There were numerous rivals of whom we know next to nothing--except by the
quotations of Athenaeus and Plutarch, and the Greek grammarians who cited
them to support a dictum--in this as in the preceding periods of comedy
in Athens, for Menander's plays are counted by many scores, and they were
crowned by the prize only eight times. The favourite poet with critics,
in Greece as in Rome, was Menander; and if some of his rivals here and
there surpassed him in comic force, and out-stripped him in competition
by an appositeness to the occasion that had previously in the same way
deprived the genius of Aristophanes of its due reward in Clouds and
Birds, his position as chief of the comic poets of his age was
unchallenged. Plutarch very unnecessarily drags Aristophanes into a
comparison with him, to the confusion of the older poet. Their aims, the
matter they dealt in, and the times, were quite dissimilar. But it is no
wonder that Plutarch, writing when Athenian beauty of style was the
delight of his patrons, should rank Menander at the highest.
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