Before the Church · c. 320 BC; survives in fragments
Thais
Menander of Athens · c. 342 – c. 291 BC
What it is
A lost play of the New Comedy, named for its courtesan and known from scattered lines. One of them became a proverb long before Paul reached for it: bad company corrupts good character.
Why it lasted
Quoted without attribution in 1 Corinthians 15:33, in the middle of the argument about the resurrection — evidence that Paul expected a Corinthian congregation to catch a line from the popular theatre. Most of Menander was lost until papyri began returning him in the twentieth century.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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