indicate that he was a very young man when they were written. Thus Terence may, more even than Catullus or Lucan, be ranked among 'the inheritors of unfulfilled renown.'
He is said to have been born at Carthage, brought to Rome as a slave, and carefully educated in the house of M. Terentius Lucanus, by whom he was soon emancipated. A difficulty was felt in ancient times as to how he originally became a slave, as there was no war between Rome and Carthage between the Second and Third Punic Wars, and no commercial relations with Rome and Italy till after the destruction of Carthage. But there was no doubt as to his Phoenician origin. It has been suggested that his Carthaginian origin perhaps explains the interest which the family of the Scipios first took in him. He was of slender figure and dark complexion. He is said to have owed the favour of his great friends as much to his personal gifts and graces as to his literary distinction. In one of his prologues he declares it to be his ambition, while not offending the many, to please the 'boni.'
His earliest play was the 'Andria,' exhibited in 166 b.c., when he could only have been about the age of nineteen. A pretty, but probably apocryphal, story is told of his having read the play, before its exhibition, to Caecilius—who however is said to have died in 168 b.c., the year after the death of Ennius—and of the generous admiration manifested by Caecilius. The story probably owes its origin to the same impulse which gave birth to that of the visit of Accius on his journey to Asia to the veteran Pacuvius. The next play exhibited by Terence was the 'Hecyra,' first produced in 165, but withdrawn in consequence of the bad reception which it met with, and afterwards reproduced in 160. The 'Heauton Timorumenos' appeared in 163, the 'Eunuchus' and 'Phormio' in 161, and the 'Adelphoe' in 160, at the funeral games of L. Aemilius Paulus.
After bringing out these plays Terence sailed for Greece, whether, as it is said, to escape from the suspicion of publishing the works of others as his own, or, as is more probable, from the desire to obtain a more intimate knowledge of that Greek life which had hitherto been known to him only in literature, and which it was his professed aim to reproduce in his comedies. From the voyage to Greece Terence never returned. According to one account he was lost at sea, according to another he died at Stymphalus in Arcadia, and according to a third at Leucadia, from grief at the loss by shipwreck of his baggage, containing a number of new plays which he had translated from Menander. The old grammarian quoted by Suetonius states that he was ruined in fortune through his intimacy with his noble friends. Another account spoke of him as having left behind him property consisting of gardens, to the extent of twenty acres, close to the Appian Way. It is further stated that his daughter was so well provided for that she married a Roman knight.
As his art is purely dramatic and also imitative, for any further knowledge of his character and circumstances we have to rely on his prologues in which he speaks in his own person. They give the impression of a man of frank and ingenuous nature, with a high idea of his art, very sensitive to criticism, and proud, though not ostentatiously so, of the favour he enjoyed with the best men of his time. The tone of all his prologues is apologetic. In this respect, as well as in his relation to his patrons, he reminds us of the tone of some of the Satires of Horace. But there is a robuster force both of defence and of offence in the son of the Venusian freedman than in the young Phoenician freedman. In nearly all his prologues he defends himself against the malevolence and detraction of an old poet, 'malevolus vetus poeta,' whose name is said to have been Luscius Lavinius, or Lanuvinus. The chief charge which his detractor brings against him is that of contaminatio, the combining in one play of scenes out of different Greek plays. Terence justifies his practice by that of the older poets, Naevius, Plautus, Ennius, whose careless freedom he follows in preference to the dull pedantry of his detractor[7]. He recriminates on his adversary as one who, by his literal adherence to his original, had turned good Greek plays into bad Latin ones. He justifies himself from the charge of plagiarising from Plautus and Naevius[8]. In another passage he contrasts his own quiet treatment of his subjects with the sensational extravagance of other play-wrights[9]. He meets the charge of receiving assistance in the composition of his plays by claiming, as a great honour, the favour which he enjoyed with those who deservedly were the favourites of the Roman people[10].
He was not a popular poet, in the sense in which Plautus was popular; he made no claim to original invention, or even original treatment of his materials: he was however not a mere translator but rather an adapter from the Greek; and his aim was to give a true picture of Greek life and manners in the purest Latin style. He stands in much the same relation to Menander and other writers of the new comedy[11], as that in which a fine engraver stands to a great painter. He speaks with the enthusiasm not of a creative genius, but of an imitative artist, inspired by a strong admiration of his models. And this view of his aim is confirmed by the result which he attained. He has none of the purely Roman characteristics of Plautus, in sentiment, allusion, or style[12]; none of his extravagance, and none of his creative exuberance of fancy. The law which Terence always imposes on himself is the 'ne quid nimis.' He aims at correctness and consistency, and rejects nearly every expression or allusion which might remind his hearers that they were in Rome and not in Athens. His plots are tamer and less varied in their interest than those of Plautus, but they are worked out much more carefully and artistically. He takes great pains in the opening scenes to make the situation in which the play begins clear, and he allows the action to proceed to the dénouement through the medium of the natural play of character and motive. As a painter of life it is not by striking effects, but by his truth in detail, and his power of delineating the finer distinctions in varying specimens of the same type, that he gains the admiration of the reader. There are no strongly-drawn or vividly conceived personages in his plays, but they all act and speak in the most natural manner. Though he has left no trace in any of his plays of one drawing directly from the life, there is no more truthful, natural, and delicate delineator of human nature, in its ordinary and more level moods, within the whole range of classical literature. Characters, circumstances, motives, etc., are all in keeping with a cosmopolitan type of citizen or family life, courteous and humane, taking the world easily, and outwardly decorous in its pleasures, but without serious interests, or high aspirations.
Terence is, accordingly, in substance and form, a 'dimidiatus Menander,'—a Roman only in his language. The aim of his art was to be as purely Athenian as it was possible for one writing in Latin to be. While his great gift to Roman literature is that he first made it artistic, that he imparted to rude Latium the sense of elegance, consistency, and moderation, his gift to the world is that, through him, it possesses a living image of Greek society in the third century b.c. presented in the purest Latin idiom. The life of Athens after the loss of her religious belief, her great political activity, and speculative and artistic energy,—or, rather, one of the phases of that life, as it was shaped by Menander for dramatic purposes—supplies the material of all his plays. It is the embodiment of the lighter side of the philosophy of Epicurus, without the elevation of the speculative and scientific curiosity which gave serious interest even to that form of the philosophic life. There is a charm of friendliness, urbanity, social enjoyment, superficial kindness of heart, in the picture presented: and it was a necessary stage in the culture of the best Romans that they should learn to appreciate this charm, and assimilate its influence in their intercourse with one another. The Greek comedy of Menander was a lesson to the Romans in manners, in tolerance, in kindly indulgence to equals and inferiors, and in the cultivation of pleasant relations with one another. The often quoted line,—
Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto,
might be taken as its motto. The idea of 'human nature,' in its weakness and in its sympathy with weakness, may be said to be the new element introduced into Roman life by the comedy of Terence. The qualities of 'humanitas, clementia, facilitas,'—general amiability and good nature,—are the virtues which it exemplifies. The indulgence of the old to the follies or pleasures of the young is often contrasted with the stricter view of the obligations of life, entertained by an earlier generation, and always in favour of the former. The plea of the passionate modern poet—