[In the following excerpt, Goldberg explains how the Dyskolos achieves much of its impact through a careful balance between the serious and the comic.]

Knemon, a thoroughly inhuman human, and
a grouch to all. He doesn't welcome crowds …

(6-7)

The rhetorical flourish with which Pan introduces Knemon is calculated to suggest a familiar figure, for the misanthrope was an established comic type by Menander's time with a traditional vocabulary to describe his misanthropy. Pan tells us that he lives alone, though a daughter and servant actually share his house, and his character is much like that of Phrynichos' Loner (Monotropos, fr. 18K), who lived ‘Timon's life, wifeless, slaveless, sharp-tempered, approachless, humourless, with my own opinions.’ Phrynichos' play was produced in 414 bc, a century before Menander's Dyskolos; in the generation before Menander, Antiphanes had written a Timon and The Vice-hater (Misoponeros) and Mnesimachos wrote a Dyskolos, while the title Monotropos is attributed to both Ophelion and Anaxilas. The rural setting Pan stresses at the outset is itself part of the characterization that types Knemon. A play by Pherekrates called The Rustics (Agrioi) had a chorus of misanthropic farmers, and Menander's second Brothers, the original of Terence's play of that title, presented a gruff and unsociable farmer.

I'm a farmer, a workman sullen, bitter,
and tight.

(fr. 11K-T, cf. Terence, Ad. 866-7)

Such misanthropy is also evident in a fragment of Menander's Waterpot (Hydria, fr. 401K-T), where a hatred of crowds and a praise of modest country ways are familiar both in sentiment and vocabulary.

How sweet to one who hates low ways is
solitude, and sweet to one who practices no
evil is the proper care of his own land.
From crowds comes envy and the luxury
that, flashing through the city, never lasts.

Knemon, too, is a vice-hater (388, cf. 447ff., 743-5), and his love of solitude, repeatedly stressed, is his undoing (169, 222, 597). Pan's apanthropos and dyskolos are thus key words for introducing the comic misanthrope, as are the joke about hating crowds and the insistence that Knemon lives alone.¹

Such a character offers the dramatist certain distinct possibilities.² Because the misanthrope is unapproachable, other characters will fail in attempts to communicate with him. These failures, which can be dramatized with endless variety, provide a rich vein of humour. Thus Pyrrhias reports his aborted effort to make contact with Knemon (103ff.), we see Sostratos frustrated in a similar attempt (145ff.), and we watch the more boisterous Getas and Sikon fail in succession (454ff.). Secondly, because he is an obstructor fated by the very nature of comedy to be defeated, we can enjoy the eventual triumph over him. Knemon's rescue from the well will cut the dramatic knot by teaching him the need for contact with others, but the play does not end with a touching change of heart. Humour returns with the farcical torment of Knemon by Getas and Sikon in a musical fantasia based upon Knemon's unsociable disposition and the earlier scenes of asking at the door. Yet the misanthrope also teeters on the brink of seriousness. The apparent retreat of Molière's Alceste is more impressive than the wedding of comparative nonentities that closes his Misanthrope; Shakespeare's Timon takes his hatred with him to the grave. Knemon, too, is a figure with some claim to poignancy. His complaints sometimes turn to self-pity, and beneath his bluster are hints of an inability to cope that peaks in the long monologue upon which the play's romantic interest and the resolution of its tension depend. The dyskolos figure has two sides: Menander uses both as he builds a play up around him.

His structural principle is the same one used to such great effect in the Epitrepontes; he keeps the central figure at a distance and develops his character indirectly. Knemon appears only briefly in Act i and intermittently in Act iii. His two major scenes are in Act iv and Act v, which correspond to the climax and dénouement. Menander rations out the effect the dyskolos can produce as the play develops a set of situations to which he must respond. Sostratos' romance, the sacrifice to Pan, and the lost pot are separate events welded into a plot by the cumulative challenge they make to Knemon, and each situation is enacted by a different set of characters. Sostratos and Gorgias represent the love interest. Getas and Sikon develop the sacrifice motif, and the lost pot involves Knemon's immediate household. There are no continuous surrogates such as Habrotonon and Smikrines to weave these situations together. Instead, Menander uses the figure of the dyskolos himself, having each set of characters develop its situation as an approach to him. Approaching Knemon is both the play's chief source of humour and its basic structural device. Action develops through the process of working up to such approaches. To make the ‘working up’ dramatic Menander uses various minor figures. Some, such as Chaireas and Pyrrhias, vanish after a single scene. Others, such as Daos and Simiche, make more than one appearance but remain utility figures rather than significant characters in their own right. As a group they introduce the action and influence our perceptions of it without either overshadowing or overexposing the central figure. This tendency to keep Knemon in the background makes Menander's handling of minor characters particularly significant.

Pan is the first such character, chosen to put space between audience and actors. His call in the play's first line to imagine the scene emphasizes its fanciful quality, and he ends with a formulaic appeal for the audience's favour. Within this deliberately artificial frame Pan introduces themes rather then specifics. He describes Knemon at some length to type and awaken interest in him, but he mentions other characters much more briefly and gives only a hint of the direction the play's action will take. By giving and holding back information, by grammatical subordinations, and by persistent banter he establishes certain priorities among characters without actually saying much about them. How this play of misanthropy and romance will develop is left unstated. Nevertheless, the introduction of Knemon in familiar terms arouses certain expectations, and the hint of divine influence guarantees both that events will end happily and that the audience will not take them at face value.³

Action begins with the entry of Sostratos and Chaireas. Chaireas' first words are the expository question common to many such introductory scenes, and their conversation is intended to furnish details Pan has omitted.⁴ As a protatic maker of leading questions and brief comments Chaireas would be entirely colourless were it not for a single monologue which gives him dramatic identity (57-68). His offer of help no matter what the situation is, with its parataxis and vivid present tenses, the characteristic speech of the parasite or fawner. Like Habrotonon's explanation in the Epitrepontes of how she will show the ring to Charisios, its lively structure introduces into an expository scene the opportunity for mimickry and elaborate gestures. Menander uses the speech to relieve the tedium of expository dialogue, and he spices the discussion by opening it in medias res. The entrance of Pyrrhias then fills the gap, while his description of Knemon looks ahead to the confrontation that follows. Pyrrhias, too, is a figure coloured only by his identification as a familiar comic type, the running slave. Like his Roman descendants, he urges all to get out of his way, he is practically breathless, and he is slow in making his report.⁵ As Pyrrhias appears, Chaireas begins to fade out, and both flee before the approaching Knemon, never to return.⁶ They exist only to enliven the exposition by making it a dialogue and, more subtly, to demonstrate certain points about Sostratos.

This scene with Chaireas and Pyrrhias presents Sostratos with certain choices, and, as Aristotle argued, it is through choices that character is both shaped and revealed.⁷ At the outset Sostratos does not appear very self-reliant. He seeks to involve Chaireas in the affair because he wants a helper of experience, and he sent Pyrrhias to make the first contact rather than go himself. But he is quickly shown to be decent and honest at heart. His distaste for Chaireas' unprincipled advice reflects well on him, and he is quick to admit possible error in sending Pyrrhias. When the terrified Pyrrhias appears and urges flight, Sostratos seems steadfast; ‘you're talking nonsense’ is his only reply to Pyrrhias' repeated requests to flee (123). When Chaireas is sufficiently frightened to desert the cause, Sostratos recognizes his reasons for the excuse they are. The young man thus seems possessed of both courage and good sense, perhaps only slightly undercut by our knowledge that Pan has inspired him. When measured against Chaireas and Pyrrhias his good qualities emerge clearly, but we get a different view when we see him matched against Knemon.

We have had two views of Knemon so far. Pan provided the particulars of his situation and typed him as the proverbial dyskolos. By telling us more about him than the other characters know, he enables us to feel superior to and remote from them. We smile at Sostratos' naïveté in thinking he can arrange a marriage without difficulty, and we wink knowingly at Pyrrhias' description of the apparent madman who answered his polite overtures with a shower of clods, stones, and wild pears. While Pan's description was a direct and omniscient narrative, Pyrrhias' account gains impetus by its confused, pre-eminently human perspective. It is accompanied by Chaireas' and Sostratos' reactions and includes extracts from the aborted conversation itself. This use of oratio recta to enliven a report became a standard technique for Menander, for example in the Samia to spice a crucial narrative (206ff.) and in the Sikyonios to heighten the effect of a messenger's long speech (176ff.). Here in the Dyskolos the device makes the scene on the hill come alive, underscoring the source of Pyrrhias' terror and looking to the entry of Knemon in hot pursuit. The description actually makes Pyrrhias' conduct sound more sensible than Sostratos' anger at his failure, and it is confirmed by Sostratos' own conduct once his friends desert and he faces the raging dyskolos alone. He promptly backs down, just as Pyrrhias had urged.

Knemon's entrance has been carefully prepared, for both prologue and exposition look forward to this moment. Pyrrhias announced his imminent arrival nine lines before he actually reaches the stage, and Sostratos follows his progress up the parodos with uneasy comments. Knemon threatens, he shouts, and of course he walks alone (147ff.). His appearance was no doubt striking—it clearly frightens Sostratos—and his monologue is equally so. Its content is just what we expect. He alludes to the encounter Pyrrhias has just described, and his complaint about the crowd echoes Pan's joke in the prologue. The sardonic reference to Perseus, though not without comic parallels, is both startling and amusing.⁸ Knemon wants a winged horse and a Gorgon's head, but by naming Perseus outright and only alluding to the objects he implies a different wish, to be Perseus himself. The contrasts between irascible old man and mythological hero and between grandiose wish and trivial complaint are both unexpected and comic. But the speech has rather a different effect upon Sostratos. Despite his heroic resolve, Sostratos' only thought now is for his own safety. Overwhelmed by the ferocious appearance, extravagant language, and heavy sarcasm of the old man, he speaks only a feeble excuse, and that a false one, for his presence. Menander denies him a satisfactory exchange, and his only decision is to get additional help. He had sought Chaireas thinking him experienced in such matters; now he will find his slave Getas, who is a man of the world (184). Sostratos remains dependent on others. The impression of maturity and resolution created by the exchanges with Chaireas and Pyrrhias is shattered by the dyskolos.

The comedy of Sostratos' frustration is now augmented by a new figure, Knemon's daughter herself, whose entry introduces the second essential situation, the lost pot. Like Chaireas and Pyrrhias, she is prominent in only a single scene, and like them she is modelled after a recognizable type. This time, however, the model is tragic. Her opening lament, her reference to Knemon's servant (Pan's ‘old serving woman’ and Pyrrhias' ‘wretched old woman’) as a nurse, and perhaps her gestures and very appearance with a water jar are calculated tragic echoes.⁹ Her appeal to the nymphs, which reflects the piety Pan had attributed to her, confirms the seriousness of her character, as do her concern for the old woman's safety and her reluctance to disturb the sacrificers at Pan's shrine. Her appearance introduces the first hint of a serious mode, and it is linked to the one situation that will have a serious effect upon Knemon. Yet the hint is gentle and works in counterpoint with Sostratos' comic asides. As in the opening scene of the Aspis, Menander juxtaposes a tragically posed character and a comic one. Both scenes are essentially expository—the one full of background information, the other explaining the lost pot—and both use the contrast between the two figures to reveal something about the comic one. Sostratos is again momentarily dumbfounded. When faced with the girl's evident distress he can only articulate a string of oaths and an expression of amazement until he collects his wits sufficiently to address her (191ff.).¹⁰ His success at helping the girl restores his sagging spirits, however, and he eventually leaves the stage confident that all will turn out well. His self-apostrophe, like his earlier response to Chaireas and Pyrrhias, reflects an ability to see himself objectively that makes Sostratos, though perhaps a weak character, nevertheless a likeable one.

