“Truly this Syrus has coaxed me hither, impertinently enough, with his fine promises that I should receive ten minæ; but, if he deceives me this time, ’twill be to no purpose to ask me to come again; or, if I promise, and appoint to come, I’ll take good care to disappoint him. Clitipho, who will be full of eager hope to see me, will I deceive, and will not come; and Syrus’ back shall pay the penalty.”
Santra[25] thinks, that if Terence had required any assistance in his comedies; he would not have requested it from Scipio and Lælius, who were then extremely young[26]; but from [27]Caius Sulpicius Gallus, a man of great learning, who also was the first person who procured[28] the representation of comedies at the consular games or from [29]Quintus Fabius Labeo; or from[30] Marcus Popilius Lænas, two eminent poets, and persons[31] of consular dignity: and Terence himself, speaking of those who were reported to have assisted him, does not mention them as young men, but as persons of weight and experience, who had served the Romans in peace, in war, and in private business.
After the publication of his six comedies, he quitted Rome, in the thirty-fifth year of his age, and returned no more. Some suppose that he undertook this journey with a view to silence the reports of his receiving assistance from others in the composition of his plays: others, that he went with a design to inform himself more perfectly of the manners and customs of Greece.
Volcatius speaks of his death as follows:
Sed ut Afer sex populo edidit comœdias
Iter hinc in Asiam fecit: navim cum semel
Conscendit, visus nunquam est. Sic vita vacat.
“Terence, after having written six comedies, embarked for Asia, and was seen no more. He perished at sea.”
Quintus Consentius[32] writes, that he died at sea, as he was returning from Greece, with one hundred and eight plays, translated from Menander[33]. Other writers affirm, that he died at Stymphalus, a town in Arcadia, or in Leucadia[34], in the consulate of[35] Cneus Cornelius Dolabella and Marcus Fulvius Nobilior, and that his end was hastened by extreme grief for the loss of the comedies which he had translated, and some others which he had composed himself, and sent before him in a vessel which was afterwards wrecked.
He is said to have been of a middle stature, well-shaped, and of a dark complexion. He left one daughter, who was afterwards married to [36]a Roman knight, and bequeathed to her a garden of [37]XX jugera, near the Appian Way, and close to the [38]Villa Martis: it is therefore surprising that Portius should write thus: