And now deign to favour the play with your attention, and give it an impartial hearing, that you may know what is in future to be expected from the poet, and whether the comedies that he may write hereafter, will be worthy to be accepted, or to be rejected by you.—Prologue to the Andrian.
These lines contain very strong presumptive proof that the Andrian was Terence’s first production; and, for that reason, it has been selected for this essay, and not on account of its being supposed to be superior to his other plays: for so great, so steady was the equality of this poet’s genius, that no critic of eminence, ancient or modern, could ever yet venture to assign to any one of his plays a claim of superiority to the rest. The celebrated Scaliger has asserted that there were not more than three faults in the six plays of Terence.
The ancients seem to have been least partial to the Step-mother: Volcatius says,
“Sumetur Hecyra sexta ex his fabula.”
The Step-mother is reckoned the last of the six. This was the only piece written by our author, in which the plot was single; and the want of a double plot, which the Romans then preferred, was, doubtless, the reason of its being postponed to Terence’s other productions.
The force of custom has given authority to an erroneous disposition of these comedies, which are usually printed in the following order:
- The Andrian,
- The Eunuch,
- The Self-tormentor,
- The Brothers,
- The Step-mother,
- The Phormio.
They were written and represented at Rome as follows:
| Year of Rome. | |
| The Andrian | 587 |
| The Step-mother | 588 |
| The Self-tormentor | 590 |
| The Eunuch | 592 |
| The Phormio | 592 |
| The Brothers | 593 |
The original cause of the order of these plays being changed by the ancient transcribers is not known; though it is conjectured that they classed them thus, that the four plays taken from Menander might be placed together. This leads me to mention Terence’s close imitation of the Greek dramatists, amounting, in fact, to a partial translation of them; and it is necessary to bear this in mind during a perusal of his writings, lest, under the impression that this author wrote originally in Latin, the reader should forget that the scene is always laid in Greece; that the persons of the drama are not Romans but Greeks; and that, consequently, the manners, customs, names, and things, there mentioned, are almost uniformly Grecian.