Menedemus

“ Taking this to heart, and in order to punish himself for his ill-timed severity, Menedemus, though now an aged man, fatigues himself by laboring at agricultural pursuits from morning till night. At the period when the Play commences, Clinia has just returned to Attica, but not daring to go to his father’s house, is entertained by Clitipho, the son of Chremes, who is the neighbor of Menedemus. ”

“ So that, when on one occasion, after the death of Asclepiades, a friend of his came to a banquet, and when the slaves refused him admittance, Menedemus ordered them to admit him, saying that Asclepiades opened the door for him, even now that he was under the earth. And the men who chiefly supported them were Hipponicus the Macedonian, and Agetor the Lamian. And Agetor gave each of them thirty minæ, and Hipponicus gave Menedemus two thousand drachmas to portion his daughters with; and he had three, as Heraclides tells us, the children of his wife, who was a native of Oropus. ”

“ For the less hope the young man entertains, the greater the difficulty with which he’ll bring his father to his own terms. I’m not sure even, that he may not take a wife, and then no thanks for Syrus. But what is this? The old man’s coming out of doors; I’ll be off. What has so far happened, I am surprised at, that he didn’t order me to be carried off from here: now I’ll away to Menedemus here, I’ll secure him as my intercessor; I can put no trust in our old man.
Goes into the house of Menedemus.
Scene III. Enter Chremes and Sostrata from the house. ”

“ This point being admitted, Menedemus continued: To benefit is not the same as good, therefore good does not benefit. After the time of Menedemus the Elean sect became known as the Eretrian. Its exponents denounced all negative propositions and all complex and abstruse theories, declaring that only affirmative and simple doctrines could be true.
The Megarian sect was founded by Euclid of Megara (not the celebrated mathematician) , a great admirer of Socrates. The Athenians passed a law decreeing death to any citizen of Megara found in the city of Athens. ”

“ Menedemus, then, who was born in the city Eretria, abolished all plurality and difference of virtues, supposing that there was but one only virtue, and the same known by sundry names: For he said, that it was but one and the same thing which men called temperance, fortitude, and justice: like as if one should say, A reasonable creature and a man, he meaneth the selfsame thing. ”

“ SCENE IX. Enter Menedemus.
Mene. (to himself) . Oh son, how happy hast thou made thy father,
Convinc’d of thy repentance!
Chrem. (overhearing) . How mistaken!
Mene. Chremes! I wish’d for you.—’Tis in your power,
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And I beseech you do it, to preserve
My son, myself, and family.
Chrem. I’ll do’t.
Wherein can I oblige you?
308 Mene. You to-day
Have found a daughter.
Chrem. True. What then?
Mene. My Clinia
Begs your consent to marry her.
Chrem. Good Heaven!
What kind of man are you?
Mene. What mean you, Chremes? ”

“ Yet might it save a thousand. Well saved, is like well spent;
Ay, even though ’tis saved for another: besides I am sure
The money is safe enough. And now I have gone so far
To help Menedemus, I can’t draw back; while if I do it
I certainly win his esteem & thanks. ’Tis very true
That a good turn done to a neighbour is done to oneself: one lives
Within the circle of joy one goes to create! ’Tis wise:58 759
And then to have Menedemus my friend! Say forty pounds;
I happen to have it handy. I’ll do it. It shan’t be said,
Chremes is not a gentleman. No, I’ll do it.
Pam.Sir,
Have you decided? ”

“ And he made some very shameless; accordingly, Betion, one of his intimate acquaintances, is reported to have said once to Menedemus, “So Menedemus constantly spends the evening with Bion, and I see no harm in it.” He used also to talk with great impiety to those who conversed with him, having derived his opinions on this subject from Theodorus.
X. And when at a later period he became afflicted with disease, as the people of Chalcis said, for he died there, he was persuaded to wear amulets and charms, and to show his repentance for the insults that he had offered to the Gods. ”

“ XII. Menedemus was not easy to be understood, and in his conversation he was hard to argue against; he spoke on every subject, and had a great deal of invention and readiness. But he was very disputatious, as Antisthenes says in his Successions; and he used to put questions of this sort, “Is one thing different from another thing?” “Yes.” “And is benefiting a person something different from the good?” “Yes.” “Then the good is not benefiting a person.” ”

