Portrait of Menander
Roman copy after a Greek original; 1st–2nd centuries A.D., after an original of ca. 290 B.C.
Marble, 15 in. (38.1 cm)
Stephen Carlton Clark, B.A. 1903, Fund
1994.94.1
Menander, the leading figure in Greek New Comedy—a phase of comedic theater extending from the late fourth to the mid-third century B.C.—attained even greater renown in the Roman period. More than sixty known Roman marble portrait heads representing Menander can be traced back to a seated statue of the playwright erected in the theater of Dionysos in Athens in the early third century B.C. An inscribed base for this statue, discovered near the theater, gives the names of the sculptors as Kephisodotos and Timarchos, sons of Praxiteles, one of the greatest of all Greek sculptors. Menander wears an unusual hairstyle, with the hair brushed forward on one side, back on the other, and horizontally across the top of his head.
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