This succession of events has introduced two situations, the young man in love and the lost pot, but it makes no connection between them. Instead, it focuses attention on two characters: Sostratos, around whom the action seems to revolve, and Knemon, toward whom it looks. Chaireas and Pyrrhias fled at his approach, Sostratos is intimidated by him, and the girl leaves abruptly because she thinks he is coming out. It is, however, Daos who enters, another minor figure used to introduce another ingredient, the tension between city and country. Daos' appearance now, only some twenty-five lines before the end of the act, both rounds off the action presented so far and looks ahead to the next development.¹¹ His is the first articulated country view, and it is one of bitterness and automatic suspicion (208ff.). His comments on the scene between Sostratos and the girl introduce the theme of the next act, but by keeping Daos apart Menander holds that theme in reserve. In his final monologue Daos gives still another view of Knemon which concludes the expository portrait that has been the theme of this act. Daos is the first character to comment seriously on Knemon's way of life by suggesting the harm it can do. Whereas Pan had treated him as a comic type and Pyrrhias' description was tinged with farce, Daos' bitter attack points to the darker side of misanthropy that will provide the turning point of the action. The contrast between his view and the preceding ones is a strategically placed reminder that Knemon is ungeneralizable and will prove to be a type apart.

The countryman's distrust of Sostratos and his motives is soon developed in Act ii as Knemon's estranged step-son Gorgias taxes Daos for not having taken stronger measures. Gorgias is determined to intervene to protect his half-sister, and the suggestion that they approach Knemon themselves brings a spontaneous expression of terror from Daos. Fear of Knemon again looms large, but the necessity is removed by the return of Sostratos. Having failed to find Getas, Sostratos returns alone, resolved to approach Knemon directly. His explanation for Getas' absence introduces the final situation of the play, his mother's sacrifice to Pan, which Sostratos treats with characteristic casualness. His own situation is his prime concern, and he is once again to be frustrated. Though determined to confront Knemon, the best he achieves is a confrontation with Gorgias (269ff.) This confrontation again reflects well on Sostratos.¹² Gorgias begins by making a speech that is extremely formal and stilted. Only after thirteen lines of moralizing does he address Sostratos directly with a second person verb, and even then his charge is indirect (284). Whereas Gorgias tries hard to be general, Sostratos is at once explicit and personal. He forces Gorgias to come to the point by putting the essence of his entire speech into a single sentence: ‘Do you think I've done something unseemly?’ (288). Gorgias must say what he means, but he still clings to the formality of parallel participles and expands the alleged wrong-doing into a pompous ‘deed worthy of a thousand deaths’ (289-93). Sostratos, who has done nothing at all improper, is clearly taken aback, and he is carefully polite at trying to get a word in (293, 299-300). When he does get the chance, his reply is simple and direct. His defence is the honesty of his intentions, reinforced by his natural candour and modesty, and it has the desired effect upon Gorgias. The young farmer becomes more conciliatory, and Sostratos, always quick to recognize a helper, realizes that he can be useful.

Gorgias' first bit of help takes the form of still another description of Knemon and the difficulty of approaching him (323ff.). This description is an amplification of Pan's original portrait and uses familiar elements of the stock characterization; though Gorgias has finally cut the length of his sentences, his structures remain formal.¹³ But Gorgias also adds the hint of another side to Knemon's nature, his appreciation of honest work and his distrust of leisure. Gorgias sees a chance to approach him through this positive trait, and Sostratos is anxious to go along. Now Daos puts in a word, and at his suggestion Sostratos agrees to work beside them in the field. The ever-suspicious Daos has been held in reserve until this point, where his maliciously intended proposal caps the plan. It will, of course, come to nothing since they will not find Knemon in the field, but Sostratos' willingness to shoulder a mattock will increase Gorgias' respect for him and will furnish the material for a later, brilliant monologue. With this decision Sostratos again reverts to type. He avoids a direct appeal to Knemon and once again relies on the advice of others.

The scene is written with great skill. The contrast in style between Sostratos and Gorgias economically distinguishes them while the misunderstanding with which the meeting begins and the abrupt reversal that ends it ensure a comic undercurrent to maintain interest and amusement. But despite the care in construction, the characters themselves seem limited and ultimately uninteresting. Daos is a utilitarian figure enlivened only by his sullenness, and he disappears as a speaking character after line 378. Gorgias' attitudes are stiff and predictable. Sostratos is weak and equally predictable. He is motivated more by the necessities of dramatic romance than by an individualised passion, and his constant reliance on others strongly implies that his fate will not be determined by his own actions. Pan's prologue has promised as much, and it is noteworthy that Pan phrased his intervention as the result of interest in the girl, not in Sostratos. His limitations as a central character lie at the heart of the discomfort with which early critics discussed the play; when the Dyskolos is summarised as the story of Sostratos' romance it does not sound very interesting.¹⁴ The key ingredient lacking from Sostratos' character is the ability to articulate his emotions. He tells Chaireas he is lovesick and he admits as much to Gorgias, but his only expansion of this theme is a factual explanation of the action he has taken. By leaving the lover's feelings unexpressed Menander eliminates the opportunity for psychological tensions that might advance him beyond his type and impress the audience too deeply. The self-irony that increases our liking for him also keeps him at a distance. Gorgias, too, is kept at a distance. His function in the play is not unlike Habrotonon's in the Epitrepontes. The independent threads of the action are connected through his intervention, and as a farmer he keeps the rustic perspective before us in Knemon's absence. But he is not granted the lively mind and complex motivation that individualised Habrotonon, nor does he occasionally seize the limelight. His attitudes are never a surprise; when he takes charge his heroism is enacted off-stage, and Sostratos tells of it. Menander deliberately flattens the characterization of his two young men to prevent them from overshadowing the dyskolos. Their confrontation is neatly divided between bringing them together in Sostratos' interest and discussing the difficulties of approaching Knemon. Once again other characters look toward Knemon.

