Comedy, regularly beating the younger figure of Menander in contests; but the latter would be the most highly esteemed by subsequent generations. Menander's comedies not only provided their audience with a brief respite from reality, but also gave audiences an accurate, if not greatly detailed, picture of life, leading an ancient critic to ask if life influenced Menander in the writing of his plays or if the case was vice versa. Unlike earlier predecessors, Menander's comedies tended to centre on the fears and foibles of the ordinary man, his personal relationships, family life and social mishaps rather than politics and public life. His plays were also much less satirical than preceding comedies, being marked by a gentle, urbane tone, a taste for good temper and good manners (if not necessarily for good morals). The human dimension of his characters was one of the strengths of Menander's plays, and perhaps his greatest legacy, through his use of these fairly stereotype characters to comment on human life and depict human folly and absurdity compassionately, with wit and subtlety. An example of the moral reformations he offered (not always convincingly) is Cnemon from Menander's play Dyskolos, whose objections to life suddenly fade after he was rescued from a well. The fact that this character was not necessarily closed to reason makes him a character whom people can relate to. Philemon's comedies tended to be smarter, and broader in tone, than Menander's; while Diphilus used mythology as well as everyday life in his works. The comedies of both survive only in fragments but their plays were translated and adapted by Plautus. Examples include Plautus' Asinaria and Rudens. Based on the translation and adaptation of Diphilus' comedies by Plautus, one can conclude that he was skilled in the construction of his plots. Substantial fragments of New Comedy have survived, but no complete plays. The most substantially preserved text is the Dyskolos ("Difficult Man, Grouch") by Menander, discovered on a papyrus, and first published in 1958. The Cairo Codex (found in 1907) also preserves long sections of plays including Epitrepontes ("Men at Arbitration"), Samia ("The Girl from Samos"), and Perikeiromene ("The Girl who had her Hair Shorn"). Much of the rest of our knowledge of New Comedy is derived from the Latin adaptations by Plautus and Terence. Influence Horace claimed Menander as a model for his own gentle brand of Roman satire. The New Comedy influenced