I sometimes wonder what Menander would say if he were writing today, in a society in which thoughtful people with academic credentials are ridiculed and organizations like QAnon have influence.
Keep in mind that I live in Texas. Dan Patrick, whose greatest contributions to society were as a television clown, is lieutenant governor. Ken Paxton, whose greatest legal feat has been in keeping prosecutors and the bar association at bay, is attorney general.
Menander loved making fun of bad judgment. He was a dramatist — a comedy man.
He was arguably the most quoted writer the ancient Greeks produced, but almost all of his plays have been lost.
The Greeks thought of him as we think of Shakespeare.
Aristophanes the grammarian said something like: “O, Menander! O, Life! Hard to tell who was cribbing from whom.”
Menander included proverbs, street sayings and urban legends in his plays. It’s difficult to tell what was a folk saying and what was an original line.
That’s Menander’s genius. The Athenians loved his work because they saw themselves in it. They heard their own voices in his and couldn’t really tell which was which.
Menander had this saying, which I think is about literary borrowing: “An oak having fallen, every man makes wood.” The oak was sacred to Zeus, so it was more than bad form to cut one down. But if an oak fell on its own, everybody started making doorposts and framing lumber.
The process of writing doesn't begin when you sit down in front of a blank page. Writers begin by collecting materials. Writers scavenge, rustle, borrow and steal.
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