With Sostratos' affairs well in hand, Menander now reintroduces the broad comedy he had suspended after Pyrrhias' exit in Act i. A cook enters with a sheep, soon followed by a slave staggering under a heavy load. Both are familiar comic figures, and they reinforce their comic appearance with equally familiar lines, the cook with stock jokes on making mincemeat and the slave with an exaggerated complaint (398ff.). This slave is immediately identified as Getas, whom Sostratos had linked with his mother's intention to sacrifice. Getas has hired the cook for this purpose and proceeds to explain the circumstances that led to the sacrifice: Sostratos' mother had a dream in which Pan put fetters on her son, dressed him in work clothes, and gave him a mattock (412ff.). As an obvious echo of the action planned for Sostratos, the dream connects the sacrifice motif with the young man's romance. It also puts further distance between the audience and Sostratos by the reminder that Sostratos' destiny is out of his hands. Equally significant is the fact that Menander constructs this link with wholly comic characters. By linking the gentle irony of Sostratos' romance with the broad comedy of these two, Menander associates his situation with gaiety and farce. Then, having linked the sacrifice and Sostratos, he links it with Knemon.

The dyskolos himself opens Act iii, only to be confronted with the arriving party. Sight of this new crowd brings further proof of Knemon's misanthropy and a decision to stay at home rather than risk contact with them outside.¹⁵ Knemon's refusal to go out is necessary to frustrate Gorgias' plan to meet him in the field and to keep him where he can go after the lost pot himself. Menander also embellishes his situation for comic effect. The sacrificers are short of a cauldron, and the only way to get one is to approach the dyskolos. Getas, like Pyrrhias before him, is defeated by Knemon's ferocity and refusal to become involved. Though Getas is no coward and can return tit for tat in a comic exchange, his mission is unsuccessful, and he leaves the field to Knemon (468ff.). Next comes the cook, who claims a special expertise in making such requests. His monologue explaining the technique he will use, though noteworthy for its liveliness and its role in setting up the next bit of farce, is a stock device not of cooks, but of parasites. As he says, ‘a man needing something has to be ingratiating’ (492-3). Though the assembling of his equipment is a standard opportunity for a cook's speech, Menander does not develop the motif in the familiar way. Rather than let the cook develop his own theme, Menander harnesses his potential for practical ends.¹⁶ The comic expansion of the request is done by Knemon, and the cook must admit to being thoroughly beaten.

I've come to ask for a stewing pot.          ::          I haven't got a stewing pot nor an axe nor salt nor
vinegar nor anything else, but I have told everyone
in the neighbourhood plainly, don't come near me.
                                                            Thanks a lot.          ::          I don't want
any thanks from you people.          ::          Well then, no thanks.          ::
What incurable troubles!          ::          He's given me a real pounding.

(505-15)

This inability of the broad characters Pyrrhias, Getas, and Sikon the cook to get the better of Knemon puts him in a unique position. Menander is using the figure of the misanthrope for comic effect, but by compressing and rationing out these farcical approaches he prevents his dyskolos from being identified as a completely farcical character himself.

The differing descriptions of him also work against a simple identification, and the situation that affects him most profoundly is carefully kept distinct from farce. Whereas Sostratos' romance is linked to the broad comedy of the sacrificers, the lost pot was introduced by Knemon's daughter with tragic overtones. Now in Act iii, as the situation at the well becomes more complex, Menander again chooses a tragic model for representing it. The old serving woman Simiche enters as a tragic exangelos to announce grave news within. Like the nurse in Euripides' Hippolytos, she reports the misfortune that triggers the play's climax, and she too is followed on-stage by the principal character. Simiche, however, is deprived of a sympathetic audience and abruptly breaks off her account at the sound of the opening door. Yet despite Getas' uncharitable comments about her, he is sufficiently moved by her dilemma to offer help, and even after Knemon's abusive reply to her, Getas closes the scene with an expression of sympathy. His reference to battling against the rocks echoes the prologue and puts a better construction on Knemon's lot than the complaint with which Daos closed Act i. The serious mode first suggested by modelling the girl and nurse on tragic types begins to surface as Getas' rudeness and initial lack of sympathy are momentarily subdued by the problem they face.

Act iv begins with a seeming repeat of this scene, but this time it is played before a different audience. Simiche is again the tragic exangelos with the final news that Knemon himself has fallen into the well, but Sikon refuses to be anything other than the comic cook. He reverses the tragic expectation by receiving the news with unabashed glee and the suggestion that Simiche fix the old man permanently (629ff.). Only the timely appearance of Sostratos and Gorgias saves the day. This scene is the closest Menander comes to representing the cook along conventional lines, and it is the last bit of broad humour until the finale. Sikon's language is coloured by frequent oaths, each to a different divinity, and the literal turn of a proverb. He is inquisitive and verbose, and the moral he draws from the mishap—that one should never wrong a cook—is a common manifestation of a mageiros' self-importance. His malicious glee capitalises on the comic wish to punish the misanthrope, but his contrast with the other characters awakens a more sympathetic undercurrent. Simiche's only thought, despite her harsh treatment, was to save Knemon. Gorgias and Sostratos run to the rescue, and Sikon himself reports the daughter's cry of anguish within the house. By leaving the stage to Sikon alone, Menander isolates his vengeful attitude from those closest to Knemon. Thus even in the finale, which Sikon's taunts in some sense prefigure, Simiche is kept apart from the developing farce. She will be unaffected by Getas' sharpness of tongue and by the change of metre, and she will not be part of the stage action taking shape. Comic opposition to the dyskolos is beginning to settle on the coarse, stock figures only, leaving space for sympathy and some degree of reconciliation between Knemon and the more individualised characters Sostratos and Gorgias.

