The style of theater known as New Comedy came into being in Athens in the late fourth century B.C. These plays focused on everyday characters-albeit in highly unusual domestic situations-rather than the mythological and heroic figures of Old and Middle Comedy. Menander was the leading playwright of this genre, having written more than one hundred plays, many of which are known to us through fragments and Latin adaptations by Roman authors. Although he won only eight dramatic victories in his lifetime-a relatively small number for a celebrated Greek playwright-he became one of the most popular authors of antiquity, often likened to Homer.

This herm bust is one of more than fifty extant sculpted portraits of Menander, all thought to evoke a statue-the base of which still exists-erected in the theater of Dionysos at Athens around 290 B.C., close to the time of his death. The slight twist of the neck and the pursed lips give him an active, dynamic appearance, but the deep-set eyes and narrow nose impart a look of intelligence associated with philosophers and poets. His full head of hair and smooth, fleshy face make him appear youthful and recall the portraiture of Rome's first emperor, Augustus; this image of Menander was probably made during or shortly after Augustus's reign (27 B.C.-A.D. 14).

While the head of the bust is in the round, the sculp-ture tapers into the form of a herm, a type of columnar boundary marker popular for garden decoration in the Roman period. Portraits of great thinkers-either in herm form or in a roundel-were often displayed together in the private and public libraries of the Roman world to evoke the great cultural heritage of the ancient Greeks.

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