Dyskolos is an Ancient Greek comedy by Menander, the only one of his plays, and of the whole New Comedy, that has survived in nearly complete form. It was first presented at the Lenaian festival in Athens in 316 BC, where it won Menander the first prize.
Menander with masks depicting New Comedy characters: youth, false maiden, and the old man, Princeton University Art Museum
Ancient Greek comedy was one of the final three principal dramatic forms in the theatre of classical Greece. Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods: Old Comedy, Middle Comedy, and New Comedy. Old Comedy survives today largely in the form of the eleven surviving plays of Aristophanes; Middle Comedy is largely lost, i.e. preserved only in relatively short fragments by authors such as Athenaeus of Naucratis; and New Comedy is known primarily from the substantial papyrus fragments of Menander.
Actor on a Sicilian red-figured calyx-krater (c. 350–340 BC).
Terracotta comic theatre mask, 4th/3rd century BC (Stoa of Attalus, Athens)
Marble image of a theatre mask, 2nd-century BC.
An actor in the mask of a bald man, 2nd century BC