Saepe est etiam sub palliolo sordido sapientia.
He seems to have had nothing of the creative originality of Plautus, nor ever to have enjoyed the same general popularity. He prepared the way for Terence by a more careful conformity to his Greek models than his predecessor had shown, and, apparently, by introducing a more serious and sentimental vein into his representations of life.
With Terence Roman literature takes a new departure. When he appeared, a younger generation had grown up, who not only inherited the enthusiasm for Greek art and letters of the older generation,—of men of the stamp of the elder Scipio, Æmilius Paulus, T. Quintius Flamininus,—but who had been carefully educated from their boyhood in Greek accomplishments. The leading representative of this younger generation, Scipio Aemilianus, was about the same age as Terence, and admitted him to his intimacy; thus showing in his early youth the same enlightened and tolerant spirit and the same cultivated aspiration which made him choose Panaetius and Polybius as the associates of his manhood, and induced him to live in relations of frank unreserve with Lucilius during the latter years of his life. Among the members of the Scipionic circle, Laelius and Furius Philo were also closely associated with Terence; and he is said to have enjoyed the favour of older men of distinction and culture, Sulpicius Gallus, Q. Fabius Labeo, and M. Popillius, men of consular rank and of literary and poetic accomplishment[267]. In the interval between Plautus and Terence, the great gap which was never again to be bridged over had been made between the mass of the people and a small educated class. While the former became less capable of intellectual pleasure, and were beginning to prefer the exhibitions of boxers, rope-dancers, and gladiators[268], to the comedies which had delighted their fathers, the latter became more exacting in their demands for correctness and elegance than the men of a former generation. They had acquired through education the fastidiousness of scholars and men of culture, a quality not easily gained and retained without some sacrifice of native force and popular sympathies. Recognising the immense superiority of the Greek originals in literature to the rude Roman copies, they believed that the best way to create a national Latin literature was to deviate as little as possible, in spirit, form, and substance, from the works of Greek genius. But though cosmopolitan, or rather purely Greek, in their literary tastes, they were thoroughly patriotic in devotion to their country's interests. They cherished their native language as the great instrument of social and political life; and they recognised the influence which a cultivated literature might have in rendering that instrument finer and more flexible than natural use had made it. By concentrating attention on form and style, without aiming at originality of invention, Latin literature might become a truer medium of Greek culture, and might, at the same time, impart a finer edge and temper to the rude ore of Latin speech.
The task which awaited Terence was the complete Hellenising of Roman comedy, and the creation of a style which might combine something of Attic flexibility and delicacy with the idiomatic purity of the Latin spoken in the best Roman houses. By birth a Phoenician, by intellectual education a Greek, by the associations of his daily life a foreigner living in Rome, he was more in sympathy with the cosmopolitan mode of thought and feeling which Greek culture was diffusing over the civilised world, than with the traditions of Roman morality or the homely and genial humours of Italian life. As a dependent and associate of men belonging to the most select society of Rome, he had neither the contact with the many sides of life, nor the familiarity with the animated modes of popular speech, which helped to fashion the style of Plautus: but by assimilating the literary grace of the Athenian comedy and the familiar manner of a friendly, courteous, and active-minded society, he gave to Latin, what the Greek language in ancient and the French in modern times have had preeminently, a style which gives dignity and urbanity to conversation, and freedom and simplicity to literary expression. If the oratorical tastes and training of the Romans make the absence of these last qualities perceptible in much both of their prose and verse, we feel the charm of their presence in the Letters of Cicero, the lighter poems of Catullus, the Epistles of Horace, the Epigrams of Martial: and it was owing to the social and intellectual position of Terence that this secret of combining consummate literary grace with conversational ease and spontaneity was discovered.
