2
But Menander’s diction is so polished and its ingredients mingled into so consistent a whole that, although it is employed in connexion with many emotions and many types of character and adapts itself to persons of every kind, it nevertheless appears as one and preserves its uniformity in common and familiar words in general use; but if the action should anywhere call for strange and deceptive language and for bluster, he opens, as it were, all the stops of his flute, but then quickly and plausibly closes them and brings the sound back to its natural quality. And although there have been many noted artisans, no shoemaker ever made the same shoe, no mask-maker the same mask, and no tailor the same cloak, that would be appropriate at the same time for man and woman and youth and old man and domestic slave; but Menander so blended his diction that it comports with every nature, disposition, and age, and he did this although he entered upon his career while still a young man and died at the height of his powers as playwright and poet,Menander was born in 342 b.c. and died in 292-291 b.c. at the age of fifty-two. His first play, probably the Heautontimoroumenos, was brought out when he was somewhat under twenty years of age. See Clark, Class. Phil. i. (1906) pp. 313 ff. when, as Aristotle says, writers make the greatest progress in the matter of diction. If, therefore, we were to compare Menander’s earliest dramas with those of his middle and final periods, we should perceive from them how many qualities he would, had he lived longer, have added to these.
