was the second and the last of the Roman comic poets, of whose works more than fragments are preserved. The few particulars of his life were collected long after his decease, and are of very doubtful authority. It would therefore be to little purpose to repeat them without scrutiny or comment. We shall, in the first place, inquire who were the biographers of Terence, what they relate of him, and the consistency and credibility of their several accounts. We shall next briefly survey the comedies themselves, their reception at the time, their influence on dramatic literature, their translators and imitators, their commentators and bibliography.
Our knowledge of Terence himself is derived principally from the life ascribed to Donatus or Suetonius, and from two scanty memoirs, or collections of Scholia, the one published in the seventeenth century, by Abraham Gronovius, from an Oxford MS., and the other by Angelo Mai, from a MS. in the Vatican. The life of Terence, printed in the Milan edition of Petrarch's works 1476, is merely a comment on Donatus. Of these, the first mentioned is the longest and most particular. It is nevertheless a meagre and incongruous medley, which, for its barrenness, may be ascribed to Donatus, and for its scandal to Suetonius. But it cites still earlier writers,--C. Nepos, Fenestella, Porcius, Santra, Volcatius, and Q. Cosconius. Of these Nepos is the best known, and perhaps the most trustworthy. His contemporaries deemed him a sound antiquarian (Catull. 1.1), and his historical studies had trained him to examine facts and dates. (Gel. 15.48.) Of Fenestella, more voluminous than accurate, we have already given some account [Vol. II. p. 145]. Q. Cosconius was probably the grammarian cited by Varro (L. L. 6.36, 89), Porcius, the Porcius Licinius, a satirical and seemingly libellous versifier, mentioned by Gellius (17.21, 19.19), and Volcatius was the Volcatius Sedigitus quoted by the same author (15.24). Santra is enumerated by St. Jerome (Vit. Script. Eccles.) among the Latin compilers of Memoirs; he wrote also a treatise De Antiquitate Verborum, cited frequently by Festus. Such writers are but indifferent vouchers for either facts or dates, whether from their living so long after the poet's age, or from the character of their testimony. In the following account we interweave our comment with their text.
P. Terentius Afer was born at Carthage B. C. 195, since he was in his 35th year at the performance of his last play, the Adelphi, B. C. 160. By birth or purchase, he became the slave of P. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator. But if he were " civis Carthaginiensis," as the didascalia of Donatas and the biographers style him, his servile condition is difficult to understand. Fenestella remarked that Terence could not have been a prisoner of war, since Carthage was at peace with Rome from B. C. 201 to 149. But in that interim the Carthaginians were involved in wars with their own mercenaries, with the Numidians, and with the southern Iberians, and at least two Roman embassies visited Carthage. So that, although the truce with Rome was unbroken, Terence or his parents may have been exposed in the Punic slavemarkets, and transported to Italy. His cognomen After rests on as good authority as any other circumstance related of him. Yet it is not conclusive. It may have been merely an inference from a popular rumour of his Punic origin; and it was a cognomen of the Gens Domitia at Rome, where it certainly does not imply African descent. Terence is said to have been of an olive complexion, thin person, and middle height. (Donat.) These are not the physical characteristics of the Punic race, but they accord with those of the Liby-phoenician or Celtiberian perioeci, who were planted as colonists in various parts of the Carthaginian territory ; and it is more likely that a perioecus, or the son of a perioecus, should have been enslaved, than that a native Carthaginian should have become the property of a Roman senator, so long as their respective commonwealths were at peace. It is remarkable also that Plautus, an Umbrian, in his comedy of the " Poenulus" should have introduced a Carthaginian among his dramatis personae, and an entire scene in the Punic language, while neither Carthaginian words, names, or allusions, are to be met with in Terence.
