Terence. Publius Terentius Afer, Roman comic poet, was born at Carthage about 185 B.C., in the interval between the second and third Punic wars. He was presumably a Phœnician by race; and he became, by birth or purchase, the slave of the Roman senator P. Terentius Lucanns, who brought him to Rome, and, out of regard to his handsome person and unusual talents, educated him highly, and finally manumitted him. On his manumission he assumed, of course, his patron's nomen, Terentius. His first play was the Andria, acted in 166 B.C. Its success was immediate, and introduced its author to the most refined society of Rome, where his engaging address and accomplishments made him a great favourite. His chief patrons were Lælius and the younger Scipio, after living with whom in great intimacy for some years in Rome he went to Greece, doubtless with the view of becoming personally familiar with Greek life and manners; and there he seems to have died in 159 B.C., only about twenty-five years old. Six comedies are extant under the name of Terence, which are perhaps all he produced—viz. Andria, exhibited in 166 at the Megalensian games, an adaptation of Menander's Andria with additions from the same poet's Perinthia; the bright and lively Eunuchus, from Menander's Eunouchos and some parts of his Kolax; Hauton Timouroumenos ('the self-tormentor'), after Menander's play of the same title, without the use of another play, a comedy of intrigue, with a somewhat extravagant plot, and but little attempt at delineation of character; Phormio, so called from the parasite in the play, the original by Apollodoros of Karystos being entitled Epidikazomenos, a bright merry comedy, with an interesting plot and careful character-painting; Hecyra, the mother-in-law, his least successful piece, the plot poor and uninteresting, the characters peculiar; and Adelphi, from Menander's Adelphoi, with the addition of a scene from the beginning of Diphilos' Synapothnês-kontes, an effective comedy, with simple and harmonious plot, and careful delineation of character—the two old men, the easy bachelor about town and the embarrassed country landlord, forming an inimitable contrast. Thus, as we have seen,
Terence has no claim to creative originality, his plays, Greek in origin and Greek in scene, being directly based on Menander, who, indeed, is best known to us through the works of his copyist. Cæsar, in a well-known epigram, addresses him 'O dimidiat Menander.' A foreigner in Rome and a total stranger to Greece when he wrote, he gave the still somewhat uncouth Romans a picture of the grace, elegance, and refinement of Greek manners; and he wrote in singularly pure and perfect Latin—ranked by Munro in the very highest level with Cicero, Cæsar, and Lucretius. His style, indeed, is pure almost to being immaculate, and, though inferior to Plautus in comic power, in mastery over passion, in vigour and variety, he is more than his match in consistency of plot and character, in tenderness, in wit, in effective dialogue, and in metrical skill. He employs almost exclusively iambic and trochaic metres. He admitted and defended from the example of the older Roman poets the practice of contaminatio—constructing one Latin play by uniting scenes from several separate Greek ones. He was a true artist. In conjunction with Plautus, Terence, on the revival of letters, was studied as a model by the most accomplished play-writers. The Eunuchus is reflected in the Bellamira of Sir Charles Sedley and Le Muct of Brueys; the Adelphi in Molière's École des Murs and Baron's L'École des Pères; and the Phormio in Molière's Les Fourberies de Scapin. His plays have been translated into most of the European languages. Notable editions of his works are those of Bentley (1726), Davies, Parry, Fleckenstein (1857), Wagner (Lond. 1869), Umpfeunbach (Berlin, 1870, the standard critical edition), and Dziatzko (Leip. 1884).