Publius Terentius Afer (or Terence in English) is a second-century BCE playwright, and the last of the three great Roman comic playwrights after Plautus and Caecilius Statius.
Life
We know more about Terence’s life than usual due to the survival of Suetonius’ biography of him. He was born at Carthage around 195 BC. As a child, he was taken to Rome and sold into slavery, where he was educated and subsequently freed by Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator. Upon becoming a freedman, he adopted the name Publius Terentius as well as the cognomen Afer to reflect his Carthaginian origin. He was said to have joined the literary circle around Scipio Aemilianus and Laelius, who became his patrons, though recent scholarship doubts the existence of any such formal group.
Around 159, Terence left for Greece to further his study of Greek comedies and Menander in particular. He is said to have died either in Greece or lost at sea along with the new plays he had written.
Works
His six plays, all of which survive, are Adelphoe (“The Brothers”), Andria (“The Girl from Andros”), Eunuchus (The Eunuch), Heautontimorumenos (“The Masochist”), Hecyra (“The Mother-in-Law”), and Phormio. More possibly were written; Quintus Cosconius claims he had “plays adapted from Menander” (fabulis conversis a Menandro) with him when he was lost at sea, though most ancient authorities claimed he died in Greece.
Style
Terence was fond of contaminatio, “the process of combining two or more Greek comedies to form a single Latin play”, for which he was criticized by his contemporaries, notably Luscius Lanuvinus, an older playwright. Terence confronted the charge in the beginning of his Andria, stating that there were good precedents for the practice. Terence was also accused of not actually writing his works himself, having Scipio Aemilianus and Laelius write for him. It is possible that there was some collaboration, but most scholars believe that this accusation arose out of disbelief that a Carthaginian could compose such good poetry and is instead a testament to Terence’s talent.
Terence’s comedy differs greatly from his predecessors Plautus and Caecilius Statius, in that Terence’s plays are generally less farcical and more psychological, taking the traditional stock characters of New Comedy and softening them, subverting common tropes, and exploring deeper dimensions and motivations of the characters. Even the very language of Terence’s plays was more artful than his predecessors’.
Legacy
Terence’s plays were generally well regarded by both contemporaries and later generations, though not without some detractors. Suetonius relates a (most likely fictitious) story in which Caecilius Statius becomes enamored with the Andria when Terence, before he ever put on a play, read it aloud at a dinner, thus granting approval from the senior playwright.
In reality, Terence had a rocky start to success. He had a difficult time keeping the attention of the audience during the first two performances of the Hecyra, succeeding only on a third attempt.
He became especially popular in the late Republican era, when it became fashionable to study him, and his work became standard for school instruction. Afranius claimed Terence had no equal, and Cicero was very fond of quoting him in his speeches. He was beloved for his “pure style” or, in the words of Horace, his “art” (ars), and remained popular all the way through the Middle Ages.
Still, Vulcatius, in the creation of a Latin canon, placed him lower on a list of great Roman comics, not even in the same league as Naevius, Plautus, or Caecilius Statius, and Julius Caesar thought that his plays lacked vis (“force”), though he otherwise praised Terence’s mastery of the Latin language.
Textual History
Terence’s textual history is one of the richest and most vibrant. Rouse and Reeve note in their article in Texts and Transmission that it contains a fourth century commentary (by Donatus), a late fourth/early fifth century manuscript, some fragments, “numerous quotations in [early] grammarians”, and “650 manuscripts written after AD 800”.
Memorable Lines
From the Eunuchus
- Nullumst iam dictum quod non dictum sit prius. (“There’s nothing said now that hasn’t been said before.”)
From the Heautontimorumenos
- Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto. (“I am a person, so nothing human is strange to me.”)
- This phrase was for a long time thought to represent a humanistic thought in Terence, though in context that interpretation appears a stretch.
- Nil tam difficile est quin quaerendo investigari possiet. (“Nothing is so difficult that it cannot be figured out by investigation.”)
- Ius summum saepe summa est malitia. (“The greatest law is often the greatest evil.”)
- Cf. Callimachus’ μέγα βιβλίον μέγα κακόν (“A big book is a big evil.”)
From the Phormio
- Fortis fortuna adiuvat. (“Fortune favors the brave.”)
- This proverb most likely was well known and traditional by the time Terence uses it; it is repeated quite frequently throughout antiquity in various forms.
- Quot homines tot sententiae. (“For however many men, there are that many opinions.”)
Terence Online
Latin: PHI Latin Texts
English and Latin: Perseus
Further Reading
- Gesine Manuwald 2011. Roman Republican Theatre. Cambridge.
- Daniel P. Hanchey 2013, “Terence and the Scipionic Grex,” in Augoustakis & Traill eds. A Companion to Terence: Wiley-Blackwell.
