Neque ita imperita, ut quid amor valeat, nesciam[15].
Gnatho is a new and more subtly conceived type of the parasite, and in Thraso the 'Miles Gloriosus' does not transcend the limits of credibility. Parmeno and Phaedria are natural embodiments of the confidential slave and the weak lover. Their relations to one another are brought out with more delicate irony and finer psychological analysis, though with less vigour than those of Pseudolus and Calidorus, or of Ludus and Pistoclerus in the Pseudolus and Bacchides of Plautus. The Davus, Geta, and Syrus of the other plays are tamer and less humorous than the slaves of Plautus; but they play their part with wit and liveliness, and the rôle which they have to perform is not felt to be incompatible with the ordinary conditions of life. Aeschinus, in the Adelphoe, shows a higher spirit and more energy of character than most of the other lovers in Plautus or Terence. The contrast between the genial, indulgent, selfish man of the world, and the harder type of character produced by exclusive devotion to business, is well brought out in the Micio and Demea of the Adelphoe, and in the Chremes and Menedemus of the Heauton Timorumenos. The two brothers in the 'Phormio,' Demipho and Chremes, are also happily characterised and distinguished from one another; and Phormio is himself a type of the parasite, as distinct from Gnatho, as he is from the Gelasimus or Curculio of Plautus. The character-painting in Terence is altogether free from the tendency to exaggeration and caricature which is the besetting fault of some of the greatest humourists. Yet with all his truth of detail, his careful avoidance of the extreme forms of villainy, roguery, and inhuman hardness, it may be doubted whether the life represented by Terence is not on the whole more purely conventional than that represented by Plautus. His personages seem to move about in a kind of 'Fools' paradise' without the knowledge of good or evil. All the sentimental virtues seem to flourish spontaneously, even in the hearts of his courtesans: and though he holds up a true ideal of fidelity in love and loyalty in friendship, yet the chief practical lesson that seems to be suggested is the necessity of overcoming the restraints imposed by prudence and conscience on the indulgence of natural inclination.
If we consider the form, substance, and spirit of these six plays, we find that their merit consists in the art with which the situation is unfolded and the plot developed, the consistency and moderation with which a conventional view of life and various types of character are set before us, and in the large part played in them by the tender and sympathetic emotions. But their great attraction, both to ancient and modern readers, has been their charm of style. The diction of Terence, while it wants the creativeness and exuberance of Plautus, is free from the mannerisms which accompanied these large endowments of the older poet. The superiority of his style over that of Lucilius, who wrote a generation after him, is almost immeasurable. The fine Attic flavour is more perceptible in his Latin, than in the Greek of his contemporaries. He does not attempt to emulate the 'numeri innumeri' of Plautus, but limits himself almost entirely to those metres which suit the natural flow of placid or more animated conversation, viz. the iambic (senarian or septenarian) and the trochaic septenarian. The effect of his metre is to introduce measure, propriety, grace, and point into ordinary speech without impairing its ease and spontaneousness. The natural vivacity and urbanity of his style is equally apparent in dialogue, or in rapid and picturesque narrative of incidents and pathetic situations[16]. He is full of happy often-quoted sayings, such as
Hinc illae lacrimae. Amantium irae amoris integratiost.
Quot homines, tot sententiae.
Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.
Tacent: satis laudant.
Nosse omnia haec salus est adulescentulis.
Cantilenam eandem canis—laterem lavem,—etc. etc.
Many of these—such as 'ne quid nimis,' 'ad restim res redit mihi,' 'auribus teneo lupum,' etc.—are obviously translations from Greek proverbial sayings; and in all his use of language we may trace the influence of a close observation and sympathetic enjoyment of Greek subtlety, reserve, delicate allusiveness, curious felicity in union with direct simplicity. These qualities of style, reproduced in the purest Latin idiom, had a great influence on the familiar style of Horace. Expressions in his Satires and Epistles, and even in his Odes, show how closely he studied the language of Terence[17]. It is from a scene in Terence that Horace takes his example of the weakness of passion[18]; and the mode in which he tells how his father trained him to correct his own faults by observing other men must have been suggested by the conversation between Demea and Syrus in the Adelphoe[19]:—