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TERENCE (Publius Terentius Afer) was born in Africa, and in his youth was brought to Rome as a slave. The name of his family is unknown, but when he was set free he took that of Terentius, from his master Terentius Lucanus. He began to write in the year 166 B.C., and continued with increasing success till his death.
Owing to the loss of Menander's plays, the later, or new comedy of the Greeks is known to us only by the plays of Plautus and Terence; and superior as Plautus was in brightness and originality, the dignity of Terence's style, and the purity of his Latin, so strange in an African slave, have made him for the moderns the chief representative of the ancient comedy of private life. Hence his enormous influence in literature; for Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Molière have all been indebted to him. Such plays as Les Fourberies de Scapin breathe the very spirit of the ancient comedy.
Terence took the plots of his six plays from the Greek, and much of his work is merely translation, so that it is difficult to tell how far its merits are his own or Menander's; but one of his most successful characters, the insolent parasite, Phormio, who is yet ever ready, faithful, and undaunted in the service of his friends, comes in a play taken from a very inferior dramatist. His plots and characters are drawn from a narrow and somewhat conventional field. The troubles of young men in love, and their efforts to outwit their elders, with the aid of clever slaves and parasites, form the general groundwork; and a favourite way out of the difficulties is the discovery that the girl in question has been lost or stolen in childhood, and is really of a most respectable family. The slaves of Terence are a wonderful study to those who reflect on the story of his life. They are always on the side of youth and pleasure, full of umpudence and resource, often with a fidelity to their chosen part, unshaken even by the sound of the whip and the chains which we hear behind all. The comedy of the ancients did not allow of characters showing the extremes of heroism or baseness, but in Terence all are marked by some redeeming qualities. The suspicious fathers and dissolute sons, crafty slaves and overbearing masters, braggarts, parasites, and courtesans have all some share of kindly human feeling and good fellowship. The words of Terence so often quoted may stand as the very essence of his moral teaching: "Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto" -- I am man; and think there is nothing human but claims my sympathies.
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| This biography is
reprinted from The New Calendar of Great Men. Ed. Frederic
Harrison. London: Macmillan and Co., 1920. |
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