TERENCE AND THE COMIC POETS SUBSEQUENT TO PLAUTUS.
The names of five or six comic dramatists are known, who fill
the space of eighteen years between the death of Plautus and the
representation of the earliest play of Terence, the 'Andria.' From
one of these, Aquilius, some verses are quoted, which Varro did not
hesitate to attribute to Plautus, and which Gellius characterises as
'Plautinissimi.' They are the words of a parasite, complaining of the
invention of sun-dials as inconveniently retarding the dinner
hour. Among these writers the most famous was Caecilius Statius, an
Insubrian Gaul, first a slave, and afterwards a freedman of a member
of the Caecilian house. He is said to have lived on terms of great
intimacy with Ennius. His poetic career very nearly coincides with
that of the epic and tragic poet, and he only survived him by one
year. Some Roman critics ranked him above even Plautus as a comic
poet. The line of Horace--
Vincere Caecilius gravitate, Terentius arte--
probably indicates the ground of their preference. He is said also
to have been careful in the construction of his plots[1]. Cicero, who
often quotes from him, speaks of him as having written a bad style[2].
He is also mentioned among those poets who 'powerfully moved the
feelings.'
He composed about forty plays. Most of them had Greek titles, and a
considerable number of these are identical with the titles of comedies
by Menander. Two of the longest of his fragments express with more
bitterness and less humour the feelings which husbands in Plautus
entertain towards their wives. In one of these passages he has adapted
his Greek original to the coarser Roman taste with even less
fastidiousness than Plautus generally shows[3]. Another passage, from
the Synephebi, is more in the spirit of Terence than of Plautus. It is
one in which a young lover complains that the 'good nature' (commoditas) of
his father made it impossible to cheat him with an easy conscience.
Occasionally we find specimens of those short maxims which probably
led the Augustan critics to attribute to him the character of
_gravitas_, such as the
Serit arbores quae alteri saeclo prosint,
quoted by Cicero in the Tusculan Questions, and this line--
Saepe est etiam sub palliolo sordido sapientia.
He seems to have had nothing of the creative originality of Plautus,
nor ever to have enjoyed the same general popularity. He prepared the
way for Terence by a more careful conformity to his Greek models than
his predecessor had shown, and, apparently, by introducing a more
serious and sentimental vein into his representations of life.
With Terence Roman literature enters on a new stage of its
development. When he appeared, a younger generation had grown up, who
not only inherited the enthusiasm for Greek art and letters of the
older generation,--of men of the stamp of the elder Scipio, Aemilius
Paulus, T. Quintius Flamininus,--but who had been carefully
educated from their boyhood in Greek accomplishments. The leading
representative of this younger generation, Scipio Aemilianus, was
about the same age as Terence, and admitted him to his intimacy; thus
showing in his early youth the same enlightened and tolerant spirit
and the same cultivated aspiration which made him choose Panaetius and
Polybius as the associates of his manhood, and induced him to live in
relations of frank unreserve with Lucilius during the latter years
of his life. Among the members of the Scipionic circle, Laelius and
Furius Philo were also closely associated with Terence; and he is said
to have enjoyed the favour of older men of distinction and culture,
Sulpicius Gallus, Q. Fabius Labeo, and M. Popillius, men of consular
rank and of literary and poetic accomplishment[4]. In the interval
between Plautus and Terence, the great gap which was never again to be
bridged over had been made between the mass of the people and a small
educated class. While the former became less capable of intellectual
pleasure, and were beginning to prefer the exhibitions of boxers,
rope-dancers, and gladiators[5], to the comedies which had delighted
their fathers, the latter became more exacting than the men of a
former generation, in their demands for correctness and elegance. They
had acquired through education the fastidiousness of men of culture,
a quality not easily gained and retained without some sacrifice
of native force and popular sympathies. Recognising the immense
superiority of the Greek originals in literature to the rude Roman
copies, they believed that the best way to create a national Latin
literature was to deviate as little as possible, in spirit, form, and
substance, from the works of Greek genius. But though cosmopolitan,
or rather purely Greek, in their literary tastes, they were thoroughly
patriotic in devotion to their country's interests. They cherished
their native language as the great instrument of social and political
life; and they recognised the influence which a cultivated literature
might have in rendering that instrument finer and more flexible than
natural use had made it. By concentrating attention on form and style,
without aiming at originality of invention, Latin literature might
become a truer medium of Greek culture, and might, at the same time,
impart a finer edge and temper to the rude ore of Latin speech.
