This book includes everything that has come down to us in a more or less integral form from the works of ancient Greek playwrights of the Hellenistic era. The book opens with Menander's comedy "Bruzga" - the only fully preserved work of the poet, found quite recently - in 1956. The rest of Menander's works, like Herod's mimiambas - scenes for street mime actors - have already been translated into Russian. The book also includes the work of the philosopher Theophrastus "Characters," which served as an arsenal of comic human types for drama, which for the first time turned to the life of ordinary, ordinary citizens.