His talent early displayed itself, securing him a crown while he was yet a mere youth, but subjecting him to the displeasure of his defeated rivals, who accused him of presumption in vying with experienced poets. Menander replied to the charge by appearing on the stage with an armful of new-born puppies, which he cast into a tub of water. Bidding the audience mark how they swam, he exclaimed: “You ask me, Athenians, how at my years I can have the knowledge of life required in the dramatist; I ask you under what master and in what school these creatures learned to swim?” Despite his superior merit, however, Menander obtained the dramatic prize but eight times, owing to the greater influence of his rival Philemon with the masses. It is stated that this injustice at length led the poet to drown himself. His plays long served as models to the comic stage. The Romans, Plautus and Terence, helped themselves freely from his treasury, and through their dramas our modern comedy may be traced back to Menander himself. FRAGMENTS FROM MENANDER. “When thou would’st know thyself, what man thou art, Look at the tombstones as thou passest by: Within those monuments lie bones and dust Of monarchs, tyrants, sages, men whose pride Rose high because of wealth, or noble blood, Or haughty soul, or loveliness of limb; Yet none of these things strove for them ’gainst time: One common death hath ta’en all mortal men. See thou to this, and know thee who thou art.” SYMONDS. “The sum of all philosophy is this— Thou art a man, than whom there breathes no creature More liable to sudden rise and fall.” “Of all bad things with which mankind are cursed, Their own bad tempers surely are the worst.” “The maxim‘Know thyself’ does not suffice; Know others!—know them well—that’s my advice.” =Philemon= exhibited the first of his ninety-seven comedies when Menander was a boy of eleven. Nine years later Menander’s first piece appeared, and the rivalry between the poets began. In their subsequent contests, Philemon sometimes stooped to unworthy means to defeat his opponent; still, that his countrymen really admired him is evident from the legend current of his death. As he was concluding a comedy in his ninety-ninth year, nine beautiful maidens were said to have entered his chamber and beckoned him away. They were the Muses, about to wing their flight from Athens forever, and with them departed the soul of Philemon—the last of the Athenian poets. FRAGMENTS FROM PHILEMON. “Have faith in God, and fear; seek not to know him, For thou wilt gain naught else beyond thy search: Whether he is or is not, shun to ask: As one who is, and sees thee, always fear him.”