1. The most judicious critic of antiquity, when he is purposely considering the excellencies of the Greek comedians, and, what is more, exposing the comparative deficiencies of the Roman, says not a word of it. He thinks, indeed, that Terence’s, which yet he pronounces to be most elegant, is but the faintest shadow of the Greek, comedy. But then his reason is, quod sermo ipse Romanus non recipere videatur illam solis concessam Atticis venerem. [L. x. 1.] It seems then as if the main defect, which this critic observed in Terence’s comedy, was a want of that inexplicable grace of language, which so peculiarly belonged to the Greeks; a grace of so subtle a nature that even they could only catch it in one dialect—quando eam ne Græci quidem in alio genere linguæ non obtinuerint. [Ib.]”
2. Some of Terence’s plays may be almost said to be direct translations from Menander. And the comic humour, supposed in the objection, being of the truest taste, no reason can be imagined why the poet should so industriously avoid to transfuse this last and highest grace into his comedy. Especially since the popular cry against him proceeded from hence, that he was wanting in comic pleasantry; a want, which by a stricter attention to this virtue of his great original, supposing Menander to have been possessed of it, he might so easily have supplied. And lest it should be thought he omitted to do this, as not conceiving any thing of this virtue, or as not approving it, we find in him, but rarely indeed, some delicate touches, which approach as nearly as any thing in antiquity to this genuine comic humour. Of which kind is that in the Hecyra:
Tum tu igitur nihil adtulisti huc plus unâ sententiâ?
For these reasons I should suppose that Menander and the writers of the new comedy, from whom Terence copied, had little of this beauty.
But what shall we say then to Cæsar’s dimidiate Menander? It refers, I believe, solely to what Quintilian, as we have seen, observed, that, with all his emulation of Attic elegance, he was unable, through the native stubbornness of the Latin tongue, to come up to the Greek comedy. The very text of Cæsar leads to this meaning.
Tu quoque, tu in summis, ô dimidiate Menander,
Poneris, et merito, PURI SERMONIS AMATOR.
His excellence consisted in the purity and urbanity of his expression, in which praise if he still fell short of his master, the fault was not in him, but the intractability of his language. And in this view Cæsar’s address carries with it the highest compliment. Quintilian had said in relation to this point, Vix levem consequimur umbram. But Cæsar, in a fond admiration of his merit, cries out,
Tu quoque, TU in summis, ô dimidiate Menander.
His censure of him is delivered in the following lines:
Lenibus atque utinam scriptis adjuncta foret vis
Comica, ut æquato virtus polleret honore
Cum Græcis, neque in hâc despectus parte jaceres;
Unum hoc maceror et doleo tibi deesse, Terenti.