The "Phasma" of Menander Turner, Eric G Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Winter 1969; 10, 4; ProQuest pg. 307

The Phasma of Menander 
Eric G. Turner 

THE Phasma of Menander was the first fragment of this author 
to be recovered from the Nearer East in the nineteenth century. 
Theodor Gomperz tells! how he was present in the winter of 

1867 at a lecture in which Constantin Tischendorf sketched out a 
plan of a great work on Greek palaeography. It would include all 
kinds of inedita and "nothing made the mouth water so much as the 
news that there would be about 40 new verses of Menander." Nine 
years passed before Tischendorf's defective copy of these verses was 
actually published, by the Dutch scholar Cobet.2 Cobet tracked down 
a quotation by Clement of Alexandria embedded in the new verses 
and therefore was able to confirm the identity of the author. He did 
realise he had parts of two plays; his allocation of our fragment was 
to the Deisidaimon, as was afterwards Wilamowitz' to an unknown 
'Pessimist'.3 But both Cobet and Wilamowitz (in spite of the strictures 
of Kock) made good suggestions about the text. Both were excited 
about the discovery. Cobet asked that a thorough search be made of 
the monasteries of Mount Athos by all who happened to go there.4 

This prayer has been answered generously by fortune. And as it 
happens some fragments of our play were recovered by Grenfell and 
Hunt in Oxyrhynchus between 1897 and 1907. But they were not 
recognised until almost a hundred years after Tischendorf's lecture. 
They will be published in POxy. Part XXXVIII as nO.2825. 

The play, we know, was famous in antiquity. In 1938 Professor 
B. Meritt published a stone from the Athenian agora recording a 
revival of it in 250 B.C.s Another inscription (IG ll2 2323) shows that it 
was revived again in Athens in 167 B.C. This revival might have been 
the reason why Luscius of Lanuvium chose to adapt it for the Roman 

1 Hermes 11 (1876) 507-13. 
2 Mnemosyne N.S. 4 (1876) 285-93. 

3 Hermes 11 (1876) 498-506. 
, "Namque Menandri reliquias etiam tenues et exiles lubentissime accepturi sumus." 

op.cit. (supra n.l) 293. 
i In Hesperia 7 (1938) 116. 

307 



308 THE PHASMA OF MENANDER 

stage, as we know from the preface to Terence's Eunuchus. A mosaic 
floor in a house at Mitylene shows part of the action, and will be 
discussed later. 

How did a comic poet use the theme of an capparition'?-for so I 
translate the title Phasma. cGhost' is not correct. The tragedians 
regularly use the Greek word d8wAOV for the wraith of a person no 
longer alive, or even for a wraith that assumes the form of a living 
person. cpaa/L(X ('apparition') is a more generalised term. It may hint 
at an epiphany, the occasion when a divine figure (or sometimes a 
wraith, like that of the dead Achilles in Euripides' Hecuba) presents 
himself to mortal vision; or to presentations made in dreams. On an 
audience that believed in their reality, an Apparition in a play is likely 
to have had a startling effect. Darius' ghost did, so did that of Pol ydorus. 

We learn how Menander used the theme from a bare summary of 
the action given by Donatus (on Ter. Eun. 9). Edmonds6 translates as 
follows (somewhat adapted): "The Apparition is the title of a play of 
Menander's in which a young man's stepmother had secretly brought 
up a daughter she had borne as a result of an affaire.' She was keeping 
the girl hidden in the house next door and contrived to have her often 
with her, without the secret being known, in the following way. Cutting 
a hole through the wall between her husband's house and the neigh­
bour's, she made the entrance to it look like a shrine, and as she 
screened it with garlands and fresh greenery, could call the girl into 
her house while at her frequent devotions. When he first saw the 
mother at worship there, the Young Man was terrified at the sight of 
a beautiful girl he thought must be a spirit [velut numinis visu], which 
indeed gave the play its name (Phasma, apparition). Coming gradually 
to realise the truth, he fell in love so deeply that there was nothing 
for it but he must marry her. And so, to the advantage of mother and 

6 J. M. Edmonds ed., The Fragments of Attic Comedy IIlB (Leiden 1961) p.748. 
7 "A daughter she had borne to a neighbour" is the accepted but wrong version, based 

on reading Donatus' text as quam ex uicino quodam conceperat. If, as must be assumed, the 
affaire or violation had taken place before the mother's removal to her present menage 
(1TpLV €t..8"LV €v8&'[j", Phasma 11) and marriage, the statement that the girl's father was a 
neighbour is irrelevant to the present stage setting, and because irrelevant, confusing and 
likely to be wrong. R. Kassel's brilliant correction of Donatus quam ex uitio quondam 
conceperat removes these difficulties (ex uicio quodam was altered to ex uicio quodam under 
the influence of the follOWing cum haberet in latebris apud uicinum proximum). For the phrase 
ex uitio concipere Kassel compares the Ciceronian conceptus ex stupris. It is, of course, pre­
dictable that as the play progresses the girl's father will be found to be resident in one of 
the houses on the stage. 



ERIC G. TURNER 309 

daughter, in fulfilment of the lover's hopes, and with the father's 
consent, a wedding took place which ends the play." 

