Terence

Roman playwright

• Born: c. 190 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Carthage (now in Tunisia)
• Died: 159 b.c.e.
• Place of death: En route from Greece

As a Roman comic playwright whose adaptations of Greek dramas depicted in graceful Latin the social realities operating in his ancient world, Terence strongly influenced the development of sophisticated theater in the West.

Early Life

Ancient materials reporting on the life of Terence (TEHR-uhns) frequently present contradictory information. Certain facts, however, fall into the realm of probability: Publius Terentius Afer (Terence) was born at Carthage and came to Rome as the slave of Terentius Lucanus, a senator who educated him and set him free. Because Terence’s life fell between the Second and Third Punic Wars, he could not have been a slave captured in combat; thus, he may have been owned and sold by a Carthaginian trader.

Terence was of average height, medium build, and dark complexion. His cognomen “Afer” is thought to indicate his African birth; however, one cannot be completely certain that Terence was actually ever a slave. Roman biographers, who often wove a web of fiction around their subjects, commonly recorded playwrights as having sprung from slavery, and “Afer” need not positively establish African birth. Nevertheless, many commentators have marveled at the significant achievement of the onetime slave who learned Latin as a second language and who came to use it with such outstanding artistry and precision.

In Rome, the young man’s intelligence and talent soon gained for him entry into the Scipionic circle of study, a group of patrician literati behind a philhellenic movement. So close was the involvement of Terence and particular associates in this group—including Scipio Africanus and Gaius Laelius—that rumors circulated suggesting that Terence was simply a front for these august patrons of the arts who had really authored the plays. Terence, in fact, inadvertently helped the malicious gossip along by never definitively attempting to refute the charges. Indeed, in the prologues to his plays he concentrated on stating his theories of dramatic art, trying to deflect the scurrilous accusations. Unfortunately, Terence’s short life came to be plagued by constant innuendo.

When Terence offered his first drama to the aediles, the officials at the public games where the performances were held, he was ordered to show his work to Caecilius Statius, a revered comic playwright of an earlier era whose successes had been, in part, a result of the abilities of noted actor Lucius Ambivius Turpio. Legend describes the youthful Terence, poorly dressed, arriving at the dramatist’s home during the dinner hour, sitting down on a bench near the old man’s couch, and beginning to read from his first effort. It took only a few minutes for Caecilius to recognize the genius of his young visitor, and Terence was invited to take a seat at the table. Not only did his career as dramatist begin at that moment but also the actor Turpio, now in old age, performed in Terence’s plays, giving them the same public notice and authoritative support he had given to Caecilius. Thus promoted, Terence appeared an assured success from the beginning.

Life’s Work

Terence looked to the New Comedy of Greece for his major literary resource and composed, therefore, in the tradition of palliatae, plays derived from Greek models, and acted in Greek dress, or pallium. Of the twenty-six complete plays surviving from the second century b.c.e. Roman stage, six are the work of Terence, whose chief model was Menander, an artist with a reputation in the ancient world superseded only by Homer and Vergil. While the Old Comedy had dealt with affairs of state, the New Comedy exemplified by Menander focused on domestic issues, particularly on wealthy youths and the tangled dilemmas of their often complicated love lives. Filial duty, which on occasion ran counter to the young men’s casual self-indulgence, and the devious machinations of crafty slaves helped generate comic situations at times to farcical extremes.

Terence found his métier in these intricate plots and, by artfully adapting the Greek models, brought with his distinctive translations a conscious artistry to the Roman stage. He developed prologues that articulated literary principles and that did not simply explain the action to follow. He developed a “doubling technique” to balance Menander’s character creations. Alongside these innovations, Terence sensitively rendered the impact of behavioral fashion on the ethical values of his time. While Terence realized that in his models the characters were standard, the action was predictable, and the themes were formulaic; under his original touch the plays not only embody a vivid realism but also detail a sociological compendium of the age.

The complete works of Terence, produced over a six-year period, include the following extant plays: Andria (166 b.c.e.; English translation, 1598), Hecyra (165 b.c.e.; The Mother-in-Law, 1598), Heautontimorumenos (163 b.c.e.; The Self-Tormentor, 1598), Eunuchus (161 b.c.e.; The Eunuch, 1598), Phormio (161 b.c.e.; English translation, 1598), and Adelphoe (160 b.c.e.; The Brothers, 1598). While the dramas—all based on the work of either Menander or Apollodorus of Carystus—reveal the extent of Terence’s achievement, of greater significance to his biography are the didascaliae (production notes attached to the dramas) and the prologues, for these writings candidly reveal information that chronicles the way Terence’s creative life was progressing. These statements sometimes indicate his strategy for dealing with the hurtful charges of plagiarism and the jealous accusations of contaminatio, that is, adulterating his literary sources.

Even before the presentation of his first play, Terence was forced to defend his unorthodox, innovative literary practices. Luscius Lanuvinus, a jealous competitor who had either seen Andria in rehearsal or read it in manuscript, began a vendetta of slander by accusing Terence of contaminating the plays he had used in his adaptation. During the next few years, these accusations were repeated and, apparently, escalated into charges of plagiarism. Terence went about defending the legitimacy of his literary methods as well as the originality of his artistry, going so far as to point out the Roman historical precedent for adapting work from the Greek stage. On one occasion, Terence flatly charged that his accuser was simply trying to force him into early retirement, to drive a young competitor from the theater by wounding him with invective. Insisting that he would prefer to exchange compliment for compliment rather than engage in verbal skirmishes, Terence urged his audiences to enjoy his plays, to be fair in their assessments, and to disregard the gossip of an evil-tempered old man, especially one whose talent was weak.

