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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: TAV-THE |
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TERENCE . Our knowledge of the life of the celebrated Latin playwright, Publius Terentius Afer, is derived chiefly from a fragment of the lost work of Suetonius, De viris illustribus, preserved in the commentary of Donatus, who adds a few words of his own. The prologues to the comedies were among the original
He is said to have been born in Carthage, and brought to Rome as a slave. At Rome he was educated like a free man in the house of Terentius Lucanus, a senator, by whom he was soon emancipated; whereupon he took his master's nomen Terentius, and thenceforward his name was Publius Terentius Afer, of which the last member seems to imply that he was not a Phoenician (Poenus) by blood. He was admitted into the intimacy of young men of the best families, such as Scipio, Laelius and Furius Philus; and he enjoyed the favour of older men of literary distinction and official position. In the circle of Scipio he doubtless met the historian Polybius
Terence's earliest play was the Andria, exhibited in 166 B.C. A pretty, but perhaps apocryphal, story is told of his having read the play, before its exhibition, to Caecilius (who, after the death of Plautus, ranked as the foremost comic poet), and of the generous admiration of it manifested by Caecilius. A similar instance of the recognition of rising genius by a poet whose own day was past is found in the account given of the visit of Accius to the veteran Pacuvius. The next play was the Hecyra, first produced in 165, but withdrawn in consequence of its bad reception, and reproduced in 16o. The Heauton Timorumenos appeared in 163, the Eunuchus in 161, the Phormio in 161, and the Adelphoe in 16o at the funeral games of L. Aemilius Paullus. Of these six plays. the Phormio and probably the Hecyra were drawn
No writer in any literature, who has contented himself with so limited a function, has gained so great a reputation as Terence. He lays no claim to the position of an original
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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 the Greek society in the 3rd century B.C., presented in the purest Latin idiom. Yet Terence had no affinity by birth either with the Greek race or with the people of Latium. He was more distinctly a foreigner than any of the great classical writers of Rome. He lived at the meeting-point of three distinct civilizations--the mature, or rather decaying, civilization of Greece, of which Athens was still the centre; that of Carthage, which was so soon to pass away and leave scarcely any vestige of itself; and the nascent civilization of Italy, in which all other modes were soon to be absorbed. Terence was by birth an African, and was thus perhaps a fitter medium of connexion between the genius of Greece and that of Italy than if he had been a pure Greek or a pure Italian; just as in modern times the Jewish type of genius is sometimes found more detached from national peculiarities, and thus more capable of reproducing a cosmopolitan type of character than the genius of men belonging to other races.The prologues to Terence's plays are of high interest
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We learn from these prologues that the best Roman literature was ceasing to be popular, and had come to rely on the patronage of the great. A consequence of this change of circumstances was that comedy was no longer national in character and sentiment, but had become imitative and artistic. The life which Terence represents is that of the well-to-do citizen class whose interests are commonplace, but whose modes of thought and speech are refined, humane and intelligent. His characters are finely delineated and discriminated rather than, like those of Plautus, boldly conceived. Delicate irony and pointed epigram take the place of broad humour. Love, in the form of pathetic sentiment rather than of irregular passion, is the chief motive of his pieces. His great characteristics are humanity and urbanity, and to this may be attributed the attraction which he had for the two chief representatives of these qualities in Roman literatureCicero and Horace. Terence's pre-eminence in art was recognized in the Augustan age; and Horace expresses this opinion , though not as his own, in these words (Epistles II. i. 59):-" Vincere Caecilius gravitate, Terentius arte." The art of his comedies consists in the clearness and simplicity with which the situation is presented and developed, and in the consistency and moderation with which his various characters play their parts. But his greatest attraction to both ancient and modern writers has been the purity and charm of his style. He makes no claim to the creative exuberance of Plautus, but he is entirely free from his extravagance and mannerisms. The superiority of his style over that of Lucilius, who wrote his satires a generation later, is immeasurable. The best judges and the greatest masters of style in the best period of Roman literature were his chief admirers in ancient times. Cicero frequently reproduces his expressions, applies passages in his plays to his own circumstances, and refers to his personages as typical representations of character.' Julius Caesar's lines en Terence, the " dimidiatus Menander," while they complain of lack of comic power, characterize him as " puri sermonis amator." Horace, so depreciatory in general of the older literature, shows his appreciation of Terence by the frequent reproduction in his Satires and Odes of his language and his philosophy of life. Quintilian applies to his writings the word elegantissima. 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 Latin style, inculcates on him the constant study of Terence. Montaigne2 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." Sainte-Beuve devotes to him two papers of delicate and admiring criticism. He quotes Fenelon and Addison
The chief manuscript of Terence is the famous Codex Bembinus, of the 4th or 5th century, in the Vatican. Another Vatican MS. of the loth century contains illustrations based on an old tradition. Each play has an argument in metre by Sulpicius Apollinaris (2nd century of our era). We have also a valuable commentary (newly edited by P. Wessner) on five of the plays, derived chiefly from Euanthius and Donatus (both of the 4th century), and another of less importance by one Eugraphius. The editio princeps was published at Strassburg in 1470. The most famous edition is that of Bentley, published at Cambridge in 1726. At present the best texts are those by K. Dziatzko (Leipzig
For a conspectus of Terentian studies see Teuffel-Schwabe-Warr, History of Roman Literature, and Schanz's Geschichte der romischen Litteratur (3rd ed., 1907). Among critical estimates of Terence may be mentioned Sainte-Beuve's in Nouveaux lundis (3rd and loth of August 1863), and Mommsen's in the History of Rome, book iv., chapter xiii. \Ioliere made large use of the Phormio in Les Fourberies de sea pin, and the subject of l'Ecole des maris is taken from the Adelphoe. Terence was translated into English verse by George Colman (1765). (W. Y. S.; E. H.*) End of Article: TERENCE If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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