The task which awaited Terence was the complete Hellenising of Roman
comedy, and the creation of a style which might combine something of
Attic flexibility and delicacy with the idiomatic purity of the
Latin spoken in the best Roman houses. By birth a Phoenician, by
intellectual education a Greek, by the associations of his daily
life a foreigner living in Rome, he was more in sympathy with the
cosmopolitan mode of thought and feeling which Greek culture was
diffusing over the civilised world, than with the traditions of Roman
austerity or the homely humours of Italian life. As a dependent and
associate of men belonging to the most select society of Rome, he had
neither that contact with the many sides of life, nor that familiarity
with the animated modes of popular speech, which helped to fashion
the style of Plautus: but by assimilating the literary grace of the
Athenian comedy and the familiar manner of a high-bred, friendly,
and intelligent society, he gave to Latin, what the Greek language in
ancient and the French in modern times have had pre-eminently, a style
which gives dignity and urbanity to conversation, and freedom and
simplicity to literary expression. If the oratorical tastes and
training of the Romans make the absence of these last qualities
perceptible in much both of their prose and verse, we feel the charm
of their presence in the Letters of Cicero, the lighter poems of
Catullus, the Epistles of Horace, the Epigrams of Martial: and it was
owing to the social and intellectual position of Terence that this
secret of combining consummate literary grace with conversational ease
and spontaneity was discovered.
Our knowledge of the life of Terence is derived chiefly from a
fragment of the lost work of Suetonius, _De viris illustribus_,
preserved in the commentary of Donatus. Confirmation of some of the
statements contained in the life is obtained from later writers and
speakers, and also from the prologues to the different plays, which
throw light on the literary and personal relations of the poet. These
prologues were among the original sources of Suetonius: but he
quotes or refers to the works of various grammarians and
antiquarians--Porcius Licinus, Volcatius Sedigitus, Santra, Nepos,
Fenestella, Q. Cosconius--as his authorities. The first two lived
within a generation or two after the death of Terence, and the first
of them shows a distinct animus against him and his patrons. But
notwithstanding the abundance of authorities, there is uncertainty as
to both the date of his birth and the place and manner of his death.
The doubt as to the former arises from the discrepancy of the MSS. His
last play, the Adelphoe, was exhibited in 160 B.C. Shortly after its
production he went to Greece, being then, according to the best MSS.,
in his twenty-fifth ('nondum quintum atque vicesimum egressus[6]
annum'), according to inferior MSS., in his thirty-fifth year. This
uncertainty is increased by a discrepancy between the authorities
quoted by Suetonius. Cornelius Nepos is quoted for the statement that
he was about the same age as Scipio (born 185 B.C.) and Laelius, while
Fenestella, an antiquarian of the later Augustan period, represented
him as older. As the authority of the MSS. coincides with that of the
older record, the year 185 B.C. may be taken as the most probable date
of his birth. In the case of an author drawing originally from life,
it might seem improbable that he should have written six comedies, so
true in their apprehension and delineation of various phases of human
nature, between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five. But the case of
an imitative artist reproducing impressions derived from literature
is different; and the circumstances of Terence's Phoenician origin and
early life may well have developed in him a precocity of talent. His
acknowledged intimacy with Scipio and Laelius, and the general belief
that they assisted him in the composition of his plays, agree better
with the statement that he was about their own age than that he was
ten years older. The lines at the end of the prologue to the Heauton
Timorumenos--
Exemplum statuite in me ut _adulescentuli_
Vobis placere studeant potius quam sibi,
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 _denouement_ 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--
'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,
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 _role_ 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]:--
_De._ Denique
Inspicere tamquam in speculum in vitas omnium
Iubeo atque ex aliis sumere exemplum sibi.
