A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

998 TERENTIUS. TERENTIUS.
he had business in hand. When at length he I commission to live at the public expense while
entered the supper-room, he excused his absence by transacting his private business. These facts,
saying he had been writing verses, and had never gleaned from his biographers themselves, render
written any more to his liking. He then recited the neglect of the patrons and the indigence of the
the opening lines of the 4th scene in the 4th act of client very doubtful. The hostility to Terence
the "Self-Tormentor:" was perhaps owing partly to professional causes,
" Satis, pol, proterve me Syri promissa huc in- and partly to his popularity with the great. Teduxerunt," &c. rence was a foreigner, a freedman, and the adherent of a party. Even Horace was taunted
The belief that Terence was aided by his friends with being libertino patre natus; and in Horace's
in composition, if properly limited, has in it days the long civil wars and the influx of strangers
nothing improbable. He was a foreigner, and of a into the senate and the tribes had melted down
race, to which, whether Libyan or Iberian, the many of the oldItalian prejudices. In Terence's age
Greek and Latin idioms presented no ordinary there were two strongly opposed parties in literature,
difficulties. Of the English, who speak and write as well as in politics,-the Latin party, of which
French, few attain to precision or purity, and the Cato and the Fabii were the representatives, and the
Punic or Basque dialects diverged more from the Greek, or movement-party, of which the Scipios were
languages of Athens and Rome than the speech of the leaders and Terence the favourite. Here was
London from the speech of Paris. From the plentiful matter for libel. Whether the attacks of
purity of Terence's diction we might, without these Lavinius drove him from Italy, or whether he went
anecdotes, infer his intimacy with the best society to Greece as to a university, is uncertain. Before
in Rome. Of that society, in that age, the Scipios his departure his detractors had affirmed that
were the leaders; and the Laelii, both male and from his ignorance of Attic manners and idiom his
female, the models of forensic and conversational versions of Menander and Apollodorus were caricaeloquence. [LsELIA, No. 1.] Nor did Terence tures. (Prol. in Andr. Heautont. Pzorme.) He
deny the charge. He gloried in it, as the test of never returned, and the accounts of his death are
his proficiency as an artist. (Prol. in Adelph.) as various as the records of his life. According to
Our own dramatic literature furnishes parallel cases. one story, after embarking at Brundisium, he was
Garrick added a scene to the " West Indian," and never heard of more; according to others, he died
revised the " Clandestine Marriage." Pope re- at Stymphalus, in Arcadia (Auson. Epist. xviii.),
touched tire songs in the "Beggar's Opera," and in Leucadia, or at Patrae, in Achaia. One of
the " Medea" was submitted to the critics of his biographers said he was drowned, with all the
Leicester House. Yet no one doubts that Cum- fruits of his sojourn in Greece, on his home-passage.
berland, Colman, Gay, and Glover, were respectively But the prevailing report was, that his translations
the authors of those productions. The story of of Menander were lost at sea, and that grief for
Terence's poverty is less easy to refute, but we their loss caused his death. He died in the 36th
disbelieve it equally. He owned an estate of a year of his age, in B.C. 159, or, according to St.
few acres, contiguous to the Appian road, and, Jerome (Chiron. 01. 155, 3), in the year following.
after his decease, his daughter married a man of He left a daughter, but nothing is known of his
equestrian rank. Neither of these facts accords family.
with the assertion of Porcius Licinius (Donat.), Six comedies, all belonging to the Fabzcda Palthat he was too poor to hire a house or keep a liata, are all that remain to us; and since in
slave. An eques would scarcely wed a portionless these we can verify the citations from him in the
maiden, the daughter of a freedman; and even grarmmarians, they are probably all that Terence
in that age, land lying near the great highway of produced. His later versions of Menander were,
Italy must have been valuable as pasture, arable, in all likelihood, from their number and the short
or building ground. Avarice, on the other hand, time in which they were made, merely studies for
was not the vice of the Scipios. (Polyb. xxxii. 14.) future dramas of his own, and therefore are not to
If they took freely from kings and tetrarchs (Liv. be ranked as sleperdita. For Terence's exemption
xxxviii. 50), without scrupulously accounting to from the neglect or ravages of time various causes
the treasury, they gave freely to their favourites nay be assigned. His works were few in number,
and dependents. Ennius, though poor (Hieron. and small in bulk. From their purity of diction,
C/iron. 01. 135), did not starve under their roof, they became the text-books of the grammatical and
and was buried in their tomb; Polybius and Pa- rhetorical schools; they found favour with St.
naetius lightened the privations of exile in their Jerome, and escaped the censures of the church.
camp and their villas, and Lucilius, who succeeded They were brought forward at the following seasons
Terence in the friendship of Scipio and Laelius, and under the following circumstances.
could afford to make literature his profession. But, 1. ANDRIA, " the Woman of Andros," so called
if by poverty be meant indigence, the tenour of from the birth-place of Glycerium, its heroine, was
Terence's history contradicts the rumour of his first represented at the Megalesian Games, on the
poverty. After the representation of his six come- 4th of April, B. c. 166. It was, according to Dodies, for one of which, the Eunusch, he received the natus, the first in order of time of Terence's plays.
unprecedented sum of nearly 601., he travelled in This has been disputed by subsequent critics (PeGreece. Now a journey in Greece could not be per- titus, de Ord. Comn. P. Ter.), but seems warranted
formed in those days any more than in our own by the poet's age —27-at his interview with
without cost, even if his patrons lightened his charges Caecilius (szuprp), and by the original title, Andria
by their tesserae hospitalecs (Plaut. Poen. v. 1. 25), to Terentii. For in the didascaliat it was the custom
their various clients and friends. And Terence to put the name of the play foremost, if by an
resided, as well as travelled in Greece, since while author hitherto unknown; whereas Terentuii Andric
there he translated 108 of Menander's comedies; would import that it was a new piece by a known
nor as an alien could he hold a libera legatio, or writer. From the anecdote of Caecilius above re