The humanisation of Sostratos began with his work in the field. Though Menander chose to keep Sostratos' mental state in shadow to prevent too deep an identification with him, he is more willing to portray Sostratos' physical state in detail because of its comic potential. Sostratos' monologue describing his experience with the mattock capitalises on his capacity for wry self-description and his essential innocence (522ff.). The progress of pain up his back is told in graphic detail calculated to elicit a superior laugh from experienced workmen and amused sympathy from the more urbane. Yet he still relies on Gorgias, and the mysterious power of Pan's shrine to attract him reminds us of the greater forces at work upon him. Our superior knowledge continues to keep Sostratos at a distance, but his highly individual narrative style, enlivened by its humour and the use of oratio recta in reporting Gorgias' role, accentuates his likeable traits and begins to develop a kind of sympathy for him. This process of increased sympathy is continued with his next monologue, which describes the rescue of Knemon from the well (666ff.). Once again Gorgias was in charge and actually ran the risk of descending after the old man while Sostratos stood by with one hand on the rope and both eyes on the girl, but it is Sostratos' excited description of his own hapless lovesickness that attracts attention. His initial exclamations also divert attention from Sikon and the coarse humour he represents. In place of the broad jibes and self-importance with which Sikon greeted the news, Sostratos' narrative introduces the more subtle humour of his innocent inflation of these events to cosmic proportions and the confessed modesty of his own role in them. Though for Sostratos too Knemon's accident was timely, it is the rescue (and the opportunity to be near the girl) that cheers him. Sostratos' inability to play the hero's part himself is countered by his ability to describe the girl as if a goddess and by turning Gorgias into a Titan. He again wins sympathy by the openness of his description and the infectious joy with which he narrates it. He is even about to take us into his confidence, but once again his plans are disrupted by the dyskolos as the old man himself is suddenly wheeled on-stage (689ff.).

The serious mode used to colour the development of Knemon's situation all along reaches a height with this appearance on the ekkyklema. He enters like a stricken hero of tragedy, a stance carefully foreshadowed by having modelled the narration of his mishap on a tragic pattern. In Euripides' Herakles, for example, the catastrophe of the hero's madness is announced by Iris and Lyssa. A chorus, punctuated by cries from within, builds suspense, and then a messenger enters to report how the mad Herakles has killed his wife and small children. Only then do the hero and his murdered family appear. This is the structure Menander adapts for the Dysokolos.¹⁷ Simiche's call for help pre-figures the action, while Sikon's monologue performs the function of a chorus. It, too, is punctuated by an off-stage cry, and dramatization of his expectations whets our own. Sostratos is the messenger. In place of having a chorus to address he speaks directly to the audience. Then he gives details of the rescue and prepares for the entrance of the hero himself; his tendency to inflate the magnitude of these events is perhaps an unconscious echo of the tragic function he fulfils. As in the opening scene of the Aspis and the arbitration scene of the Epitrepontes, Menander uses the tragic pattern not for parody but to guide his audience's expectations and colour its perceptions. Though he does not forego comedy entirely, the thrust of this scene is in another direction. The treatment of Knemon has hinted at a serious underside, and now the explicit association prepares us to see something of it.

As sometimes happens in tragedy, the metre changes to trochaic tetrameters to mark a passage that climaxes development of the plot.¹⁸ Like Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis, Knemon cuts the dramatic knot by renouncing the position that has obstructed progress of the inevitable action (708ff.). In explaining and amending his character, his speech integrates the variant perspectives presented by others. The description of his own conduct parallels those given by Pan and Gorgias (724-6, cf. 9-10, 332-5). His discovery of responsibility toward other people answers Daos' earlier complaint about his treatment of his daughter (715-17, cf. 222-4), and Knemon accepts for himself the adjectives ‘harsh and grouchy’ … (cf. 242, 325). His excuse is the world's selfishness and dishonesty, which echoes his complaint in Act iii about the greed and hypocrisy of sacrificers, but Gorgias' deed has taught Knemon the limitations of this view. He therefore proposes the changes that make possible the play's happy resolution, but they have a curious limitation of their own. Knemon's acknowledgement of social responsibility is immediately followed by his delegation of it. He explicitly wishes to continue living his own way, and his reason for adopting Gorgias is to avoid the social intercourse otherwise necessary to secure his daughter's future. When Gorgias attempts to bring Sostratos forward, Knemon will not wish to become involved. The poignancy of his speech lies in this evident price for his misanthropy. He is wet and shaken, and he relies on his daughter for physical support. He must confess his error, but he cannot change his ways. Like Molière's Alceste he spurns the sympathy offered him, and like Shakespeare's Timon he is prepared to die as he lived, alone. His monologue, so solemn in form and sentiment, concludes the chain of situations that have been presented with consistent tragic overtones. The fall down the well which motivates it links the lost pot and the scattered descriptions of Knemon's character into the dramatic praxis that profoundly affects his relatives and his household.

The link between this action and the romance surrounding Sostratos still remains to be made, but Menander has prepared for it by a mixture of modes. We know that Knemon will not really die, and his serious confession is juxtaposed with Sostratos' lighter situation. The young lover has been kept in the background, but he remains present as a comic figure. Knemon snarled at his love-lorn sigh when the girl puts her arms around the old man and his only other acknowledgement of Sostratos, mention of the sunburn, recalls the lover's most comic moment. Gorgias also recalls this moment and links it to the betrothal he is now empowered to make. Sostratos' presence, like Smikrines' at the beginning of the Aspis and like Moschion's during the recognition scene of the Perikeiromene, prevents the tragic colouring from becoming too strong by preparing for the comic developments that follow. With the dyskolos wheeled back in, Gorgias' comic attempt at a betrothal reasserts a light mode (761ff.). He juxtaposes the verbs for betrothing the girl and granting a dowry in some haste to fit the formal words in, and he concludes with a characteristically convoluted bit of moralizing about the reward of virtue.¹⁹ They are interrupted, however, by the arrival of Sostratos' father Kallipides, whose only thought is for his delayed meal. His mention of the sheep recalls the antics of the cook who brought it and the noisy crowd of sacrificers. The act that began with a tragic exangelos thus ends with an echo of past comedy and the promise of a happy resolution to come.

