Terence

c. 193 b.c.e.–c. 159 b.c.e.

Comic playwright

Hellenist and Humanist.

The Roman biographer and historian Suetonius in the first century c.e. wrote the life of Terence, and some of that biography was preserved by Aelius Donatus, a medieval commentator on the playwright's work. Even so, as with all ancient biography, it is impossible to determine the authenticity of all the details. He was born in Carthage around 193 b.c.e., which accounts for his cognomen (last name) "Afer," meaning "African." He may have come to Rome as the slave of one Terentius Lucanus, from whom he took his family name, Terence. Despite his humble and unpromising entrée into Rome, he became closely associated with the house of Scipio, one of Rome's premier families. Some contemporaries suggested that Scipio Aemilianus or Gaius Laelius, two members of that elite circle, composed Terence's plays themselves. The playwright refutes these and other allegations in the prologues to his six plays. At any rate, the Scipionic circle held wide influence culturally; they were philhellenes, or lovers of all things Greek, and with their Greek conquests they brought also a renewed passion for Greek art, drama, and culture. This trend is illustrated by Terence's corpus. Like fellow playwright Plautus, Terence used the plots and titles of Greek New Comedies for his comedic drama, relying on Menander for four of his six plays. He followed his precursors more closely than Plautus did, but his talents were distinctly different from his forerunner in Roman comedy. All six of his plays survive and include: Mother-in-Law; Eunuch; and Brothers. This last play was commissioned for the funeral of Lucius Aemilius Paulus, the father of Scipio Aemilianus, in 160 b.c.e. While Plautus aimed and succeeded at entertaining the Roman masses in vast numbers, Terence's more tightly constructed and less riotous plays seem to be geared toward a more sophisticated group of theater-goers, people who recognized the constraints of the genre and sought something beyond its boundaries. Terence adhered strictly to the generic conventions, but used them to express a new interest in humanism and the personal. A famous line from Self-Torturer states that "I am human, and I don't think anything human is foreign to me." Terence also celebrated the artistic achievement of Greece and followed his models more closely in order to showcase his predecessors' talents. Using primarily Menander as a model, he wrote plays in refined Latin on the Menandrian themes of the importance of friendship, the resolution of family conflicts that reflected social issues, and the making of good citizens. He also offered some important innovations to the structure of theater: Terence used a double-plot structure and strove for on-stage realism, more suspense and less irony, and the universal quality of gentle humor found in Greek New Comedy. In one of his most exciting plays, Eunuch, a young man who lusts for an innocent young woman (the slave of a prostitute) poses as a eunuch to gain access to her chamber, while in another plot, a soldier is in love with this same prostitute and competes with another client for her attention. In the end, the slave-girl is found to be the daughter of a citizen and so can be legally married to her rapist, which passed as a happy ending in New Comedy. Terence's humanism was not necessarily popular with the public, however, as the playwright himself relays in prologues that make no attempt to be integrated into the plays themselves. At the first performance of Mother-in-Law in 165 b.c.e., Terence's audience was distracted by an acrobatic display; at a second performance in 160 b.c.e., they left in droves to watch gladiators fighting. At a third production later that same year, his audience, or most of it, finally stayed until the end of the play. Terence died at a very young age, either 24 or 34, while on a voyage to Greece. Dying while journeying to the cultural center of the world was especially poetic—the same story is also told of Vergil's death in 19 b.c.e.

sources

Richard C. Beacham, The Roman Theater and Its Audience (London: Routledge, 1991).

Gian Conte, Latin Literature: A History (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).

George E. Duckworth, The Nature of Roman Comedy: A Study in Popular Entertainment (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1952).

E. J. Kenney, ed., The Cambridge History of Classical Literature II: Latin Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).