Publius Terentius Afer, a Phoenician, was born about 190 B.C.
in Carthage. He was brought to Rome as a slave, but his master
quickly recognized the young man's potential and chose not only
to emancipate him, but to provide him with a classic Roman education.
Unlike Plautus, Terence was not
the people's poet, but the darling of the aristocracy. His refined
literary abilities made the young man a popular companion of
the cosmopolitans of high society. He even won the admiration
of figures such as Cicero and Horace.
Terence took for his springboard the comedies of Menander.
His first play, Andria--which was written at the age of
nineteen--was later adapted by Richard Steele in The
Conscious Lovers. The only one of Terence's plays not adapted
from Menander was Phormio, which was based on the work
of Apollodorus, another writer of New Comedy. Moliere, in turn,
adapted Phormio in one of his earliest plays, The Trickeries
From his first play to his last, Terence's works became more
and more polished. He cared little about public taste. Instead,
he devoted himself to capturing the spirit of the Greek originals
which he adapted. However, this did not necessarily mean exact
translations, for Terence felt free to adapt them as he pleased.
Terence tried to cultivate a certain refinement of sentiment.
He does not laugh so much as smile, and instead of ridicule he
employs irony. Among the Roman playwrights, he is perhaps the
only one who aimed at perfection rather than at instant pleasure.
His characterization is subtle, and his dialogue combines grace
His output was meager not only because he was lost at sea
when he was about thirty on a journey to Greece, but because
he was a scrupulous stylist.
The taste of the impatient Roman populace, however, denied
him widespread popularity. They preferred the coarse jokes of
a playwright such as Plautus over the refined sentiment of Publius
After Terence's death, the Roman drama deteriorated rapidly.
The general populace gave up the theatre almost entirely in favor
of elaborate spectacles, gaudy processions of captives and slaves,
circuses, gladiators slashing each other to death, and mimic
sea battles in Naumachiae so elaborate they defy description.
By the time the Roman empire finally collapsed, pantomimists,
jugglers and acrobats were the only survivors that remained from
what was once a proud tradition of drama.