Menander Play Returned From Egypt

In 1952, scholars rediscovered enough of a complete play by ancient Greek playwright Menander of Athens in Egypt for it to be performed again. Menander had been the ancient world’s most popular and admired writer of New Comedy, but most of his work disappeared for nearly 1,000 years. The recovered play, Dyskolos, was found in a papyrus codex and later published in 1958. The discovery brought one of antiquity’s most famous comic voices back from fragments to a full stage work.

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