We may schematize the households: 

I HOUSE B HOUSE A 
(Father B, Wife B) Wife A= Husband A/Father A= Wife C (dead) 

/ I 
Apparition Stepson 

(Pheidias) 

Since we do not know the girl's name, it may save space to call her 
<The Apparition' and her mother <The Apparition's mother'. Much 
that we should like to know is omitted. Was the appearance of the 
Apparition the principal event in the play or simply a mechanism to 
get it started? Was the hole through the wall shovvn on the stage? 
Whose father gave consent to the wedding, the girl's or the bride­
groom's? From what we know of Men ander, we can be sure that there 
were more characters and more incidents than figure in this sum­
mary. 

The Oxyrhynchus fragments, fortunately precisely identified,S add 
some valuable elements for a dramatic reconstruction. 

In fr.A a man and his wife (4)[1\'] aVEp, 11) discuss a delicate and 
intimate matter, the festival at which a girl was violated by a man, 
and presumably bore a child whose paternity is in question. It is not 
certain that only two characters play the scene, and that the wife is 
confessing to her husband, but that could be its tenor. 

There is in fact a difference in regard to the precise festival at which 
the incident took place. One witness (a woman who is to be sum­
moned) will say at a festival at Brauron; the husband, at the Adonia 
(probably), celebrated in Athens. This difference may be an indication, 
as Professor Garton has suggested to me, that the husband as well as 
the wife concerned had had a premarital escapade. 

In fr.B col.i a cook speaks (17-18, perhaps also 4,8,9), a slave Syrus 
is involved and cursed; and from the interchange we learn that some­
one <had a slight touch of melancholia', is now better, and that some-

8 The presence of fr.l (Koerte) was observed by Mr Lobel, of fr.Z by Dr John Rea. I should 
like also to record the contributions made to elucidation of this new text by Professor 
E. W. Handley, Professor T. B. L. Webster and Mr W. E. H. Cockle. 



310 THE PHASMA OF MENANDER 

one (the same person?) is to <marry again' (a second marriage, or a 
marriage which had been put off is now on again). 

In coLii a slave reports to his master (TP&]9'LP.£' 11) on a scene 
taking place indoors, which it seems that he had spied out. The man 
spied on, apparently a rival lover (cf 15), is shamming madness 
(6,8,12). His fit takes the form of kissing a girl all over her face (12-14). 
The master, who suspects he is being gulled, goes indoors to his sister; 
his sister herself he expects to be somewhat despondent. 

(SLAVE?) «He's no simple Simon." (MASTER?) «My first impressions 
of him were right; and now ... Wasn't he at all abashed then?" 
(SLAVE) «No, he [answered?] and got close to her like a man in his 
right mind." (MASTER) "I think he has the thing worked out right." 
(SLAVE) "Then he rushed her again." (MASTER) "Aphrodite isn't lucky 
for me." (SLAVE) «Why, you are one of the committee that has put 
captive girl on his menu. The way his illness takes him, he may eat 
her nose right away." (MASTER) «Heavens, don't say that." «Yes he 
will, or devour her lips with kisses." «What?" «Perhaps it's for the 
best, you'll come to a dead stop being in love if you see her like that." 
"You aren't leading me up the garden path, are you?" «Not I, by 
Apollo." <'I'll go indoors to my sister ... I fancy she's depressed ... " 

Fr.C seems to be the greeting of the head of one of the stage house­
holds, on returning from a journey, to the tutelary statue of Apollo 
standing by his door. 

We may now apply these new factors to what we already possess of 
the play, given us in Tischendorf's fragments. They were in fact 
copied from scraps of parchment still in the binding of a book in 
St Catherine's monastery on Sinai. Later on, Porphyrius Uspensky 
visited the monastery, dissolved the glue and freed the parchment 
scraps from their cover. He took them to Russia, and in 1883 they 
went into the Imperial Library at St Petersburg, as a result of which 
they are now usually referred to as membranae Petropolitanae. In 1891 
Victor Jernstedt published a careful account of them9 and identified 
our leaf as part of the Phasma. The leaves are now in the Saltikov­
Schedrin State Public Library at Leningrad. I have been able to obtain 
good photographs of them (including the now almost illegible side) 
and should like to express my gratitude here to the Director of the 
Library, DrV. M. Barashenkov, its curator ofMss Madame Granstrem, 

t ActaUPetropol 26 (1891). 



ERIC C. TURNER 311 

the head of its International Exchange Section Dr 1. F. Grigoreva, and 
to Professor 1. Fikman of Leningrad. 

The pieces consist of two medium-sized fragments of parchment 
and a number of scraps. The largest piece contains a part of 
Menander's Epitrepontes, and was definitively anchored in that play 
by J. Hutloff in 1913.10 It offers a scene from early in the play, before 
the Cairo codex begins. The second largest was identified as Phasma 
because of its contents. The identification could (improbably) be 
wrong. That it is by Menander is guaranteed by its inclusion (vv.50-56 
Koerte) of a quotation from Menander by Clement of Alexandria. 

