Terence
Publius Terentius Afer, better known in English as Terence, was a playwright during the Roman Republic. He was the author of six comedies based on Greek originals by Menander or Apollodorus of Carystus. All six of Terence's plays survive complete and were originally produced between 166–160 BC.
According to ancient authors, Terence was born in Carthage and was brought to Rome as a slave, where he gained an education and his freedom; around the age of 25, Terence is said to have made a voyage to the east in search of inspiration for his plays, where he died either of disease in Greece, or by shipwreck on the return voyage. However, Terence's traditional biography is often thought to consist of speculation by ancient scholars who lived too long after Terence to have access to reliable facts about his life.
Terence's plays quickly became standard school texts. He ultimately secured a place as one of the four authors taught to all grammar pupils in the Western Roman Empire, and retained a central place in the European school curriculum until the 19th century, exercising a formative influence on authors such as William Shakespeare and Molière.
Life and career
The manuscripts of Terence's plays contain didascaliae, or production notices, recording the dates, occasions, and personnel of early productions of the plays, and identifying the author of the Greek original. Other traditional information about the life of Terence derives from the Vita Terenti, a biography preserved in Aelius Donatus' commentary, and attributed by him to Suetonius. However, it is not likely that Terence's contemporaries would have considered a dramatist important enough to write down his biography for posterity, and the narrative given by Suetonius' sources is often construed as conjecture based on the play texts and ''didascaliae.''Conditions of performance
In the 2nd century BC, plays were regular features of four annual Roman festivals: the Ludi Romani, the Ludi Plebeii, the Ludi Apollinares, and the Ludi Megalenses ; plays would also be staged at votive games, triumphs, and the more elaborate aristocratic funerals. Because the Roman calendar ran some two and a half months ahead of the Sun in the 160s, Terence's plays that premiered at the Megalensia, though officially scheduled in April, would actually have premiered in late January.There was no permanent theatre in Rome until the construction of the Theatre of Pompey in 55 BC, and Terence's plays would have been performed on temporary wooden stages constructed for the occasion. The limited space available would probably have accommodated an audience of less than 2,000 persons at a given performance. Admission was free to the entire population, seemingly on a first-come-first-served basis, except for the reservation of seats for members of the Senate after 194 BC; descriptions of 2nd century theatre audiences refer to the presence of women, children, slaves, and the urban poor.
In Greek New Comedy, from which the Roman comic tradition derived, actors wore masks which were conventionally associated with stock character types. Ancient authors make conflicting statements on whether Roman actors also wore masks in the time of Terence. For a time, Christian Hoffer's 1877 dissertation On the Use of Masks in Publius Terentius' Comedies won universal acceptance for the view that masks were not worn at the original performances of the plays of Terence. However, most more recent authorities consider it highly likely that Roman actors of Terence's time did wear masks when performing this kind of play, and "hard to believe" or even "inconceivable" that they did not. Donatus states that the actors wore masks in the original productions of the Eunuchus and the ''Adelphoe.''
The ''didascaliae''
According to the didascaliae, each of Terence's plays was originally produced by the acting company of Lucius Ambivius Turpio, and musical accompaniment for each of the plays was provided by a tibicen named Flaccus, a slave in the service of a certain Claudius. The traditional and generally accepted chronology of the plays established according to the didascaliae is as follows:- 166 BC: Andria at the Ludi Megalenses
- 165 BC: abortive production of Hecyra at the Ludi Megalenses
- 163 BC: Heauton timorumenos at the Ludi Megalenses
- 161 BC: Eunuchus at the Ludi Megalenses; Phormio at the Ludi Romani
- 160 BC: Adelphoe, and second abortive production of Hecyra, at the funeral games of Aemilius Paullus; third production of Hecyra at the Ludi Romani
The didascaliae also appear to record some information about revival performances at least as late as the 140s. Patrick Tansey has argued that the didascalia to Phormio in the codex Bembinus contains garbled names of the consuls in 106 BC, which would be the last attested production of Terence before the Renaissance, though the consuls of 141 BC had similar names.
