποντες, generally well preserved; sixty-three lines (the prologue, list of characters, and the first scene), from the Ἥρως; three hundred and forty lines from the Σαμία (the identification of the two last plays is not considered absolutely certain); and twenty lines from an unknown comedy. Subsequently, part of a third copy of the Περικειρομένη was found in Egypt, some one hundred and forty lines, half of which were already known, while the remainder were new (Abhandlungen der königl.-sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, Leipzig), 1908.
It is doubtful whether these fragments, which are of sufficient length to afford a basis for the consideration of the merits of Menander as a writer of comedies, justify the great reputation enjoyed by him in ancient times. With the exception of a scene in the Ἐπιτρέποντες, which would appeal to the litigious Athenians, they contain little that is witty or humorous; there is little variety in the characters, the situations are conventional, and the plots, not of a highly edifying character, are lacking in originality. Menander’s chief excellence’s seem to be facility of language, accurate portrayal of manners, and naturalness of the sentiments which he puts into the mouth of his dramatis personae. It is remarkable that the maxims, which form the chief part of the earlier collections of fragments, are few in the later.
On Menander generally see monographs by C. Benoît (1854) and G. Guizot (1855); J. Geffcken, Studia zu Menander (1898); H. Lübke, Menander und seine Kunst (1892); J. Denis, La Comédie grecque (1886), vol. ii.; H. Weil, Études sur l’antiquité grecque (1900). Editions of the fragments: Γεωργός, by J. Nicole, with translation and notes (1898) and by B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, with revised text and translation (1898); the Ἥρως, Ἐπιτρέποντες, Περικειρομένη, Σαμία, by G. Lefebvre and M. Croiset, with introduction, notes and translation (Cairo, 1907); J. van Leeuwen, with Latin notes (2nd ed., 1908); L. Bodin and P. Mazon, Extraits de Ménandre (Samia and Epitrepontes, 1908); E. Croiset, L’Arbitrage, critical ed. and translation (1908); C. Robert, Der neue Menander (text reconstructed, 1908); Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, “Der Menander von Kairo” in Neue Jahrbücher für das klassische Altertum (1908), pp. 34–62; German trans. by C. Robert, Szenen aus Menander (1908); English by Unus Multorum (1909). See also Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, “Der Landmann des Menandros” in Neue Jahrbücher (1899), p. 513; C. Dziatzko, “Der Inhalt des Georgos von Menander,” in Rhein. Mus. liv. 497, lv. 104; F. Leo, “Der Neue Menander” in Hermes, xliii. 120; E. Capps, “The Plot of Menander’s Epitrepontes” in Amer. Journ. of Philology (1908), p. 410; A. Kretschmar, De Menandri reliquiis nuper repertis (1906); F. G. Kenyon in Quarterly Review (April, 1908); The Times Literary Supplement (Sept. 20, 1907); Athenaeum (Oct. 23, 1897; Aug. 1, 1908; Oct. 24, 1908); and list of articles in periodicals in Van Leeuwen’s edition. (J. H. F.)
MENANDER (Milinda), a Graeco-Indian dynast. When the
Graeco-Indian king Demetrius had been beaten by Eucratides
of Bactria, about 160 B.C., and the kingdom of Eucratides
(q.v.) dissolved after his assassination (c. 150 B.C.), a Greek
dynasty maintained itself in the Kabul Valley and the Punjab.
The only two kings of this dynasty mentioned by classical
authors are Apollodotus and Menander, who conquered a great
part of India. Trogus Pompeius described in his forty-first
book (see the prologue) “the Indian history of these kings,
Apollodotus and Menander,” and Strabo, xi. 516, mentions from
Apollodotus of Artemita, the historian of the Parthians, that
Menander “conquered more tribes than Alexander, as he
crossed the Hypanis to the east and advanced to the Isamus; he
and other kings (especially Demetrius) occupied also Patalene
(the district of Patala near Hyderabad on the head of the delta of
the Indus) and the coast which is called the district of Saraostes
(i.e. Syrastene, in mod. Gujarat, Brahman Saurashtra) and the
kingdom of Sigerdis (not otherwise known); and they extended
their dominion to the Seres (i.e. the Chinese) and Phryni (?).”
The last statement is an exaggeration, probably based upon the
fact that from the mouth of the Indus trade went as far as China.
