24 Facts About Terence

Terence was the author of six comedies based on Greek originals by Menander or Apollodorus of Carystus.

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.

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.

Terence 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.

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.

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.

When he was about the age of 25, Terence travelled to Greece or Asia and never returned.

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.

Carney argues that Terence must have been born from the Italiote Greek population enslaved by Hannibal, as this would explain his proficiency in Latin and Greek.

Suetonius' statement that Terence died at about the age of 25 in 159 BC would imply that he was born in 184 BC, the same year as the death of Plautus, and was only 18 years old when he produced his first play.

The variant reading that Terence was in his 30s when he died suggests instead that he was born ten years earlier in 194, which would appear to be supported by the statement attributed to Fenestella that Terence was older than Scipio and Laelius.

Five of Terence's plays are about a pair of young men in love.

The manuscripts of Terence can be divided into two main groups.

Terence was one of the few canonical classical authors to maintain a continuous presence in medieval literacy, and the large number of surviving manuscripts bears witness to his great popularity.

Roman students learning to write would regularly be assigned to copy edifying sententiae, or "maxims", a practice adopted from Greek paedagogy, and Terence was a rich source of such sententiae.

Robert Talbot reads Hrotsvit's plays as a Christian allegorisation of Terence designed to rehabilitate the comedies themselves, as Hrotsvit's reconfiguration of the genre to demonstrate the superiority of heavenly love to earthly love will enable readers to read Terence in a new way, with their minds directed from the sinful content to a higher Christian meaning.

The first printed edition of Terence appeared in Strasbourg in 1470, while the first certain post-antique performance of one of Terence's plays, Andria, took place in Florence in 1476.

Terence's plays were a standard part of the Latin curriculum of the neoclassical period.

Jefferson copied four extracts from the Andria into his literary commonplace book, seemingly in the late 1760s and 1770s, and the presence of three different editions of Terence in the carefully selected second Monticello library is a clear indication that Terence formed a part of Jefferson's retirement reading.

Grandfather John, after rereading all six of Terence's comedies, expressed apprehension about whether they were fit to be taught or exhibited to impressionable youths, who lacked sufficient life experience to recognise certain characters and their deeds as morally repugnant and react appropriately.