'Hoc facito.' _Sy._ Recte sane. _De._ 'Hoc fugito.' _Sy._ Callide.
_De._ 'Hoc laudist.' _Sy._ 'Istaec res est.' _De._ 'Hoc vitio
datur.'[20]
Again, the remonstrance of Micio to Demea,
Si esses homo,
Sineres nunc facere, dum per aetatem licet,
expresses the philosophy of many of his love poems and his drinking
songs. The Epicurean sentiment and reflexion borrowed from Menander
were congenial to one side of Horace's nature, as the manly
independence and serious spirit of Lucilius were to another: and in
his own style he has incorporated the conversational urbanity of the
one writer no less than the intellectual vigour of the other. But
Horace was much richer and more varied in the subjects of his art, as
he was larger and more penetrating in his knowledge of the world, and
more manly and serious in his view of life, than the comic poet who
died so early in his career.
But not Horace only, but some of the best judges and greatest masters
of style both in ancient and modern times have been among his chief
admirers. Cicero frequently reproduces his expressions, applies
passages in his plays to his own circumstances, and refers to his
personages as typical representatives of character[21]. Julius Caesar
characterises him as 'puri sermonis amator.' Quintilian applies to his
writing the epithet 'elegantissimus,' and in that connexion refers to
the belief that his plays were the work of Scipio Africanus. Cicero,
on the other hand, speaks of the belief that they were the work of
Laelius, 'cuius fabellae propter elegantiam sermonis putabantur a C.
Laelio scribi[22].' The imputation in the poet's own time, which he
does not altogether disclaim, appears to have been that both friends
assisted him in his task.
His works were studied and learned by heart by the great Latin writers
of the Renaissance, such as Erasmus and Melanchthon: and Casaubon, in
his anxiety that his son should write a pure style, inculcates on him
the constant study of Terence. Montaigne applies to him the phrase of
Horace,--
Liquidus puroque simillimus amni.
He speaks of 'his fine expression, elegancy, and quaintness,' and
adds, 'he does so possess the soul with his graces that we forget
those of his fable[23].' It is among the French, the great masters
of the prose of refined conversation, that his merits have been most
appreciated in modern times. Sainte-Beuve, in his 'Nouveaux Lundis,'
devotes to him two papers of delicate and admiring criticism. He
quotes Fenelon and Addison, 'deux esprits polis et doux, de la
meme famille litteraire,' as expressing their admiration for the
illimitable beauty and naturalness of one of his scenes. Fenelon is
said to have preferred him even to Moliere. Sainte-Beuve calls Terence
the bond of union between Roman urbanity and the Atticism of the
Greeks, and adds that it was in the seventeenth century, when French
literature was most truly Attic, that he was most appreciated. M.
Joubert is quoted[24] as applying to him the words 'Le miel Attique
est sur ses levres; on croirait aisement qu'il naquit sur le mont
Hymette.'
After the death of Terence the only writer of _palliatae_ of any name
was Sextus Turpilius, who died about the end of the second century
B.C. No new element seems to have been contributed by him to the
Roman Stage. After the decline of the Comoedia palliata, the Comoedia
togata, which professed to represent the Roman and Italian life of the
middle classes, first obtained popular favour. The principal writers
of this branch of comedy were T. Quintius Atta and L. Afranius. The
latter was regarded as the Roman Menander:--
Dicitur Afrani toga convenisse Menandro.