On one side the parchment is easily legible, on the other its readings 
can only be divined from the photographs (specially taken by the 
Leningrad authorities). As often happens with thin old parchment, 
the writing on the other side shows through. From the photographs 
I can make out enough to admire and in general to endorse the work 
of Jernstedt. The handwriting is a beautiful and regular example of 
'Biblical majuscule' to be assigned to the fourth century after Christ. The 
piece is about 110 mm. in height, containing 27 lines of text. The edge 
of the page does not survive. What looks like it is seen to be cut 
(perhaps by the bookbinder's knife) at an angle with the perpendicular 
formed by the initial letters of the line. It is unlikely that a scribe who 
wrote handwriting of this size would place more than one column on 
each page. The two sides therefore are successive: but in what order? 
How much is missing between them? Since Jernstedt it has generally 
been accepted that the paedagogus' lecture (vv.26-56) comes later­
and this view is reflected in the order in Koerte's edition. I believe this 
is wrong. 

The arguments for the traditional order proceed in two stages: (1) 
only about 10 lines are missing between the two sides; (2) a transition 
of 10 lines is insufficient to move from the lecture of vv.26-52 to the 
supposed prologue of vv.1-25. 

The number of missing verses may in fact be more than 10. Codices 
on papyrus written at this date often hold about 50 verses per page 
(this is the average in the Bodmer Samia, Dyskolos and Aspis, which is 
280 mm. high and was, as I think, written in the IV century). POxy. 
1236, a fragment of a parchment codex from Oxyrhynchus assigned to 
the fourth century by its editors Grenfell and Hunt (a date with which 

10 De Menandri Epitrepontibus (Diss. Berlin 1913). 



312 THE PHASMA OF MENANDER 

I should agree), contains some verses of Epitrepontes. It overlaps part 
of the play contained in the Cairo codex, and can therefore be shown 
to have contained 43 verses on each page. Its letters are slightly squarer 
and larger, its lines slightly longer than those in the Petersburg frag­
ments. Grenfell and Hunt give the size of the Oxyrhynchus fragment 
as 90 x 156 mm.; a photograph supplied by the Cairo Museum, where 
POxy. 1236 now is, shows that the lines rise obliquely across this 
90 mm. measurement. In fact, the surviving 22 lines of writing would 
occupy about 105 mm. of the height of the page; the 43 calculated 
lines would require a page (without margins) to be between 205 and 
210 mm. high. In the Petersburg codex 27 surviving lines take up 
110 mm. of height. If therefore the page height of Petersburg had 
originally been about the same as that of POxy. 1236 it could have held 
about 50 verses. No margins survive in the Oxyrhynchus fragment, or 
in that part of the Petersburg fragment which deals with the Phasma; 
but the parts of the Petersburg fragment containing Epitrepontes do 
have good side and upper margins surviving, and the page was clearly 
originally of ample size. If only the part of Epitrepontes contained in 
Petersburg were also contained in the Cairo codex, or were to turn up 
from somewhere, the inferences here set out could be tested. But it 
seems to me to be established that the interval between the two sides in 
the Petersburg codex does not have to be limited to 10 verses: it may be 
20 verses or even more (23 is the allowance if the page holds 50 verses). 
That being so, we are not bound by the difficulty of a short dramatic 
transition in choosing which side of the page we wish to put first. 

In lines 26-56 (Koerte) a young man Pheidias is being scolded by a 
privileged family slave (he addresses his master as TpoCPLfl-€, line 41); 
and some have thought him a slave who has gained his freedom. The 
ends of the verses are missing, but the general connection of thought 
as shown in Koerte's edition seems acceptable (though I don't think 
Menander would have ended two successive lines as 38 and 39 end). 
I translate: 

The slave asks, "What is the price of wheat in the market?" (The 
young man Pheidias has perhaps been ordering the dinner). "What's 
that to you?" says Pheidias. 

(SLAVE) Nothing, but I thought of using it 
As an analogy to make you see the truth. 
If they're expensive, let that give you a twinge 



ERIC G. TURNER 313 

On my behalf, a poor man. Pheidias, tell yourself 
That you're a man, and that one who's impoverished 
Is also a man, to prevent yourself from hankering after 
What's above your head. Every time you say 
You haven't slept a wink, you'll know the reason why 
If you review the life you lead. You stroll around the market 
And come home at once if your poor legs are tired. 
You bathe luxuriously, get up again and gorge 
At your pleasure: your very life's a sleep. 
In short, there's nothing wrong with you, suppose 
Your illness is what you've described. please excuse 
A vulgar phrase, master, that rises on my tongue­
You've all these bathrooms and you're constipated. 

(PHEIDIAS) You'll come to a bad end. (SLAVE) It's true, by heaven! 
That's what your sickness is. (PHEIDIAS) Too true, I'm ill 
and out of sorts, quite unlike myself. 

(SLAVE) Illness comes from weakness in the head. 
(PHEIDIAS) Well then, you've got this all worked out. 

What advice have you for me? (SLAVE) What advice? 
Listen! If you'd had a real illness, Pheidias, 
You should have looked for a real prescription for it. 
But as you haven't, try a placebo 
For something you haven't got, and fancy it will help you: 
Have the women make a circle round your body, 
Wipe you down, burn brimstone round you, 
Pour on water drawn from three separate wells, 
Mixed with salt and lentils ... 

