The New Comedy Poet Menander (who died about 292bc). Mosaic portrait found in a Roman villa of the fourth
century A.D. near the main town on the island of Lesbos (Mytilene). Other panels showed figures from the poet's
plays, similar to that found at Pompeii and illustrated on p. 440. These may derive from illustrations to
manuscripts, possibly of Hellenistic date.
In the Shield Fortune herself appears after the first scenes to explain to the audience what really is going on. This
too is a convention simply accepted and objectively treated. Choice between the delights of foreseeing and those of
surprise seems to have been a consuming problem in Menander's theatre. At any rate the end of every play could
be foreseen: it would be happy. It might recall ancient comedy by being a mildly riotous celebration. The Difficult
Man ends with dancing to flute music at a picnic near the cave of Pan, who in that play represents the contriving
and benevolent divine powers. In fact this pleasant ending, after which there is only an invitation to applause, is the
most memorable feature of the Difficult Man. If one wants to laugh aloud one would do better to delve among the
fragments for a scene of divine possession, possibly false, observed by two terrified Greeks. The play is
Theophoroumene, 'The Possessed Woman'.
Some of the plots are elaborately complicated; it would be hard to recount them in less length than that of the
plays. They are like dances, with contrasted couples, ill suited and well suited, and a variety of interlocking
opposites. The conclusions are also dance-like, shadow-footed, magical in a sense in which Aristophanes was not.
Everything mysteriously falls out just right, at the very last moment and in spite of numerous unlucky strokes and
incompetent intrigues.