We know not at what time Terence came to Rome; but from his proficiency in the language of his masters we infer that he fell early into the hands of Terentius Lucanus, even if he were not a verna, or slave born in the house. A handsome person and promising talents recommended Terence to his patron, who afforded him the best education of the age and finally manumitted him. The condition of slaves was not always unfavourable to intellectual development. More than one eminent writer was born in a servile station [*](* Bentley (Praef: in Terent. Cantabr. 1726) remarks " Hi tres (Terentius, P. Syrus, Phaedrus) pari conditione liberti et peregrini, in non ita dissimili argumento, comoediis mimis et apologis, omnia Italorum ingenia facile superaverunt." For the intellectual opportunities of slaves, see also Nepos (Att. 13, 14). Before his manumission, Terence was probably anagnostes and librarius to Lucanus.), and Tiro, Cicero's freedman, was the associate of his patron's literary labours, and his amanuensis. On his manumission, according to the usual practice, Terence assumed his patron's nomen, Terentius, having been previously called Publius or Publipor. From his cognomen, Lucanus, the patron may have been a native or landholder of southern Italy, and the protege, like Livius Andronicus, have acquired in one of the cities of Magna Graecia his taste for the Attic drama. The " Andrian" was the first play offered by Terence for representation The curule aediles, who conducted the theatrical exhibitions, referred the piece to Caecilius, then one of the most popular play-writers at Rome. [CAECILIUS STATIUS.] Unknown and meanly clad, Terence began to read from a low stool his opening scene, so often cited by Cicero as a model of narration. (Invent. 1.23, de Orat. 2.40, &c., &c.) A few verses showed the elder poet that no ordinary writer was before him, and the young aspirant, then in his 27th year, was invited to share the couch and supper of his judge. This reading of the Andrian, however, must have preceded its performance nearly two years, for Caecilius died in B. C. 168, and it was not acted till 166. Meanwhile copies were in circulation, envy was awakened, and Luscius Lavinius [Vol. II. p. 842] a veteran, and not very successful play-writer (comp. Pral. in Terent. Corn. ; Gel. 15.24; Hieron. in Genes.), began his unwearied and unrelenting attacks on the dramatic and personal character of the author. The " Andrian" was successful, and, aided by the accomplishments and good address of Terence himself, was the means of introducing him to the most refined and intellectual circles of Rome. In the interval between Plautus and Terence, the great Roman families had more and more assumed the state and character of princely houses. In their town and country seats, the Scipios, the Laelii, the Metelli and the Mucii, formed each a petty court around themselves. Among the patrons or associates of Terence we find the names of L. Furius Philus, of C. Sulpicius Gallus, of Q. Fabius Labeo, and M. Popilius Laenas. But from the comparative youth of the parties, his intercourse with Laelius and the younger Scipio had in it less of dependence on the one side, and more of friendship on the other. Nepos, indeed (Fr. Chron. 1.6), calls them aequales. Both Scipio and Laelius, however, were probably about nine years younger than their protégé. Both treated him as an equal, and this intimacy would open to him, as it formerly opened to Ennius, and subsequently to Lucilius, the houses of the Aemilii, Metelli, and Scaevolae. (Cic. Arch. 7 ; Vet. Schol. in Hor. Serm. 2.1. 71.) Nor is it rash to conjecture that Terence may have conversed with Polybius at Alba or Liternum, or made one of the group immortalised by Horace. (Serm. 2.1. 71, foll.; vet. Schol.)
Calumny did not fail to misrepresent their intercourse. His patrons, it was said, assisted Terence in the composition, nay, were the real authors of his plays, made him their playmate and butt, and let him starve. (Porcius, apud Donat.) C. Memmius [No. 5] mentioned the rumour as notorious, in his speech " Pro Se ;" Valgius wrote in his Actaeon (Bothe, Poet. Lat. Scen. v. p. 201), probably in the Prologue,
" Hae quae vocantur fabulae cujae sunt? Non has, qui jura populis end'ibus (endo-tribs ?) dabat Honore summo affectus, fecit fabulas ;"
Cicero gave it credence (ad Att. 7.3), and Nepos (Fr. Incert. 6), in the following story, ascribes at least one comedy to Laelius. It was, he says, the 1st of March, the festival of the Matronalia, on which, if on no other day of the year, the Roman ladies were absolute in their households. Laelius was spending the holiday at Puteoli; supper was announced, but he begged not to be interrupted, as
" Satis, pol, proterve me Syri promissa huc induxerunt," &c.
