The Girl from Samos

Menander · c. 315 BCE · Play · Greek · Classical

A young Athenian has got the neighbour's daughter with child while his adoptive father was away on business, and the two households agree to hide the baby by letting it pass as the child of the old man's Samian mistress. The father comes home, half-overhears a nurse in the hall, and draws the one conclusion that leaves everybody guilty of something other than what they did. About two-thirds of the text has been assembled from a Cairo papyrus and a later codex, and it is the fullest surviving picture of how New Comedy ran a domestic misunderstanding.

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