Nam quod isti dicunt malevoli, homines nohiles
Hunc adjutare, assidueque una scribere;
Quod illi maledictun vehemens existimant,
Eam laudem hic ducit maximam: cum illis placet,
Qui vobis universis et populo placent;
Quorum opera in bello, in otio, in negotio,
Suo quisque tempore usus est sine superbia.
————For this,
Which malice tells that certain noble persons
Assist the bard, and write in concert with him,
That which they deem a heavy slander, he
Esteems his greatest praise: that he can please
Those who in war, in peace, as counsellors,
Have rendered you the dearest services,
And ever borne their faculties so meekly.
Colman.
He appears to have protested against this imputation with less earnestness, because the notion was far from being disagreeable to Laelius and Scipio. It therefore gained ground, and prevailed in after-times.
Quintus Memmius, in his speech in his own defence, says “Publius Africanus, who borrowed from Terence a character which he had acted in private, brought it on the stage in his name.” Nepos tells us he found in some book that C. Laelius, when he was on some occasion at Puteoli, on the calends [the first] of March, [935] being requested by his wife to rise early, (534) begged her not to suffer him to be disturbed, as he had gone to bed late, having been engaged in writing with more than usual success. On her asking him to tell her what he had been writing, he repeated the verses which are found in the Heautontimoroumenos:
Satis pol proterve me Syri promessa—Heauton. IV. iv. 1.
I’faith! the rogue Syrus’s impudent pretences—
Santra [936] is of opinion that if Terence required any assistance in his compositions [937], he would not have had recourse to Scipio and Laelius, who were then very young men, but rather to Sulpicius Gallus [938], an accomplished scholar, who had been the first to introduce his plays at the games given by the consuls; or to Q. Fabius Labeo, or Marcus Popilius [939], both men of consular rank, as well as poets. It was for this reason that, in alluding to the assistance he had received, he did not speak of his coadjutors as very young men, but as persons of whose services the people had full experience in peace, in war, and in the administration of affairs.
After he had given his comedies to the world, at a time when he had not passed his thirty-fifth year, in order to avoid suspicion, as he found others publishing their works under his name, or else to make himself acquainted with the modes of life and habits of the Greeks, for the purpose of exhibiting them in his plays, he withdrew from home, to which he never returned. Volcatius gives this account of his death:
Sed ut Afer sei populo dedit comoedias,
Iter hic in Asiam fecit. Navem cum semel
Conscendit, visus nunquam est. Sic vita vacat.
(535) When Afer had produced six plays for the entertainment of the
people,
He embarked for Asia; but from the time he went on board ship
He was never seen again. Thus he ended his life.
Q. Consentius reports that he perished at sea on his voyage back from Greece, and that one hundred and eight plays, of which he had made a version from Menander [940], were lost with him. Others say that he died at Stymphalos, in Arcadia, or in Leucadia, during the consulship of Cn. Cornelius Dolabella and Marcus Fulvius Nobilior [941], worn out with a severe illness, and with grief and regret for the loss of his baggage, which he had sent forward in a ship that was wrecked, and contained the last new plays he had written.
In person, Terence is reported to have been rather short and slender, with a dark complexion. He had an only daughter, who was afterwards married to a Roman knight; and he left also twenty acres of garden ground [942], on the Appian Way, at the Villa of Mars. I, therefore, wonder the more how Porcius could have written the verses,
————nihil Publius
Scipio profuit, nihil et Laelius, nihil Furius,
Tres per idem tempus qui agitabant nobiles facillime.
Eorum ille opera ne domum quidem habuit conductitiam
Saltem ut esset, quo referret obitum domini servulus. [943]