“ There is some complication in this part of the plot, fairly amusing as worked out in detail in the original, but not worth analysis. It is very long before Chremes can be brought to believe that it is his own son, and not Clinia, who is the real lover of the dashing young lady whom he has been entertaining out of complaisance, as he considered, to his son's friend. Menedemus, no longer a "self-tormentor," is equally gratified to find that, after all, he is to have such a modest and highly respectable daughter-in-law, and amused at the collapse of his scheming friend. ”

“ Chremes has noticed that since Menedemus bought his present farm, he has worked upon it himself from morning till night, as hard as though he were a slave instead of a master; in fact, that he does more work than any of his slaves, and that the time which he spends himself in manual labour might, so far as the interests of the farm are concerned, be much more profitably employed in looking after them. He has no reason to suppose that his neighbour is poor ”

“ Poor Chremes grows very crestfallen in the closing scenes, when he looks forward to the ruin which his son's extravagant tastes, with the fair Bacchis's assistance, will bring upon him. Menedemus retorts upon him his own advice,—not to be too hard upon his son—young men will be young men: but Chremes fails to take the same philosophical view of his own case as he had done of his friend's. He vows at first that he will disinherit his young prodigal, and settle all his property upon his new-found daughter and her husband ”

“ MENEDEMUS, Greek philosopher, and founder of the Eretrian school of thought, was born at Eretria about 350 and died between 278 and 275 B.C. Though of noble birth, he worked as builder and tentmaker until he was sent with a military expedition to Megara, where, according to Diogenes Laertius, he heard Plato and resolved to devote himself to philosophy. It is more likely that he heard one of Plato’s followers, inasmuch as Plato died when he was only four years old, if the above dates are correct. ”

“ IV. On account then of the great freedom of speech in which he indulged, he was very near while in Cyprus, at the court of Nicocreon, being in great danger with his friend Asclepiades. For when the king was celebrating a festival at the beginning of the month, and had invited them as he did all the other philosophers; Menedemus said, “If the assemblage of such men as are met here to-day is good, a festival like this ought to be celebrated every day: but if it is not good, even once is too often.” ”

“ Of the Terentian diction the Self-tormentor is the most perfect example, and the poet seems anxious to veil the anomalies of his plot beneath the dignity of his apophthegms and the splendour of his language. The part of Menedemus, the self-tormentor, rises to almost tragic earnestness, and reminds the reader occasionally of Shakspeare's Timon. ”

“ In this mood his elder master meets him; and knowing him to possess the talent for intrigue and deception which is common to his class, asks his help to impose some tale upon Menedemus—whom he affects to abuse as "a covetous old wretch"—in order to make him a little more liberal to his unfortunate son, whom he has once already driven from home by his harshness. "That poor young man ought to have had some clever servant," says Chremes, "who would have managed the old gentleman for him." Syrus is astonished, as he may well be, at such a proposal from such a quarter ”

“ On which account, when he on one occasion brought forward a motion for some decree, a man of the name of Alexinius attacked him, saying that a wise man had no need to draw a tent nor a decree.
II. But when Menedemus was sent by the Eretrians to Megara, as one of the garrison, he deserted the rest, and went to the Academy to Plato; and being charmed by him, he abandoned the army altogether. And when Asclepiades, the Phliasian, drew him over to him, he went and lived in Megara, near Stilpo, and they both became his disciples. ”

“ And was Clinia
Witness to this?
Mene. He was.—Both he and I.
Chrem. Bacchis is my son’s mistress, Menedemus.
I’m ruin’d.
Mene. Why d’ye think so?
Chrem. Mine is scarce
A ten-days’ family.
Mene. What are you dismay’d
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Because he sticks so closely to his friend?
Chrem. Friend! His she-friend.
Mene. If so——
Chrem. Is that a doubt?
Is any man so courteous, and so patient,
As tamely to stand by and see his mistress——
Mene. Ha, ha, ha! Why not?—That I, you know,
Might be more easily impos’d upon. (Ironically.)
Chrem. D’ye laugh at me? I’m angry with myself:
And well I may. ”

“ According to the story in Athenaeiis (iv. p. 168) , he and his friend Asclepiades got their livelihood as millers, working during the night, that they might have leisure for philosophy in the day. Menedemus and his friend Asclepiades afterwards became dis- ciples of Stilpo at Megara. From Megara they went to Elis, and placed themselves under the instruction of some disciples of Phaedo. On his return to Eretria Menedemus established a school of philosophy, which was called the Eretriac. ”

