Abstract
2.6. Playwrights (continued)
2.6.1. The tragics
While Aeschylus, who disappeared from the papyri after the 4th century, was outdistanced by the duo Sophocles - Euripides, it was Euripides who was by far the favorite tragic playwright of the Egyptian Greeks according to the papyri. The clarity of the language, the rhetorical nature and the moral dimension of his works also made him the tragedian best suited to the canons of teaching. Christian interest in Euripides revolved around two works in particular : Hippolytus and The Bacchae.
2.6.2. Comedy : the intersecting destinies of Aristophanes and Menander
If we disregard Cratinos and Eupolis, which belong to the old comedy and are read in a residual way until the 4th and early5th centuries, comedy is represented in the papyri of the 3rd-7th centuries only by Aristophanes and Menander, the greatest representatives of the old and new comedy respectively. Nevertheless, according to theopinio communis , Menander fell from grace in favour of a renaissance by Aristophanes from the 4th century onwards: what could be the reasons for Menander's decline ?
Menander's decline : a direct consequence of Christianization ?
The opinion of Demetrios Chalcondyle (1423-1511), reported by Jean de Médicis, that Menander, like Sappho or Anacreon, was the victim of censorship by the Church, frightened by the seductive way in which he depicted love in his plays, has been constantly repeated, with various variations. Nevertheless, the absence of evidence of an express condemnation of Menander by the Church, coupled with the positive judgments found very early on in the Church Fathers, prevents us from explaining his decline in terms of censorship.