The marriage of Gorgias to Sostratos' sister is the first element of this resolution. Gorgias has consistently served a double function, and he now receives the second portion of a double reward.²⁰ As an industrious farmer he represented the better side of Knemon's nature, and he defended the interests of Knemon's household. For this he was rewarded by being made Knemon's heir. Gorgias also linked the misanthrope's situation with the love interest by being Sostratos' sympathetic advisor, and he now receives the reward for this loyalty. It is arranged by Sostratos in a sudden reversal of their respective roles. Sostratos proposes the marriage and forces his father to agree (797ff.). The argument he uses—the need for employing wealth wisely—is a philosophic commonplace. What is striking is that it comes from him. Gorgias has been the moralizer. Pan introduced him with a gnomic phrase, and he first confronted Sostratos with a series of moral pronouncements. Sostratos then forced him to come to the point with the suppressed impatience of the young sophisticate. Maxims, as Aristotle noted in his work on rhetoric, are the perogative of the elderly and the experienced, but they are a sign of rusticity and boorishness in the young. Yet now Sostratos himself adopts this mannerism, and it is Kallipides who grows impatient. He is tired of moralising and urges Sostratos to go off and arrange things. Sostratos' ability to win his father to the marriage, followed by Gorgias' eventual acceptance of the arrangement, resolves the tension between city and country and between rich and poor that has surfaced at intervals through the play. The contact Sostratos has had with both sides enables him to bridge the differences. The experience in Phyle has not left him unchanged. In his last appearance Sostratos seems to grow in dramatic presence, but his newly-won maturity is soon undercut by an innocent boast. Once again he resorts to a maxim (‘everything is attainable by diligence and hard work’, 862), and he offers himself as an example because he has achieved a marriage no man thought possible. This is partly true, of course, but he did not get the girl without considerable help from Gorgias and not without the connivance of Pan. The resulting irony of Sostratos' self-congratulation preserves his comic image. Unlike Charisios of the Epitrepontes and, … unlike Moschion of the Samia, the conclusion does not bring Sostratos the self-knowledge that will foster true sympathy for him. He still understands less about his affairs than we do, and that extra knowledge continues the distance between him and us.

The second element of the resolution involves Knemon, whose presence hovers just behind the scene. The moral argument Sostratos uses with his father has distinct echoes of Knemon's own situation. The observation that position brings responsibility is precisely the lesson Knemon has had to learn, and some might hear in the statement that an open friend is more valuable than hidden wealth an allusion to Timon and his buried hoard. Nor has Knemon's dyskolia, though tempered by his mishap, been entirely supplanted. Both Sostratos and Gorgias wish to include him in the festivities, but he persistently refuses (852ff., 867ff.). Simiche's warning that no good will come of his recalcitrance echoes Daos' earlier foreboding and suggests that further trouble lies ahead for him (875-8, cf. 220-6). Knemon's final appearance is in a musical fantasia based upon these hints and the comic approach to the dyskolos that has unified so much of the preceding action.

A pipe his heard, and the metre changes to iambic tetrameters. Getas' remark to the piper calls attention to the change and deliberately makes us aware of the dramatic illusion (880). Just as Pan had introduced the artificial scene by telling us to imagine Phyle, Getas now signals the approaching finale by a similar reminder. His appearance with Sikon re-introduces the broad humour they have consistently represented, and the revenge they plan on Knemon is a further development of their comedy in Act iii. That earlier humour had developed gradually. Getas' request for a cauldron was natural enough in its context. Sikon's involvement, enlivened by his set speech on techniques for borrowing, and the spectacle of Knemon's increasing rage broaden the comedy. Their escalated demands now, without any real context, move the motif fully into the realm of farce. With Knemon carried outside first Sikon, then Getas, and then the two together torment him with outrageous requests (912ff.). One small cauldron becomes any number of large cauldrons and is quickly followed by requests for bowls, tables, carpets, and a bronze mixing bowl, all rather grand objects neither the pair is likely to need nor Knemon at all likely to have on hand. The resulting structural link with the earlier action is strengthened by a thematic link, for this ragging is the final price Knemon must pay for his misanthropy. By sending everyone away he has left himself undefended, and he is reduced to the same misery (dystychia) to which he had previously reduced others (919, cf. 574). Sikon taunts him with this fact in the last description Knemon receives (931ff.). Coming just after the old man's threat to ‘kill that Simiche’, Sikon's remark that he avoids crowds, hates women, and refuses to have anything to do with sacrificers sounds much like the dyskolos of old. The traditional vocabulary of misanthropy appears once again. This time, however, owing largely to Sikon's long-restrained loquacity and Knemon's weakened constitution, the approachers overwhelm him. The old man is almost literally swept away by their energy and carried to the celebration in spite of himself. The play Pan began with an appeal to imagination and the description of a traditional comic misanthrope ends with a fantastic triumph over the same figure. What has come between is a romance designed to dramatise the various facets of his misanthropy and provide elements for a victory over it.

Menander's dexterity in weaving the diverse threads of his play into a unified fabric is considerable. The decision to develop Knemon's character indirectly enabled him to reveal its comic side through Pyrrhias, Getas, and Sikon and its serious side through the tragically posed daughter and servant and the virtuous industry of Gorgias. Sostratos' hunting trip to Phyle was the catalyst for bringing these elements together, and through his happiness happiness comes to others. The Dyskolos is thus pre-eminently a play of combined modes and situations united around the traditional figure of the misanthrope. It is an extremely skillful play, but not an entirely satisfying one, for it lacks inner tension. The great power Menander's plays can generate comes from representation of the inner conflicts their situations can produce: the agony of Polemon in the Perikeiromene learning the consequences of his rash act, Charisios' sudden realisation of his own hypocrisy in the Epitrepontes. This kind of power is missing from the Dyskolos. The dark side of misanthropy is developed as something detached from Knemon. Like Polemon and Charisios he suffers in a situation of his own making, but his suffering is not represented in personal terms. Though for a moment he reveals his inner torment, he relieves the crisis by the mechanical expedient of adopting Gorgias, and his final reconciliation is set as a deliberate fantasy. The countryman's distrust of city folk is naïvely removed by Sostratos' willingness to shoulder a mattock in his own interest, and the antagonism of rich and poor is swept away in Kallipides' formulaic indulgence of his son. Though the events of the play alter the circumstances of all its characters, the changes are largely external. Menander eliminates difficulties without really resolving them. In the Dyskolos he reveals his skill in structuring events, but not yet his ability to develop personalities.…