The belief that Terence was aided by his friends in composition, if properly limited, has in it nothing improbable. He was a foreigner, and of a race, to which, whether Libyan or Iberian, the Greek and Latin idioms presented no ordinary difficulties. Of the English, who speak and write French, few attain to precision or purity, and the Punic or Basque dialects diverged more from the languages of Athens and Rome than the speech of London from the speech of Paris. From the purity of Terence's diction we might, without these anecdotes, infer his intimacy with the best society in Rome. Of that society, in that age, the Scipios were the leaders; and the Laelii, both male and female, the models of forensic and conversational eloquence. [LAELIA, No. 1.] Nor did Terence deny the charge. He gloried in it, as the test of his proficiency as an artist. (Prol. in Adelph.) Our own dramatic literature furnishes parallel cases. Garrick added a scene to the " West Indian," and revised the " Clandestine Marriage." Pope retouched the songs in the " Beggar's Opera," and the " Medea" was submitted to the critics of Leicester House. Yet no one doubts that Cumberland, Colman, Gay, and Glover, were respectively the authors of those productions. The story of Terence's poverty is less easy to refute, but we disbelieve it equally. He owned an estate of a few acres, contiguous to the Appian road, and, after his decease, his daughter married a man of equestrian rank. Neither of these facts accords with the assertion of Porcius Licinius (Donat.), that he was too poor to hire a house or keep a slave. An eques would scarcely wed a portionless maiden, the daughter of a freedman; and even in that age, land lying near the great highway of Italy must have been valuable as pasture, arable, or building ground. Avarice, on the other hand. was not the vice of the Scipios. (Plb. 32.14.) If they took freely from kings and tetrarchs (Liv. 38.50), without scrupulously accounting to the treasury, they gave freely to their favourites and dependents. Ennius, though poor (Hieron. Chron. Ol. 135), did not starve under their roof, and was buried in their tomb; Polybius and Panaetius lightened the privations of exile in their camp and their villas, and Lucilins, who succeeded Terence in the friendship of Scipio and Laelius, could afford to make literature his profession. But. if by poverty be meant indigence, the tenour of Terence's history contradicts the rumour of his poverty. After the representation of his six comedies, for one of which, the Eunuch, he received the unprecedented sum of nearly 60l., he travelled in Greece. Now a journey in Greece could not be performed in those days any more than in our own without cost, even if his patrons lightened his charges by their tesserae hospitals (Plant. Poen. 5.1. 25), to their various clients and friends. And Terence resided, as well as travelled in Greece, since while there he translated 108 of Menander's comedies nor as an alien could he hold a libera legatio, or commission to live at the public expense while transacting his private business. These facts, gleaned from his biographers themselves, render the neglect of the patrons and the indigence of the client very doubtful. The hostility to Terence was perhaps owing partly to professional causes, and partly to his popularity with the great. Terence was a foreigner, a freedman, and the adherent of a party. Even Horace was taunted with being libertino patre natus ; and in Horace's days the long civil wars and the influx of strangers into the senate and the tribes had melted down many of the old Italian prejudices. In Terence's age there were two strongly opposed parties in literature, as well as in politics,--the Latin party, of which Cato and the Fabii were the representatives, and the Greek, or movement-party, of which the Scipios were the leaders and Terence the favourite. Here was plentiful matter for libel. Whether the attacks of Lavinius drove him from Italy, or whether he went to Greece as to a university, is uncertain. Before his departure his detractors had affirmed that from his ignorance of Attic manners and idiom his versions of Menander and Apollodorus were caricatures. (Prol. in Andr. Hcautont. Phorm.) He never returned, and the accounts of his death are as various as the records of his life. According to one story, after embarking at Brundisium, he was never heard of more; according to others, he died at Stymphalus, in Arcadia (Auson. Epist. xviii.), in Letucadia, or at Patrae, in Achaia. One of his biographers said he was drowned, with all the fruits of his sojourn in Greece, on his home-passage. But the prevailing report was, that his translations of Menander were lost at sea, and that grief for their loss caused his death. He died in the 36th year of his age, in B. C. 159, or, according to St. Jerome (Chron. Ol. 155, 3), in the year following. He left a daughter, but nothing is known of his family.
[W.B.D]