He who labors diligently need never despair; for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor.

According to the note of a scholiast on the Ibis of Ovid he drowned while bathing and his countrymen honored him with a tomb on the road leading to Athens where it was seen by Pausanias. One of the most popular writers of antiquity his work was lost in the Middle Ages and is known in modernity in highly fragmentary form much of which was discovered in the 20th century. Life and work
Menander was the son of well-to-do parents; his father Diopeithes is identified by some with the Athenian general and governor of the Thracian Chersonese known from the speech of Demosthenes De Chersoneso.

Only one play Dyskolos has survived in its entirety. His record at the City Dionysia is unknown but may well have been similarly spectacular.