Notes

1. … For the type see W. Schmid, ‘Menanders Dyskolos und die Timonlegende’, RhM 102 (1959) 157-82 and W. Görler, ‘Knemon’, Hermes 91 (1963) 268-87. The Dyskolos itself influenced the later tradition, as evidenced by Aelian's Rustic Letters 13-16 and Lucian's dialogue Timon in the second century ad. For these developments see P. Photiades ‘Le type du misanthrope dans la littérature grecque’, CE 68 (1959) 305-26, and I. L. Thyresson, ‘Quatre lettres de Claude Elien inspirées par le Dyscolos de Ménandre’, Eranos 62 (1964) 7-25.

2. Well discussed by C. Préaux, ‘La misanthrope au théâtre’, CE 68 (1959) 327-41.

3. The influence of Pan on the ensuing action is best discussed by A. Pastorino, ‘Aspetti religioso del Dyscolos di Menandro’, Menandrea (Genoa 1960) 79-106 and W. Ludwig, ‘Die Cistellaria und das Verhältnis von Gott und Handlung bei Menander’, EH 84-91. For Pan's language in the prologue and its thematic significance see S. M. Goldberg, ‘The Style and Function of Menander's Dyskolos Prologue’, SO 53 (1978) 57-68.

4. Similar questions to elicit expository information are posed in Menander's Heros 4-5 and Aspis 19, cf. Terence HT 61-2 and Eun. 46. In the opening scene of Pseudolus Plautus plays upon the conventional device by having Pseudolus expand on the very need to ask the question. E. Fraenkel, Elementi plautini in Plauto (Florence 1960) 390-3 contrasts this Plautine embellishment with the Heros fragment. The expository function of the dialogue with Chaireas and Pyrrhias is well analyzed by A. Schäfer, Menanders Dyskolos (Meisenheim 1965) 34-41, hereafter cited … as Schäfer.

5. E. W. Handley, The Dyskolos of Menanders (London 1965) 143, hereafter cited … as Handley, offers the entrance of Amphitheos at Acharnians 176ff. as a prototype. Other examples are more speculative. The two lines of Menander, fr. 690 K-T may suggest a running messenger. Another possible candidate is P. Hibeh 5 fr. a, reprinted at OCT 338. On these passages see T. Guardì, ‘I precedenti greci della figura del servus currens della commedia romana’, Pan 2 (1974) 5-15, which errs, however, in identifying Daos of Aspis 399ff. as another example. For the Roman servus currens see G. Duckworth, The Nature of Roman Comedy (Princeton 1952) 106-7. For Chaireas as parasite or fawner see Handley 140-41. Note how the repeated taus and omegas of his opening lines help make the speech a set piece.

6. Does Pyrrhias re-enter at 214? This is the intention of the papyrus, which has a dicolon after kakodaimon, a paragraphos, and the note ‘Pyrrhias’ in the right margin. Handley 27 therefore suggests that he has overheard Sostratos at 181, perhaps shown to the audience as an extra in costume and mask by the door of the shrine. This is the most plausible interpretation of such punctuation, but it is open to two serious objections. First, there would have to be an extremely quick change of costume for the actor playing the girl and Pyrrhias, even granting Handley's point that 217 is spoken from within the door. Second, there is no dramatic need to reintroduce Pyrrhias, either seen at 181, where his appearance might distract attention from Sostratos' monologue, or heard at 214, where he would be a pointless intrusion between Sostratos' speech and Daos' reaction to it. The correct explanation, accepted by G-S 170, was made independently by E. Grassi, ‘Note a Menandro’, A & R 6 (1961) 144 and T. B. L. Webster, ‘Self-Apostrophe in Menander’, CR 15 (1965) 17-18. Lines 213-17 are spoken by Sostratos himself, interrupted by Daos' aside. Similar self-apostrophes are found at Epitr. 913ff. and probably 979ff. and at Dis Ex. 23ff. The punctuation and marginal note in the papyrus either arose through misunderstanding of the passage, or the dicolon may originally have been intended to mark the change of tone in the monologue and was then misinterpreted and the paragraphos added. If this interpretation is correct, is Pyrrhias' disappearance at 144 unmotivated? Hardly, for Knemon's appearance is ample reason for any right-thinking person to vanish, as Chaireas does. Pyrrhias' entire scene is one of flight. He is eager to get away. The motion of the act is toward exits, first Chaireas, then Pyrrhias, and then, having failed to approach Knemon, Sostratos. To bring Pyrrhias back for a gratuitous few lines runs contrary to the flow of action.

7. Aristotle, EN 1112a, cf. 1103a31ff. This psychology is particularly suited to drama, for it allows the dramatist to demonstrate character through action, the method most appropriate to his medium. Thus Aristotle emphasizes that drama represents men in action, and he sees choice (proairesis) as a key element in dramatizing character. See Poetics 1448a1 and 1450b8ff. M. Anderson, ‘Knemon's hamartia’, G&R 17 (1970) 199-207 develops the point in the context of the Dyskolos.

8. For the parallels see Handley 158. The closest is perhaps Menander, fr. 718K-T (OCT 321) where the mythological example is also unexpectedly twisted, this time by pinning Prometheus to his rock for having created woman.

9. Handley 164-5 likens the lamenting girl with her water jar to Euripides' Electra and cites as parallels for the tragic diction Aeschylus, Pers. 445 and Euripides, Phoen. 373. E. G. Turner, EH 27 thinks the echo of Electra ‘a fairly recondite allusion’; what is significant is the way Menander builds upon a complex of echoes, verbal and probably visual, that would clearly be recognized as tragic, though only some in the audience might be able to cite a particular tragic prototype.

