'To step aside is human.'—
is often urged, but without any feeling that this divergence needs an apology. The hollowness of the social conditions on which this superficial agreeability and humanity rested is revealed by passages in these plays which prove that the habitual comfort of a moderately wealthy class was maintained by the practice of infanticide: and a virtuous wife is represented as begging the forgiveness of her husband for having given her child away instead of ordering it to be put to death[13]. In its outward amenity, as well as its inward hollowness, the social and family life depicted in the comedies of Terence was the very antithesis of the old Roman austere and formal discipline. How far this new view of life contributed to the subsequent deterioration of Roman character, it is difficult to say. The writings of Cicero and Horace show that the receptive Italian intellect was able to extract the elements of courtesy, tolerance, and social amiability out of such a delineation without any loss of native manliness and strength of affection. And thus perhaps, apart from their literary charm, the permanent gain to the world from the comedies of Terence and the philosophy which they embody, has been greater than the immediate loss to the weaker members of the Roman youth who may have been misled by the view of life presented in them.
Love, generally in the form of pathetic sentiment rather than of irregular passion, is the motive of all the pieces. There is generally a double love-story; one, an attachment, which, if not virtuous in the beginning, has become so afterwards, and which ends in marriage and the discovery that the lady is the daughter of a citizen, who has been exposed or carried away in her infancy; the other, an ordinary intrigue, like those which form the subject of most of the comedies of Plautus. In his treatment of love, Terence may be said to be the precursor of Catullus, Propertius, and Tibullus. He has the serious sense of its pains and pleasures which they display, though he wants the passionate intensity of the two first of these. The greatest attraction of his love passages arises from his tenderness of feeling. In this he is like Tibullus. Although the origin of the sentiment, in most of his plays, is nothing deeper than desire, inspired by outward charms and enhanced by compassion, yet we recognise in him, or in the model which he followed, much more than in Plautus, a belief in and appreciation of constancy and fidelity. In his treatment of his 'amantes ephebi' he shows sympathy with, rather than the humorous superiority to, their weaknesses which we find in Plautus. But though there is more grossness in the older poet, yet there is occasionally more real indelicacy in Terence; as in the subject of the 'Eunuchus' and in the acceptance by Phaedria, at the end of that play, of the suggestion of Gnatho, which, in its union of mercenary with sentimental motives, is almost more repugnant to natural feeling than the conclusion of the 'Asinaria' and 'Bacchides.'
The characters in Terence, although more consistent and more true to ordinary life, are more faintly drawn than those of Plautus. None of them stand out in our memory with the distinctness and individuality of Euclio, Pseudolus, Ballio, or Tyndarus. The want of definite personality which they had to the poet himself is implied in the frequent recurrence of the same names in his different pieces. They are products of analysis and reflexion, not of bold invention and creative sympathy. They are embodiments of the good sense which keeps a conventional society together, or of the tamer impulses by which the surface of that society is temporarily ruffled. The predominant tone in their intercourse with one another is one of urbanity. We find none of the rollicking vituperation and execration in which Plautus revels. Delicate irony and pointed epigram take the place of broad humour. The encounter of wits between slaves and fathers is conducted with the weapons of polished repartee and mutual deference to one another. Davus, Parmeno, Syrus, Geta, speak in the terse and epigrammatic language of gentlemen and men of the world.
While the 'Andria' has more pathetic situations, and the 'Adelphoe' is on the whole more true to human nature, the 'Eunuchus' presents the greatest number of interesting personages. The Thais of that play is the most favourable delineation of the Athenian 'Hetaera' in ancient literature. She has grace and dignity, a consciousness of her charms combined with a proud humility, and not only kindliness of nature, but real goodness of heart. The natural dignity of her nature, tempered by the sense of her position, appears in her rebuke to Chaerea,—
Non te dignum, Chaerea,
Fecisti: nam si ego digna hac contumelia
Sum maxume, at tu indignus qui faceres tamen[14];
and her kindness is equally manifest in her ready admission of his excuse,
Non adeo inhumano ingenio sum, Chaerea,