The slave's sermon may be topical, granted the catastrophic rises in 
the price of corn in Athens caused by the cornering of the market in 
the twenties. We note his reference to his master's symptoms, which 
Pheidias must have told at lengthll-especially insomnia (mentioned 
by Galen, De lods affectis 3.10 [ed. C. G. Kuhn, VIII pp.183 and 193] as 
an accompaniment of melancholia), and the word 'twinge' or 'irrita­
tion', OaKE-Tw.12 

11 €c8' ~v 8,fj>..8£c v.40, and not necessarily on the stage. 
12 Again used in medical literature, and especially of melancholia: 8aKVw8£c, Gal. 

Loc.Affect. 3.10 (VIII, p.188 Kuhn); and by Arist. Eth.Nic. 1154bll, "Persons of melancholy 
temperament always need medical treatment. Their body is constantly feeling twinges 
(8aKV0J.l-£VOV 8'Ct7£>'£') because of their temperament (Kpiic,c)." 



314 THE PHASMA OF MENANDER 

What stands on the other side of the page is much more difficult to 
read, to understand and to restore. In Koerte's (and every other) 
edition till Del Corno's is presented a completely supplemented text, 
reflecting the fact that this fragment was one of the earliest pieces of 
Menander recalled from oblivion, at a time when it was innocently 
believed that an author's words could be recovered.13 We have the 
second half of the verses, not the first, this time. I particularly doubt 
whether the first eight lines have been got right, lines 10 and 12 
certainly have not; and for the rest I take Koerte simply as a basis for 
discussion. The 2nd pers. pronoun in v.3 cavT6v, v.7 caVTOV, the pro­
hibition in the 2nd pers.7TapaSWLC v.6, the imperative OVTW 7T6€L v.7 
point either to a dialogue in progress, or else words of another person 
quoted by the speaker. 

By way of example,!' I translate vv.2-8 in Koerte's text: (2) H ••• you 
take a collaborator to bring it off ... (3) [considering] yourself the 
bridegroom, keep your wits about you ... (4) [don't deprive] a 
mother of her daughter (5) [by blabbing] this to some other man who 
has the same mother, (6-7) don't, in heaven's name, give any [grounds 
for suspicion] against yourself. That's what you must do ... (8) ... 
this. What else could a man do?" But from v.9 certainly we seem to 
hear a narrative in monologue: 

But she's no apparition, but a real girl ... 
I leave v.lO. Koerte's text must be translated, "separated from her 
mother who is getting married." 

13 We are still too ready to insert into our texts the first words that come into our heads 
\ ... hen the passage is damaged, regardless of whether Menander could ever have written 
them. When a new text of a restored passage is discovered, we find that he didn't. What was 
tortuous, awkward and forced becomes straightforward, precise and elegant-above all, 
dramatically pointed. And his Greek is always felicitous. 

U V.I must be ignored. Hudoff puts .dto]vudwv at the end of the verse. I cannot see its 
first v. If the letter were 8 or 0, 8vCGwv, oVCGwv would result. Or even, e.g., 8E:tK]vVC lwv. V.2 
E1l"tTE:AE:LV could have a ritualistic meaning (ef p.323). V.3, a quite different syntax can be 
envisaged, "put yourself on guard against the bridegroom," <pvAaTTE: 1rpo> TO]V vVp.<ptOV caurov 
(these words themselves are probably too long for the space). VA, the natural identification 
of "girl's mother" would be "mother of the bride the bridegroom is to marry." V.5, the 
difficulty of iT ]'PWt ••. Ttvi may be evaded, as suggested by Professor Hermann Frankel. 
by restoring in some such way as 

ov yap cv '1' 'T ]E"pwt Tov8' oJLOp."1Tplwt Ttvi 
Myotc ~v· ilia] p.~ 1rapa8iiJtC 

V.S. the idiom is most naturally spoken by a man deliberating on alternatives open to him. 



ERIC G. TURNER 

Before she came here, her mother bore this girl 
[This apparition], and gave her to a nurse 
To rear-who keeps her now in the next-door house, 
Brought up in secret and kept under close watch 
When her husband's at home, but at other times, 
When he's abroad and less care is needed, 

315 

She often leaves that house. How does this apparition materialize? 
That's probably the question you all want to ask 
of me. Her mother has had a hole cut through the wall 
And made a door to let her out-and a room 
From which she can keep an eye on everything. 
The passage is thickly veiled with ribbons 
To prevent a busybody stealing in and discovering 
The secret; and there's an altar also to the goddess ... 

Some part of this narrative is addressed to the spectators (19, ETL 
7TO()EI,T' lcwc), from which it may be inferred that the stage is empty 
except for the speaker. Some of the restorations gain plausibility from 
the similarity to Donatus' summary,15 the Ot€goooc (v.21: transitus), 
the ribbons (23: transitum intenderet sertis ac fronde felici). 