The prologues
The Greek plays which provided the Roman comedians with their material typically had a prologue which either preceded the play, or interrupted the first act after one or two scenes. In the plays of Plautus, the prologue usually, but not invariably, provides exposition of the plot; Terence abandons the traditional expository function of the prologue entirely and uses it to provide a different kind of entertainment centring on replies to criticism of his work.Terence particularly refers the "slanders" he has suffered to a certain "old" and "spiteful" poet. Because Terence says this man was the translator of Menander's Phasma and Thesaurus, Donatus was able to identify him as Luscius Lanuvinus, although no names are used in the prologues. Nothing survives of Luscius' work save two lines of the Thesaurus quoted by Donatus, nor is anything known about Luscius independently of Terence's prologues except that Volcacius Sedigitus rated Luscius the ninth-best Latin comic poet. Terence's description of Luscius as "old" may refer to a style of play-writing that Terence considered old-fashioned rather than to advanced age. Terence's judgement of Luscius' work is that "by translating them well and writing them badly, he has made good Greek plays into Latin ones that aren't good", and that Luscius' theatrical successes were due more to the efforts of the actors than of the author.
Suetonian biography
According to Suetonius, Terence was born in Carthage. He came to Rome as a slave in the household of an otherwise unknown senator named P. Terentius Lucanus, who educated him and freed him because of his talent and good looks. Terence then took the nomen "Terentius" from his patron. Possibly winning noblemen's favour by his youthful beauty, Terence became a member of the so-called Scipionic Circle.When Terence offered his first play, Andria, to the aediles, they bade him first read it to Caecilius. Terence, shabbily dressed, went to the older poet's house when he was dining, and when Caecilius had heard only a few lines, he invited the young man to join him for the meal. The historicity of this meeting has been doubted on the grounds that it is improbable Terence, with his aristocratic patrons, would have been unable to dress himself decently for such an important interview; a suspiciously similar story is told about the tragedians Accius and Pacuvius; and Jerome's statement that Caecilius died the year after Ennius implies that Caecilius died two years before Andria was produced. However, Thomas Carney argues that Jerome's dating of Caecilius' death is not above suspicion, and besides, a delay of several years between this meeting and production is entirely plausible, as Caecilius may have been impressed by the novice playwright's work even while the discussion showed Terence the need for revision. R. C. Flickinger argues that the reported state of Terence's clothing shows that he had not yet become acquainted with his rich and influential patrons at the time of this meeting, and it was precisely Caecilius' death shortly thereafter, and the consequent loss of his support, which caused a two-year delay in production.
All six of Terence's plays pleased the people; the Eunuchus earned 8,000 nummi, the highest price that had ever been paid for a comedy at Rome, and was acted twice in the same day. Donatus, who appears to understand that Terence himself received this entire amount, interprets the price that Suetonius says was paid for the Eunuchus as 8,000 sesterces. However, Dwora Gilula argues that the term nummus, inscribed on the title page in 161 BC, would refer to a denarius, a coin containing a much larger quantity of silver, so that the price paid for the Eunuchus was really 32,000 sesterces.
When he was about the age of 25, Terence travelled to Greece or Asia and never returned. Suetonius' sources disagree about the motive and destination of Terence's voyage, as well as about whether he died of illness in Greece, or died by shipwreck on the return voyage. Suetonius places Terence's death "in the consulship of Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella and Marcus Fulvius Nobilior," i.e., in 159 BC. It is possible that the fateful voyage to Greece was a speculative explanation of why he wrote so few plays inferred from Terence's complaint in Eunuchus 41–3 about the limited materials at his disposal.
As transmitted in the manuscript tradition, the Vita attributes the claim to Q. Cosconius that Terence died by shipwreck while returning from Greece "cum C et VIII fabulis conversis a Menandro," an expression interpreted by some to refer to 108 new plays that Terence had adapted from Menander, but by Carney as "108 stories dramatised by Menander," who is credited with having written exactly this number of plays. If this number refers to new Terentian plays, it is improbable that Terence worked at such a rate after having previously finished less than one play a year, and some editors delete the number, supposing that the numeral CVIII is simply a double copying of the preposition CVM, subsequently rationalised as a number.
Terence was said to have been of "moderate height, slender, and of dark complexion." Suetonius' description of Terence's complexion is likely an inference from his supposed African origin, and his description of the poet's physique may have originated as a metaphor for the "lightness" of his verse style, just as the poet Philitas of Cos was said to have weighted his shoes with lead lest he blow away in the wind. Likenesses of Terence found in medieval manuscripts have no authenticity. Suetonius says that Terence was survived by a daughter who later married a Roman knight, and was said to have left 20 acres of gardens on the Appian Way, a report contradicted by another of Suetonius' sources who says that Terence died poor.