Menander (Athens, 342-293 B.C.) has not been treated fairly by posterity, as almost all the one hundred plays he wrote have been lost. They are known to us, however, through the Roman playwright Plautus, who used them as inspiration for his comedies. The ancient Romans so admired Menander that more than seventy-two Roman-period copies of his portrait are still extant, although they were identified as being the likeness of the Greek poet only thirty years ago. Menander was an Athenian citizen of means. A fastidious dresser, he was known to enjoy spending money on his appearance. His portrait is one of the first representations of a cleanshaven man after the new fashion introduced by Alexander the Great. A recently reconstructed seated statue, whose head was probably the model for this replica, shows the poet dressed in an expensive and ample garment. Its original pedestal, found not long ago in the theater of Dionysus in Athens, bears an inscription indicating that the statue was made by the artists Kephisodotos and Timarchos, sons of the famous sculptor Praxiteles. It was finished shortly after Menander´s death. The Prado replica shows the poet to have been cross-eyed. The herm added by order of Azara bears a modern Greek inscription, indicating that the owner believed this to be a portrait of Aristotle.

The Majesty of Spain. Royal collections from the Museo del Prado and the Patrimonio Nacional presented by The Mississippi Commission for International Cultural Exchange, Jackson, Mississipi Commission For International Cultural Exchange, 2001, p.115