Because it is a monologue specifically addressed to the spectators, 
because it seems to summarize events in the earlier history which the 
spectator ought to know, and perhaps because of indefiniteness (5 
€T ]EpWt TOV(}' o/Lo/L'T}TplwL TLvl), this passage has been taken by almost 
everyone for a prologue-"spoken by a god," thought Wilamo­
witz,16 "for who else could know about. the secret of the pierced 
wall?" Or "spoken by a young man," said Sudhaus, who supposed 
the young man to be a friend of Pheidias; or by a rival of Pheidias, 
Koerte's latest view. T. B. L. Webster alone17 suggested that this might 
be a monologue spoken when the play is already under way, taking as 
parallel the soliloquy of Demeas at the opening of the third act of the 
Samia. And he supposed the speaker to be Pheidias. 

Let us first pause to look at v.1O (in most restorations, as in Koerte's, 
the supplement is at least two letters too long). rijc ya/Lov/L€V'T]C has 
without exception been referred to the mother of the Apparition. 

15 We have already abolished v.12 "fathered by a neighbour" (EK 'Yt"t'Tovoc] 'TaVr7jv), ex 
uicino quodam conceperat. 

18 Menander, Das Schiedsgericht (Berlin 1925) p.143 n.l. 
11 Webster, Studies in Menander (Manchester 1950) 110. 



316 THE PHASMA OF MENANDER 

Those who have paid attention to the form of the Greek word have 
supposed that she was going to marry again. HNuptias initura," says 
Sudhaus; "the bride-to-be," Edmonds, adding as comment, "the news 
must have come later in the play that the husband had perished at sea, 
leaving the girl's mother free to marry her neighbour." This is, of 
course, a possibility, and I must admit to having been taken in for a 
time, and to trying to make her the subject of yafL€Z 7T&ALV in POxy. 
fr.B coLi 4, 5. But this possibility is unlikely to have been raised at an 
early moment in the play. Moreover, the phrase in participial form 
~ yafLovfL'VYJ means simply <the bride'. So in Menander fr.581.3-5 
(Koerte) 

Don't ask useless questions, 
Who was the girl's grandfather, who her nurse, 
But ask about the temperament of the bride herself. 

The false trail here lies in the supplement fLTJTp6c. The new Oxyrhyn­
chus fragments release us from this false trail: a marriage is planned 
again, or is <on' again. V.1O here will have stated either where the 
Apparition lived, or her relation to the <girl who is to be married'. In 
the former case 

[€V OlKLCf Ta ]~8€Zca TfjC yafLovfL'VYJC 18 

Taking up her station in the house of the bride 

could give us the sense. The new point is that the <bride' in POxy' 
lived next door to the house of the Apparition's mother. In this next­
door house, where the Apparition also lives, is a complete household 
which participates in the working-out of the play. There are two 
problems in the establishment of these households: who is the bride 
next-door going to marry, and who is <some other man who has the 
same mother' (ofLofLTJTPLWt nvt, 5 Koerte)? All the older interpreters 
supposed the latter to be Pheidias' stepbrother, a son born to the 
mother of the Apparition after she settled down to respectability and 

18 Short enough. I don't like ra]x8etca, but it could have comic effect. The letter before 
8nea must be X or a. 



ERIC G. TURNER 317 

married. The scheme would look like this, and offer an innocuous 
pairing off: 

II HOUSE B HOUSE A 

Father B = Wife B Wife A = Father A/Husband A= Wife C 

/ I 
Apparition---- --------------Pheidias 

Bride------------Stepbrother 
to Pheidias 

But another arrangement is possible: 'some other man who has the 
same mother' may be a full-brother of the bride, and spoken of in this 
way by a speaker who knows that in that household the Apparition, 
though passing for a member of the family, is not full-sister of the 
other children (the speaker might even have a suspicion as to who her 
father is). Since a secret passage has to have two ends, we might 
suppose the neighbours, at first childless, were ready to adopt a girl; 
and then later children of their own were born to them. The scheme 
now looks like this: 

III HOUSE B 
Father B= Wife B 

I 
I I 

Bride Bride's 
Brother 

HOUSE A 
Wife A= Father A/Husband A= Wife C 

/ I 
Apparition -----------------Pheidias 

On this view it would be a possible corollary that Pheidias is the bride­
groom, pledged to marry the bride in a marriage of convenience. We 
can escape from schemes II and III by inventing further young men to 

be rivals, even a whole new household. It is probable that we have not 
yet enough characters for the play-but we hardly need more young 
men. 

I do not think we yet have enough information to decide between 
schemes II and III. Under scheme II we know of no special reason why 
Pheidias should have to beware of a stepbrother-unless that he did 
not wish to share his girl-friend. No reasons are yet available why the 
marriage should be off, then on again. If we go further and identify 
Pheidias with the passionate lover whose behaviour has been spied on 



318 THE PHASMA OF MENANDER 

in POxy. fr.B coLii, there seem to be positive objections to this 
solution. The young man to whom the slave reports is addressed as if 
he were in love with the rival's girl; and he goes in to see <his sister', 
speaking of her as <depressed', as though she were the bride now to be 
disappointed by Pheidias. 