Another difficulty in his career Terence accepted with benign amusement: the problem with presenting The Mother-in-Law, a drama that suffered two failures before its eventual success. The first time Terence offered the play (165 b.c.e.), his audience rushed out of the performance to view a prizefight and a tightrope walker. Trying again five years later, Terence watched as the audience hurriedly left to watch some gladiators. A few months later, the play was successfully performed, with Terence in his prologue requesting courteous support for his efforts and urging his audience to abstain from irreverent behavior that might expose him to more unfair criticism by his enemies.

In his plays, Terence used the stock themes—boastful soldiers, crafty slaves, kindly prostitutes, professional parasites, and confused sons, all involved in innocent mistakes and switched identities—and held the mirror up for the examination of moral and ethical principles, touching such concerns as the limits of filial duty, the question of a slave’s loyalty, the role of women in Roman society, and the proprieties of legal deportment. While comedy did not readily lend itself to didacticism, Terence’s plays, nevertheless, were epitomes of both entertainment and instruction, especially in portraying the emotional and psychological complexities involved in all human relationships.

Significance

As Terence’s brief life was filled with controversy and speculation, so were the events surrounding his death. The playwright left Rome for Greece and never returned. He had undertaken the journey possibly to study at first hand the culture from which his plays were derived or to scrutinize the work of Menander—maybe even to discover other works modeled after Menander’s or to escape for a time the Roman atmosphere of jealousy and acrimony that had spawned the petulant attacks of his rivals as they jockeyed for favor among patrons of the arts and theater audiences. Terence died in 159 b.c.e., either of an illness in Greece or in a shipwreck that also may have destroyed more than one hundred adaptations from Menander that he was bringing home.

Terence’s reputation as a master dramatist has clearly withstood the passage of centuries; his accomplishments in the development and advancement of world theater are clear. His painstaking artistry in portraying psychological motivation and social reality set benchmarks for dramatists to follow in establishing the seriousness of comedy. In eliminating the prologue as simply a means to explain plot, Terence ensured that the drama had to depend on characterization and dialogue. When sophisticated theatrical tastes came to govern the stage, Terence became a major literary source. During the Restoration in England, when the comedy of manners reigned supreme, Terence’s work influenced such masters as William Congreve and Thomas Otway. In France, Molière looked to Terence for inspiration. In addition, the expository prologue as a means for critical expression and advancement of dramatic theory came to be a mark of identity for George Bernard Shaw.

The facts of Terence’s life will be forever clouded by rumor and hearsay, for speculation and gossip were often freely intermingled with fact among ancient biographers. On Terence’s death, records Suetonius, he left a twenty-acre estate on the Appian Way; Licinus Porcius, however, asserts that at the end of his life Terence possessed not even a rented house where his slave might announce his master’s death.

Bibliography

Beare, W. The Roman Stage: A Short History of Latin Drama in the Time of the Republic. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1965. An authoritative study of the Roman stage, particularly useful regarding the stage practices, customs, and techniques of the time. Includes a detailed examination of the charge of contamination leveled against Terence. With extensive notes, bibliography, and appendices.

Copley, Frank O. The Comedies of Terence. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967. Translations of each play with a useful introductory note on each drama. A fourteen-page essay surveys the problems encountered in attempting to reconstruct Terence’s life and in trying to analyze his art.

Duckworth, George E. The Nature of Roman Comedy: A Study in Popular Entertainment. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994. A vital source on the ancient stage and its conventions as well as on the contributions of Terence. This work is a detailed study of themes, treatments, methods, and influences of Terence, including the critical problems in studying his texts and the biographical problems in studying his life. With an extensive index and bibliography.

Duckworth, George E., ed. The Complete Roman Drama. 2 vols. New York: Random House, 1942. This work includes Terence’s production notes, which date the performances, describe some of the staging techniques, identify some of the actors, and help both in setting the Terentian ambience and in establishing the plays’ chronologies. A general introduction provides a sound overview of the era and gives important information on ancient stage discipline.

Forehand, Walter E. Terence. Boston: Twayne, 1985. A sound, basic work that outlines the major controversies surrounding Terence’s life and productions. Contains a full account of Terence’s literary career, surveying the plays and illuminating the theater background of the times. Includes bibliography.

Goldberg, Sander M. The Making of Menander’s Comedy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. This study of Menander’s art sheds light on Terence, whose adaptations came mainly from this Greek model. Terence’s work in relation to Menander is discussed in detailed, analytical fashion throughout.

Goldberg, Sander M. Understanding Terence. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986. A perceptive, analytical study focusing on Terence and the Latin tradition of New Comedy rather than on Terence as an adapter of Menander; this work analyzes the prologues and the plays for their language and themes. The critical problems in dealing with Terence are studied. Contains a bibliography for the individual plays as well as for further study of ancient Greece.

Harsh, Philip Whaley. A Handbook of Classical Drama. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1976. Contains an informative survey of Terence’s life and work set within the context of the total range of classical drama. Extensive notes as well as bibliographies for Terence and his peers are included.

Konstan, David. Roman Comedy. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983. An examination of the New Comedy genre within contexts of the ideology and the institutions of the Roman state. With a reading of Roman plays—including those of Terence—from the social and philosophical perspective to determine how the plays reveal the ethical standards and moral imperatives of the age. Includes bibliography.