The biography of Terence written by Suetonius has been preserved in a complete state; so that in regard to the facts of his life, as of that of Horace and Virgil, we have ampler evidence than is afforded in the case of other writers, of whom the only external record is contained in the short summaries of Jerome. We are enabled to go back to the original and nearly contemporary authorities which Suetonius used in his work 'De viris illustribus.' But the result of this fuller information is to increase the distrust which some of the summaries in Jerome naturally arouse. The authorities are found to be inconsistent with one another in several important points. We find also proof that the grammarians and littérateurs of the second century B.C. had a pleasure in chronicling the same kind of scandalous gossip which Suetonius has perpetuated in his lives of the Caesars, and his biographies of Virgil and Horace.
He was born at Carthage in the year 185 B.C.[269], and became the slave of Terentius Lucanus, by whom he was liberally educated and soon emancipated. According to the statement of Porcius Licinus he was ruined in fortune by the intimacy of his noble friends, who did nothing to save him from poverty, and retired in disgust to Greece, where he died, at Stymphalus in Arcadia. The same authority adds that he had not even a lodging in Rome, to which a slave might have brought the news of his death. This account is contradicted by other authorities, who give a more probable reason for his journey into Greece—viz. his desire to become more familiar with the life and manners which he represents. In him we note that impulse to travel, stimulated by artistic enthusiasm, which acted on the great Roman poets of a later time. Other conflicting accounts are given of his death: one, that he was never heard of after sailing from Italy; another, that he was lost at sea, on his return from Greece, along with a number of plays which he had translated from Menander; another, that he died in Arcadia or at Leucadia from grief at the loss of his baggage (including a number of new plays), which he had sent forward by sea by a different route. The account given of the extreme poverty into which the neglect of his friends allowed him to sink is contradicted by the statement that he left behind him a property, consisting of gardens to the extent of twenty acres, close to the Appian Way. It seems also inconsistent with the fact that his daughter was so well provided for that she ultimately married a Roman knight. The 'animus' of Porcius Licinus against the members of the Scipionic circle is probably the explanation of the conflicting accounts of the poet's circumstances.
The 'Andria,' his earliest play, was exhibited in 166 B.C., when the poet was eighteen or nineteen years of age. A story is told, that before the play was accepted by the aediles, he was desired to read it to Caecilius; that he came to him at supper, and being meanly dressed ('quod erat contemptiore vestitu'), he sat down on a bench at the foot of his couch; but after reading a few lines he was invited to take his place at the table, and afterwards read the whole play, to the great admiration of the older poet. The story probably owes its origin to the tendency which delights to find a point of contact between the beginning of one literary career and the close of another. It is inconsistent with the date assigned for the death of Caecilius: nor does it seem likely that one, admitted to the intimacy of young men of the highest rank, should have appeared on such an occasion 'contemptiore vestitu.' Perhaps however it may be regarded as quite as worthy of credit as the story of the meeting of Accius with Pacuvius at Brundisium.
The next play in order of composition was the 'Hecyra,' first produced in 165, but withdrawn owing to the bad reception which it met. The 'Hautontimorumenos' appeared in 163, and the 'Eunuchus' and 'Phormio' in 161 B.C.; the second and third representations of the 'Hecyra' and the production of the 'Adelphi' took place in 160. The last was represented at the funeral games of L. Aemilius Paulus. It was in this year that Terence sailed for Greece; and he died in the following year when only twenty-five years of age. Two of his plays, 'Phormio' and 'Hecyra,' were translated from Apollodorus, the rest from Menander.
His art is so purely imitative, that for any knowledge of his circumstances and character we have to trust entirely to his 'prologues,' in which he speaks in his own person. We note in them his apologetic tone, in marked contrast to the confident hold which Plautus has over his audiences. This tone is to be explained partly, perhaps, by the consciousness of his servile origin and his position as an alien; partly by a sense that his art was not congenial to his audiences. He shows great sensitiveness to criticism, and shields himself from the want of popular applause by the sense of the favour and protection of the great[270]. His attitude to his 'noble friends' is not unlike that of Horace to the higher class of his day; but he seems to want the Italian self-confidence and independence of the son of the Venusian freedman. In the prologue to the 'Adelphi' he refers with pride to the charge made against him that he was assisted by his friends in the composition of his plays—
Nam quod isti dicunt malivoli, hominis nobilis