Terence

Publius Terentius Afer, known in English as Terence, was a Latin playwright of the Roman Republic and the author of six comedies that survive complete. He wrote in Latin but based his plays on Greek originals, so his work sits at the meeting point of both traditions. He matters chiefly because his plays were read in schools for centuries.

Ancient authors say he was born in Carthage, came to Rome as a slave, and was educated and freed by a senator, Terentius Lucanus, whose name he took. He probably moved in the circle around Scipio Aemilianus. The traditional biography, attributed to Suetonius, is widely regarded as largely guesswork, since it was written long after his death. He is said to have died young, perhaps of illness or in a shipwreck on a trip to Greece, though this may also be an invented explanation for why he left only six plays.

His comedies, staged between 166 and 160 BC, adapt late Greek New Comedy, above all the work of Menander. Terence did not move the plots to Rome, since the conventions of the time kept light-hearted affairs out of the city, so he kept Greek settings. His most admired quality is a clear, direct, conversational Latin. His prologues are also combative: instead of summarising the plot, they answer the attacks of a rival whom Terence calls old and spiteful, often identified as Lucius Lanuvinus.

His legacy was long. Medieval scribes copied his plays in large numbers, and monasteries used them to teach Latin. The nun Hrotsvit of Gandersheim claimed to have written her own works so that her sisters would not waste time reading Terence. Luther recommended his comedies for schoolchildren, and Shakespeare, Montaigne and Molière read and imitated him. His plays remained part of the Latin curriculum across Europe until the nineteenth century.