10. The text of this exchange is in some doubt; the papyrus may indicate a change of speaker at 196. There is a dicolon but no paragraphos, perhaps intending to mark a break in the speech rather than a change of speaker. If the rest of the line is given to Sostratos, another oath is the likely restoration. See Handley 166 and G-S 167. P. Flury, Liebe und Liebessprache bei Menander, Plautus und Terenz (Heidelberg 1968) 38 detects ‘a paratragic ring’ in Sostratos' exclamation intended to make his position amusing without being laughable. The suddenness of the girl's appearance and the social barriers ordinarily imposed between young men and women of Sostratos' class might help rationalize his incoherence, but the volubility of his oaths is surely intended to make his position comic, if not slightly foolish.

11. The technique of introducing a new development just before an act break was first discussed by E. W. Handley, ‘The Conventions of the Comic Stage’, EH 11-13 and the discussion at 27-9. For the social tension in the play see E. S. Ramage, ‘City and Country in Menander's Dyskolos’, Philologus 110 (1966) 194-211 and D. Del Corno, ‘Il problema dell' urbanesimo in Menandro', Dioniso 43 (1969) 85-94.

12. The scene is discussed well by W. G. Arnott, ‘The Confrontation of Sostratos and Gorgias’, Phoenix 18 (1964) 110-123 and F. H. Sandbach, ‘Menander's Manipulation of Language’, EH 116-19. It may be noted that the formality of Gorgias' speech here is primarily a device for heightening the contrast between them and is not an indelible mark of his character. As noted by Handley 176, his address to Daos at 234ff. is much less rigid. Distinctive language is used only as the dramatic situation requires, much as was done with Habrotonon in the Epitrepontes. W. Görler, ‘Menander, Dyskolos 233-381 und Terenz, Eunuchus 817-922’, Philologus 105 (1961) 299-307 observes striking similarities of structure between these two scenes which may suggest a formulaic type of confrontation that depends upon elaborate characterisations for its individuality.

13. Compare Gorgias' parallel negatives at 324-5 and 329-31 with Pan's emphatic negatives at 10 and, for example, Phrynichos fr. 18K, the Monotropos fragment quoted above. For Gorgias' ‘how sweet to one …’ compare the Hydria fragment. Note the emphatic position of the key word monos at 329 and 331; Sostratos uses chalepos at 325, a twin of the key word dyskolos (cf. 628, 747).

14. See for example L. A. Post, ‘Virtue Promoted in Menander's Dyscolus’, TAPA 91 (1960) 152-61 and B. A. van Groningen, ‘The Delineation of Character in Menander's Dyscolus,’ Recherches de Papyrologie 1 (1961) 95-112. Schäfer 29-30 argued that while Knemon is intended to be a central figure, the main interest lies with Sostratos and the play is really a Liebesromanze. This led him to examine what he called ‘the disintegration of a double plot’ (75ff.), and he concluded that the crucial problem with the Dyskolos is Menander's failure to combine these two elements successfully. Viewing the play as a series of situations all linked by the device of approaching the dyskolos may help overcome Schäfer's objection.

15. The attribution of parts here is in some doubt, though the lively intention of the scene is clear. OCT is probably correct to give a speaking part to Sostratos' mother. See G-S 200-3 and, for arguments on the other side, Handley 207-9. In favour of OCT are the usually feminine exclamation talan at 438 and the lack of precedent in Greek drama for the entry of a party without a speaker among them. Three speakers are universally accepted for the scene. Handley introduced Sikon at 434. Use of the expression ‘to us’ at 437 is not really appropriate to him, however, since strictly speaking he is working for the party rather than being part of it. Note Getas' ‘to you’ at 555. Further, while there is no dramatic gain in introducing the cook, use of the mother to animate the approaching party makes Knemon's complaint about the crowd at 431 more appropriate and provides a better motivation for the action.

16. H. Dohm, Mageiros (Munich 1964) 243 notes Menander's restriction of the cook's normal loquacity, while Handley 220 observes the similarity of form with Chaireas' monologue at 57ff. Contrast the more typical expansion of the cook's speech in Alexis' Cauldron (Lebes, fr. 127K) and The Night Festival (Pannychis fr. 174K).

17. This similarity of structure was noted by T. B. L. Webster, Studies in Menander, 2 ed. (Manchester 1960) 229. Some have questioned the existence of the ekkyklema to show internal scenes at this time, but both Handley 263-4 and G-S 239-41 adopt the commonsense view that some device, probably wheeled, is parodied by Aristophanes and used here by Menander as a tragic echo. For what it is worth, the highly probable restoration εἰσκυ]κλεῖτ' at 758 is the vox propria for the withdrawal of the ekkyklema (cf. Pollux, Onomastikon iv. 128). The device itself and the argument for its existence in classical times is discussed by P. Arnott, Greek Scenic Conventions in the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford 1962) 78-88.

18. T. Drew-Bear, ‘The Trochaic Tetrameter in Greek Tragedy’, AJP 89 (1968) 385-405 observes this use of the metre in the Agamemnon, Oedipus, Philoctetes, Helen, and Iphigenia at Aulis. Also M. Imhof, ‘Tetrameterszene in der Tragödie’, MH 13 (1956) 125-43. This tragic usage tells against the suggestion of F. Perusino, ‘Tecnica e stile nel tetrametro trocaico di Menandro’, RCCM 4 (1962) 45-64 that the seriousness of Knemon's speech is undercut by the rhythm.

19. Contrast the comparative disorder of Gorgias' lines with the formulaic language of comic betrothal used by Kallipides at 842ff. (cf. Mis. 444ff., Perik. 1013ff. and G-S 531 for further examples). The only formal language we know for Athenian betrothals comes from comic passages such as these. See A. R. W. Harrison, The Laws of Athens, vol. 1 (Oxford 1968) 3-9 on betrothals and 48-54 on dowries.

20. The relationship of this scene to the rest of the play is treated especially well by Schäfer 63-6.