Yet if we accept scheme ill we must suppose that during the course 
of a day (the normal duration of a Greek comedy) a marriage is both 
actively prepared, presumably with the consent of the fathers of both 
households, and that it can be broken off and replaced by a different 
marriage and leave the families on speaking terms. Some sudden 
revelation and substitute marriage could of course cause such a change 
of direction. A marriage is arranged absolutely ab initio and celebrated 
within a very few hours in the Samia. 

I do, however, feel some confidence in identifying Pheidias, the lover 
of the Apparition, with the young man who is spied upon in POxy. 
fr.B coI.ii. Moreover, I suggest that at the end of the lecture read to 
him in Petersburg 26-56, he took the advice given him. He went indoors 
to get his stepmother to arrange a ritual purification for him. While 
waiting outside the shrine for her, he was suddenly confronted by the 
Apparition appearing through the wall, and realized she was flesh and 
blood, and not a phantom. He was cured at once of melancholia; but 
his tactics are to pretend to a renewal of it, and the need for constant 
treatment. He spends his time indoors, waiting for the Apparition 
and kissing her ferociously when she appears. 

Galen tells that it was a characteristic of melancholic persons that 
they entertainedcpaV7'acla£ napa cpvc£v. In a passage19 to which Professor 
Phillip de Lacy has directed me, Galen quotes the example of the man 
who thought he was made of earthenware, and therefore took great 
care not to collide with passers-by in case he should get broken; of 
another who watched cocks crowing and spread out his own arms like 
wings and crowed; of a third who was seized with a fear "lest Atlas 
who holds up the heavens should get tired, and should then be 
crushed and involve us all in our ruin." The same point was made 
much earlier in the Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle (1150b25-28, transI. 
Rackham), "It is the quick and the melancholic persons who are most 
liable to the impetuous form of aKpacla (lack of self restraint). The 
former are too hasty, the latter too vehement to wait for reason, 

11 De Lee.Affect. 3.10 (VIll. p.l90 KUhn). 



ERIC G. TURNER 319 

because they are prone to follow their imagination (Ct1<oAOVOTj7"KOL 
Elvat rfj cpaV7'actct)." It might therefore be not unnatural for people to 
think a person who claimed to have seen an apparition a melancholic 
person. I am not saying that the shock turned Pheidias into a melan­
cholic, but that he might be accounted one. This, as I have suggested, 
is what he thought of hitnself, as revealed in the slave's lecture; and 

is the condition he continued to exploit later on. In imposing method 
on his madness he prefigures Hamlet. 

It now becomes clear where my argument is leading. The Appari­
tion, I am suggesting, is a device to allow a free-born young man and 
a free-born girl to meet each other and fall in love, it is not a major 
event led up to by all that happens in the play. It is not easy in a 
society where women are closely guarded for young men and girls to 
meet each other. We all know that Athenians took very good care of 
their womenfolk, as they still do. The comic dramatist is constantly 
on the lookout for new techniques of introducing them to each other. 
Moreover, to utilize the Apparition idea like this would be Menander's 
way. We might think that he would not, by blurting it out at the 
start, squander so promising a theme as that a ghost is not a ghost­
we mean that we would not. His comedies take a certain situation as 
base, and then explore and finally resolve its resultant complexities. 
The audience is constantly kept guessing, just as a modern audience 
is kept guessing by the writer of a whodunnit. But the Greek audience 
were guessing about means of resolution within their experience. Just 
as the original situation was always a possible one (not an impossible 
one, as in a farce),20 so the way out must follow the conventions of 
ordinary society. 

When Menander was a child there was a scandal involving a secret 
passage which caused some stir. In the year 333 B.C. Lycophron was 
accused of conducting an affair with a lady next door through just 
such a hole in the wall as Menander uses. The trial was quite an event: 
Lycurgus appeared for the prosecution, Hyperides for the defence 
(POxy. 1607). 

Pheidias and his girl-friend are unlikely to have had long to enjoy 
paradise. In the Oxyrhynchus fr.B coLii a rival (perhaps the half­
brother, as we have seen) sets a household slave to spy on them and 

20 An exception must now be made (as far as we can see from the fragments so far pub­
lished) in regard to the Aspis. The pretended death scene looks like pure Feydeau. 



320 THE PHASMA OF MENANDER 

report. And it seems that in Act II of the play their idyll was inter­
rupted by discovery. One of the mosaics from the house in Mitylene 
which contained scenes from Menander shows an episode from this 
play. This mosaic CBCH 88 [1964] 802), not one of those in the main 
dining-room, gives no names alongside the three characters shown. 
But it is headed <PACMATOC ME B, Phasma Act 2. At the left, out­
lined by a dark border, is a doorway in a wall. The folding doors open 
inwards into the room from which a young girl is emerging. At the 
right is a figure wearing a white runic covered by a dark red cloak.21 
In the centre wearing an old man's mask, dressed in gold, hourglass 
panels on the lower part of his himation, is a burly elderly figure. His 
dress and stance (especially the staff and the hourglass panels) are 
those of father-figures-such as Smikrines in the Epitrepontes, Demeas 
in the Samia. He has the air of having caught the other two unawares. 
We recollect that in POxy. 2825 someone salutes <neighbour Apollo' 
as if he were a head of a family returning from absence. Perhaps this 
is he. 