The admiration which he expressed for Terence, whom he regarded as
the foremost of all the Roman comic poets, is in keeping with this
criticism. From the testimony of Quintilian[25] we may infer that the
change of scene from Athens to Rome and the provincial towns of Italy
did not improve the morality of the Roman stage. A further decline
both in intellectual interest and in moral tendency appeared in the
resuscitation in a literary form of the Fabulae Atellanae, the
chief writers of which were L. Pomponius and Novius. A still further
degradation was witnessed in the later days of the Republic and under
the Empire in the rise of the 'Mimus,' as a recognised branch of
dramatic literature. If the influence of the comic stage, when its
chief representatives were Plautus and Terence, is to be regarded as
only of a mixed character, it is difficult to associate any idea
of intellectual pleasure with the gross buffooneries of the Atellan
farce, when it had passed from the spontaneous hilarity of primitive
times into the conditions of an artistic performance, and still
less with the 'mimi,' which were intended to gratify the lowest
propensities of the spectators. The rapid degeneracy of the mass of
the people from the characteristic virtues of the older Republic
is testified as much by the popularity of such spectacles as by the
passionate delight excited by the gladiatorial combats.
[Footnote 1: 'In argumento Caecilius poscit palmam,' quoted
from Varro.]
[Footnote 2: Ep. ad Attic. vii. 3; Brutus, 74.]
[Footnote 3: Cf. Mommsen, vol. ii. p. 435, English Translation.]
[Footnote 4: 'Consulari utroque ac poeta.' Life of Terence, by
Suetonius.]
[Footnote 5: Cf. Prologue to the Hecyra.]
[Footnote 6: Ritschl reads 'ingressus,' which would make him a
year younger.]
[Footnote 7: Prol. Andria, l. 20.]
[Footnote 8: Eunuchus, Prologue, l. 22, etc.]
[Footnote 9: Prol. to Phormio, l. 5, etc.]
[Footnote 10: Prol. Adelph. 15-21.]
[Footnote 11: The Phormio is taken from Apollodorus.]
[Footnote 12: We have one or two Latin puns. Such as the play
of words in _amentium_ and _amantium_, _verba_ and _verbera_;
one or two cases of alliteration and asyndeton, e.g.--
Hic est victus, vetus, veternosus senex,--
and
Profundat, perdat, pereat, etc.;
but such mannerisms, which abound in Plautus, are extremely
rare in the younger poet.]
[Footnote 13: In the Heauton Timorumenos.]
[Footnote 14: 'This act was not worthy of you, Chaerea: for
even if it is quite fitting that I should receive such an
insult, all the same it was not fitting that it should come
from you.']
[Footnote 15: 'I am not so wanting in natural feeling or so
unschooled in its ways as not to know what love is capable
of.']
[Footnote 16: E.g. Andria, 115-136; 282-298; Heauton
Timorumenos, 273-301.]
[Footnote 17: The original of such expressions as--Appone
lucro; Dulce est desipere in loco; Rimosa quae deponuntur
in aure; Qua parte debacchentur ignes; Cena dubia; Paucorum
hominum et mentis bene sanae; Quam sapere et ringi; Quid non
ebrietas designat?--and others, are to be found in Terence.]
[Footnote 18: Eunuch. A. i. 1; cf. Hor. Sat. ii. 3, 260,
etc.]
[Footnote 19: 414, etc.]
[Footnote 20: 'Then I bid him look into the lives of men
as into a mirror, and to form for himself an example from
others.' 'Do this.' _Sy._ 'Quite right.' _De._ 'Avoid this.'
_Sy._ 'Cleverly said.' _De._ 'This is honourable.' _Sy._ 'That
is it.' _De._ 'This is discreditable.']
[Footnote 21: Cf. Ep. ad Fam. i. 9. 19; Phil. ii. 15.]
[Footnote 22: Ep. ad Att. vii. 3. 10.]
[Footnote 23: Essays of Montaigne, Cotton's Translation, ch.
lxvii.]
[Footnote 24: By E. Negrette, in his Histoire de la
Litterature Latine.]
[Footnote 25: Quint. x. 1, 100.]