That the old coins of Apollodotus and Menander, with Greek
legends, were still in currency in Barygaza (mod. Broach), the
great port of Gujarat, about A.D. 70 we are told by the Periplus
maris Erythraei, 48. We possess many of these coins, which
follow the Indian standard and are artistically degenerate as
compared with the earlier Graeco-Bactrian and Graeco-Indian
coins, with bilingual legends (Greek and Kharoshti, see Bactria).
Apollodotus, who must have been the earlier of the two kings,
bears the titles Soter, Philopator, and “Great King”; Menander,
who must have reigned a long time, as his portrait is young on
some coins and old on others, calls himself Soter and “Just”
(δίκαιος). Their reigns may be placed about 140–80 B.C.
Menander appears in Indian traditions as Milinda; he is praised
by the Buddhists, whose religion he is said to have adopted, and
who in the Milindapanha or Milinda Pan̄ho (see below), “the
questions of Milinda” (Rhys Davids, Sacred Books of the East,
xxxv., xxxvi.) relate his discourses with the wise Nāgasena.
According to the Indians, the Greeks conquered Ayodhya and
Pataliputra (Palimbothra, mod. Patna); so the conjecture of
Cunningham that the river Isamus of Strabo is the Son, the great
southern tributary of the Ganges (near Patna), may be true.
The Buddhists praise the power and military, force, the energy
and Wisdom of “Milinda”; and a Greek tradition preserved by
Plutarch (Praec. reip. ger. 28, 6) relates that “when Menander,
one of the Bactrian kings, died on a campaign after a mild rule,
all the subject towns disputed about the honour of his burial,
till at last his ashes were divided between them in equal parts.”
(The Buddhist tradition relates a similar story of the relics of
Buddha.) Besides Apollodotus and Menander, we know from
the coins a great many other Greek kings of western India,
among whom two with the name of Straton are most
conspicuous. The last of them, with degenerate coins seems to
have been Hermaeus Soter. These Greek dynasts may have
maintained themselves in some part of India till about 40 B.C.
But at this time the west, Kabul and the Punjab were already
in the hands of a barbarous dynasty, most of whom have Iranian
(Parthian) names, and who seem therefore to have been of
Arsacid origin (cf. Vincent A. Smith, “The Indo-Parthian
Dynasties from about 120 B.C. to A.D. 100,” in Zeitschrift der
deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 1906, lx. 69 sqq.).
Among them Manes, two kings named Azes, Vonones and especially
Gondophares or Hyndophares are the most conspicuous.
The latter, whose date is fixed by an inscription from the Kabul
Valley dated from the year 103 of the Samvat era (=A.D. 46),
is famous by the legend of St Thomas, where he occurs as king
of India under the name of Gundaphar. Soon afterwards the
Mongolian Scyths (called Saka by the Indians), who had conquered
Bactria in 139 B.C., invaded India and founded the great
Indo-Scythian kingdom of the Kushan dynasty. (See Bactria;
and Persia: Ancient History.)
(Ed. M.)
The Milinda Pañho is preserved in Pali, in Ceylon, Burma and Siam, but was probably composed originally in the extreme north-west of India, and in a dialect spoken in that region. Neither date nor author is known; but the approximate date must have been about the 2nd century of our era. The work is entitled Milinda Pañho—that is, The Questions of King Milinda. In it the king is represented as propounding to a Buddhist Bhikshu named Nāgasena a number of problems, puzzles or questions in religion and philosophy; and as receiving, in each case, a convincing reply. It is a matter of very little importance whether a tradition of some such conversations having really taken place had survived to the time when the author wrote his book. In any case he composed both problems and answers; and his work is an historical romance, written to discuss certain points in the faith, and to invest the discussion with the interest arising from the story in which it is set. This plan is carried out with great skill. An introduction, giving the past and present lives of Milinda and Nāgasena, is admirably adapted to fill the reader with the idea of the great ability and distinction of the two disputants. The questions chosen are just those which would appeal most strongly to the intellectual taste of the India of that age. And the style of the book is very attractive. Each particular point is kept within easy limits of space, and is treated in a popular way. But the earnestness of the author is not concealed; and he occasionally rises into a very real eloquence. The work is several times quoted as authority by Buddhaghosa, who wrote about A.D. 450, and it is the only work, not in the canon, which receives this honour.