That it is a discovery scene hardly admits of doubt. But the figure 
on the right is not certainly identified. Mme Kahil interprets it as a 
young man, but with some hesitation: the bright pink face does not 
well suit the whiteness required of the <effeminate young man' 
(a7T<xAoc VE<XVLCKOC) of Pollux's list, and there seems to be a wreath 
across the brow which might well suit a woman. If it is a woman, it 
must surely be the Apparition's mother, surprised by an unexpected 
return of her husband into a betrayal of her daughter's presence. If it 
is a young man, it will be the father's son Pheidias, caught alone with 
his girl. It cannot be the first moment that the Apparition came 
through the wall. Had Pheidias had a companion when he thought it 
was an apparition, he would not have been so terrified, and his com­
panion would have spoken out. It can hardly be the moment at which 
for the first time Pheidias discovered the humanity of the Apparition 
-unless the central figure could be taken for a confidant, the slave, 
for instance, who had lectured Pheidias. No one could look less like a 
household slave or a confidant than the figure in the mosaic. 

This scene took place in Act II. The moment of discovery, whether 
of mother or lover, came early in the play. We have grown used in 

21 lowe the description of the colouring to Mme Lilli Kahil, who has shown me the 
manuscript of her publication of the Mytilene mosaics. 



ERIC G. TURNER 321 

the last few years to the principle that a Menandrean comedy was 
divided into five acts. Surely this is proof that the Apparition motif is 
not a main event in the play, but the situation assumed as starting 
point. 

If so, then what once seemed to me a serious obstacle to regarding 
Petersburg Phasma 9-25 as a prologue to the cOITledy (naITlely that it 
would blurt out the whole secret) no longer holds. Moreover, these 
verses cannot now be a monologue announcing discovery of the 
Apparition's reality at the opening of Act III; they are not parallel to 
the monologue of Demeas in the Samia Act III. They could perhaps 
be such a monologue at the beginning of Act II. But I think that re­
examination will show that they must be a prologue, spoken by a 
semi-divine figure. For the information which we are given is both too 
categorical and too vague for any character in the play to retell to the 
audience as his own discovery. Were it Pheidias speaking of the 
human character of the Apparition, then how does he know that 
"before she came here, her mother bore this girl" (v.ll).22 Did the 
Apparition tell him this family history? This precise knowledge is the 
exact opposite of DeITleas' ignorance in his ITlonologue in Act III of the 
Samia, for Demeas tells in vivid detail of what he heard, and has no 
certain knowledge of exactly what it portends. And should we not 
expect Pheidias to give names?-It is, after all, of his stepmother and 
his neighbours he is speaking. But prologue figures quite deliberately 
do not overburden their recitals with names. And why the historic 
presents-of which 8tSwc£ T' EKTpe<P€£V is a certain instance? These are 
exactly to be paralleled in the recitation of the divine figure Ignorance 
in Perikeiromene (e.g. 10, stSWCt T~V K6p1]JI we OvyaTepa). Coupled with 
this recital of events of the past which have left behind a deposit to 
affect the present is a description of present dramatic necessities, 
"how the girl materializes." These considerations convince me that 
we must return to the older view (the view of Wilamowitz), that 
what is given us here is an outline of what we need to know in order 
to understand the action: a knowledge not available to any of the 
human participants at this point in the play, and no more than the 
bare necessity for us. In the Aspis similar knowledge is given us by 
Tyche, Fortune, acting as prologue figure: we are assured that the 
mourned soldier, whose property is coveted by his greedy uncle, 

22 Whatever the supplements, the question holds. 
4+ G•R•B•S• 



322 THE PHASMA OF MENANDER 

is not dead but a prisoner of war and "will survive as never 
before." 

We may now pick up another of our questions: Was the passage 
through the wall part of the staging? Did the audience see it as the 
artist of the Mytilene mosaic has presented it? We know that the 
staging of internal scenes was likely to offer great difficulties to a 
Greek theatrical producer. Normally the theatre front represented a 
street; its two or three doors were the front-doors of houses giving 
onto the street. While it might be possible to see directly inside, as 
some have thought we do in the famous Dioscurides mosaic 
(CvvapLcTwcaL),23 it would be difficult to see an internal party-wall 
full-face. 24 The fact that this passage through the wall is described for 
us in detail in a prologue and the fact that the love-making ofPheidias 
and the Apparition is presented through the words of a servant play­
ing gooseberry suggest that no attempt was made. It was up to the 
dramatist's verbal ingenuity to get round this obstacle; and in POxy. 
fr.B ii he does it with such ingenuity that it almost escapes notice that 
a stroke of technique is involved. One constant feature of New 
Comedy and its Roman imitators that seems to us so artificial is hereby 
explained. To use slaves as spies and to pass on communications 
through them is a way of presenting what cannot go on in the street. 
The scene portrayed therefore on the Mytilene mosaic did not happen 
like that on the stage. It also must have been presented in words, 
whether monologue or dialogue. We must not be misled by the fact 
that the artist of the mosaic has translated the action into visual terms. 
But the fact that he has done so is of interest for all dramatic illustra­
tions in the ancient world. 