“ Colman has the following observation: “It is impossible not to regret that there are not above ten lines of the Self-Tormentor preserved among the Fragments of Menander. We are so deeply interested by what we see of that character in Terence, that one can not but be curious to inquire in what manner the Greek Poet sustained it through five Acts. The Roman author, though he has adopted the title of the Greek Play, has so altered the fable, that Menedemus is soon thrown into the background, and Chremes is brought forward as the principal object ”

“ While these things are going on, Sostrata discovers in Antiphila her own daughter. In order to obtain the money which Bacchis persists in demanding, Syrus suggests to Chremes that it should be represented to Menedemus that Bacchis is the mistress of Clitipho, and that he should be requested to conceal her in his house for a few days; it is also arranged that Clinia shall pretend to his father to be in love with Antiphila, and to beg her as his wife. He is then to ask for money, as though for the wedding, which is to be handed over to Bacchis. ”

“ And during the summer, mats of rushes were laid upon the couches, and in winter soft cushions; and each guest was expected to bring a pillow for himself. And the cup that was carried round did not hold more than a cotyla. And the second course consisted of lupins or beans, and sometimes fruits, such as pears, pomegranates, pulse, and sometimes, by Jove, dried figs. And all these circumstances are detailed by Lycophron, in his satiric dramas, which [111] he inscribed with the name of Menedemus, making his play a panegyric on the philosopher. ”

“ Whã you be dysposyd to skoffe Menedemus, yt ys best yt you gette a nother maner of gestynge stokke than thys, for I tell you it is nother good nor holsome, to bowrde so wt sayntes. For thys same mã dyd say, that a woman dyd apere to hym, in hys sleape, after a maruelouse fashion, which shold gyue hym a cuppe to drynke apon. ”

“ Menedemus, since you love to use raillery, take another subject. It is neither pious nor safe to make sport with saints ; nay, the man himself told me that there was a woman appeared to him in his sleep of an incomparable beauty, that held forth a cup to him to drink* Me. ”

“ In this way Moses Mendelssohn when in 1762 he took to wife Fromet, daughter of Abraham Gugenheim, of Hamburg, acquired twenty life-sized china apes which had been found unsaleable. Much later the apes became valued family heirlooms.
The domestic happiness and tranquility he had never known in his youth were at last to be the philosopher’s portion. Moses and Fromet had a considerable family, though only six of the children—three sons and three daughters—survived to maturity. Moses himself died in Berlin at 57. Longevity, as it proved, was not to be a trait of the Mendelssohns. ”

“ Somebody gave the Tyrant immediately a Whisper, and told him, Sir says he, This is the Poet Menander that you your self have been pleas'd to own so Great an Admiration and Esteem for. Demetrius recollects himself, and changes his Humour in the very instant; calls Menander to him, and Treats him with all the Instances imaginable of a singular Liking and Respect. ”

“ Menippus, reading from the parchment, paused now and again to peer into the gold cup, or look a moment towards the crystal. That some weighty matter was under consideration might be judged by the wrinkling of his brow, and the tapping of his clawlike finger on the table. A tall man, this Menippus, he looked the part himself, or Fate, had given him exceeding well. His hair, white and plentiful, fell straight on either side his face, and to the nape of his neck. His moustache and beard were of glossy silkiness. ”

“ There is, again, the family nurse, garrulous but faithful; and sometimes we have another of the household in the person of the family cook. Lastly, there is the hateful slave-merchant, the most repulsive character in the Greek and Roman drama, and upon whose ways and doings there is no need for us here to dwell.
The philosophy of Menander has been spoken of as distinctly of an Epicurean character, and his morality is certainly no whit higher than that of his age and times. ”

“ It is not, however, in the economic field, important as this may be, that Mendel’s discovery is likely to have most meaning for us: rather it is in the new light in which man will come to view himself and his fellow creatures. To-day we are almost entirely ignorant of the unit-characters that go to make the difference between one man and another. A few diseases, such as alcaptonuria and congenital cataract, a digital malformation, and probably eye colour, are as yet the only cases in which inheritance has been shown to run upon Mendelian lines. ”