It is time to offer a rough scenario of the play. It may have opened 

28 The same scene is shown in inversion in the Mytilene mosaics. In Greek Theatre Pro­
duction (London 1956) 24, T. B. L. Webster wrote: "the scene plays before or in one of the 
two side houses." 

2. Doors placed between two lines of stage·characters are shown in several of the illus­
trated Mss of Terence. It seems as though the miniaturist has attempted to show visually 
and Simultaneously what is taking place indoors and outdoors. See, e.g., L. Webber-Jones, 
c. R. Morey, The Miniatures of MSS of Terence Prior to the Thirteenth Century II (Princeton n.d. 
[1931]) at Adelphi 376 and Andria 465. In the former, Syrus calls through the door to the 
cook to let the eel swim in a bowl for a short while: the miniature shows Syrus outside, 
the cook inside watching the eel swimming in a bowl. 

I must admit that Mme Kahil does not agree with me, and in her publication of the 
Mytilene mosaics in Antike Kunst will present the case for regarding the scene on the 
mosaic of Phasma as what passed on the stage. 



ERIC G. TURNER 323 

with a dialogue between slaves of the stepmother's household, and 
we learn that a wedding breakfast is in course of preparation. The 
wedding is-well, shall we say-between Pheidias and the daughter 
of the house next door? But Pheidias is not well. He then walks in 
himself; he has been describing how he had seen an Apparition, and 
it has given him a shock. The slave scouts his fancies (this is Petersburg 
recto, 26-56), and recommends him to get the womenfolk to exorcise 
him. 

Pheidias sees his mother and asks her to act so. The first few lines 
of Petersburg verso are part of her reply.25 E7TL'TEAELV (v.2) may mean 
'bring to a happy ending'. But it is a technical term of ritual. His 
stepmother, in fact, is concerned at this talk of a ghost and fears dis­
covery; so, lest the girl reappear and the news reach the lady next 
door and this lady's true daughter and son, she enjoins the utmost 
discretion on him. Both go indoors after v.9 (which we must restore 
differently), and the Divine Prologue figure tells us that in fact the 
ghost is a girl, her history, and how she comes out. The prologue must 
also tell us who the neighbours are, and what sort of menage they keep, 
and who is the priestess' own husband. 

The admonitions to secrecy have, of course, been useless. In what is 
left of Act I Pheidias discovers the truth, in Act II he makes use of his 
opportunities and gives cause for suspicion. And the secret of the 
concealed girl is discovered. 

But there is still much to happen, and the order in which it happens 
will depend on the precise discovery made in Act II-lovers surprised 
together, or mother and daughter found together. In any case the 
husband will suspect his wife. The irate husband must now have an 
explanation about the girl next door. He begins to suspect his wife. 
Perhaps he chases her out, and she takes refuge with the neighbours, 
as in the Samia. The neighbour in Act IV perhaps resents suspicion 
cast on him, as if he were the father of the girl, and there could be a 
fine imbroglio. During the excitement some keepsakes retained by 
the Apparition's mother are discovered, and they, together with the 
help of the memory of a nurse, give a clue to the Apparition's pater­
nity. 

Here we may choose between two possibilities. If the erring father 
is also the present husband (i.e. Father A is also father of the girl), then 

25 That up to v.9 they should be regarded as dialogue was suggested by F. G. Allinson in 
his Loeb edition of 1921. 



324 THE PHASMA OF MENANDER 

there is every reason why he should forgive his wife, she him, and the 
neighbours be completely cleared. Perhaps this is why in Donatus' 
summary, the last sentence runs "to the advantage of mother and 
daughter, in fulfilment of the lover's hopes, and with the consent of 
the father (consensuque patris), a wedding took place." In Athenian 
law you could marry your half-sister, provided she was half-sister on 
the father's side (OP.07Td.TPLOC) not the mother's (OP.OP.~TpLOC).26 

But this is not the only possible paternity. If the tiny scrap of 
dialogue in the new papyrus reported on page 309 above between a 
husband and a wife is rightly taken to hint that the husband as well 
as the wife had been involved in premarital adventures, it would be 
quite possible for Pheidias and the Apparition not to be related. The 
father of the Apparition might be Husband/Father B, the head of the 
household into which the Apparition was adopted. His being literally 
vicinus might explain the corruption in Donatus' text. Yet it might also 
be possible for Pheidias' mother to be Wife B. In that case, Pheidias 
and the bride might be discovered to be full-brother and sister and 
therefore unable to marry; and that might be a reason why the 
fathers agreed to the marriage being switched. The plain fact is that 
we do not yet know. A hundred damaged verses out of a total of a 
thousand or so, coming early in the action, are inadequate to circum­
scribe the ingenuity of incident that might be imagined by the 
Menander whose aims and methods I have tried to elicit. 

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON 

November, 1969 

26 Pluto Them. 32 (speaking of a daughter of Themistocles): • APXE1TTOA£c 0 as(Acpoc OUK ~v 
Ol-'Op:qTp£OC £YT/I-'I£JI. [Andac.] 4.33: Ciman. Oem. 57.20: a8(}.tf>iJv yap 0 1Ta1T1Toc OVI-'OC £YT/I-''''' 
oUX Op.ol-'TJTp[av. Cf Ar. Nub. 1372.