Terence (c.195–159 BCE,) properly Publius Terentius Āfer, was a Roman comic playwright. As a translator and adapter of the Greek New Comedy, produced about 336–250 BCE, he gave near-perfect form and expression in Latin to the comedy of manners. He probably wielded a direct influence on Shakespeare.
Born in Carthage, now in Tunisia, Terence became the slave of the Roman senator Terentius Lucanus, who brought Terence to Rome, educated him, and liberated him.
Terence’s first play was the Andria (166 BCE; ‘The Girl from Andros.’) Its success introduced Terence to the most refined society of Rome and gained him the patronage of the statesmen Gaius Laelius and Scipio Aemilianus, the Younger. After spending some years in Rome, Terence went to Greece when he was 35. He never returned from the journey and died young. Of his family life, nothing is understood, except that he left a daughter and an expensive estate on the Appian Way, just outside Rome.
Contemporary scholars have been engrossed with the question of the extent to which Terence was an original writer, as opposed to a mere translator of his Greek models. Some scholars believe that Terence’s plays were not his work but were composed with the help of unidentified nobles.
Six of Terence’s comedies are still surviving: Andria (166 BCE,) Hecyra (165 BCE; ‘Mother-in-Law,’) Heauton Timoroumenos (163 BCE; ‘Sell-Tormentor,’) Eunuchus (161 BCE,) Phormio (161 BCE,) and Adelphi (160 BCE; ‘Brothers.’) They are Greek in origin and scene, and four of them are directly based on Greek dramatist Menander.
The influence of Terence on Roman education and the later European theatre was immense. His language was accepted as a standard of pure Latin, and his work was studied and discussed throughout antiquity. Many of his conventions and plot constructions were later used by Molière, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and other European dramatists.
Several of Terence’s lines have become proverbial: quot homines, tot sententiae (‘as many opinions as there are people’) and fortīs fortuna adiuvat (‘fortune favours the brave,’) both from Phormio, and homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto (‘I am human, and I think nothing human is alien to me.’) from Heauton Timorumenos.
Prominent translations include Betty Radice’s The Brothers and Other Plays (1965) and Phormio and Other Plays (1967,) and Palmer Bovie’s The Complete Comedies of Terence: Modern Verse Translations (1974.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Terence
Riches get their value from the mind of the possessor; they are blessings to those who know how to use them, and curses to those who do not.
—Terence
Topics: Value
He who cannot do what he wants must make do with what he can.
—Terence
Topics: Acceptance, Realistic Expectations
Immortal gods! How much does one man excel another! What a difference there is between a wise man and a fool.
—Terence
Topics: Wisdom
Human nature is so constituted, that all see, and judge better, in the affairs of other men, than in their own.
—Terence
Topics: Prejudice, Judgment
They are so knowing, that they know nothing.
—Terence
Topics: Knowledge
Walk in another’s shoes before judging them.Touch a person’s heart before trying to change their head.While there’s life, there’s hope.
—Terence
Topics: Character
You believe easily what you hope for earnestly.
—Terence
Topics: Belief
My advice is to consult the lives of other men, as one would a looking-glass, and from thence fetch examples for imitation.
—Terence
Topics: Example, Biography
As a person is so must you humor them.
—Terence
Topics: Humor
Of all mankind each loves himself the best.
—Terence
Topics: Self-love
Nothing is so difficult but that it may be found out by seeking.
—Terence
No man was ever endowed with a judgment so correct and judicious, but that circumstances, time, and experi ence, would teach him something new, and apprise him that of those things with which he thought himself the best acquainted, he knew nothing; and that those ideas which in theory appeared the most advantageous were found, when brought into practice, to be altogether impracticable.
—Terence
Topics: Experience
Children should be led into the right paths, not by severity, but by persuasion.
—Terence
Topics: Children, Teachers, Teaching
You can take a chance with any man who pays his bills on time.
—Terence
Topics: Debt
We are all of us the worse for too much liberty.
—Terence
Topics: Freedom
I am a man, and whatever concerns humanity is of interest to me.
—Terence
Topics: Humanity
I take it to be a principal rule of life, not to be too much addicted to any one thing.
—Terence
Topics: Occupation
You believe easily that which you hope for earnestly.
—Terence
Topics: Belief
Words gain credibility by deed.
—Terence
Topics: Getting Going, Inaction, Procrastination
Do not do what is already done.
—Terence
I do not give money for just mere hopes.
—Terence
Topics: Chance
So many men, so many opinions.
—Terence
Topics: Opinions
That is true wisdom, to know how to alter one’s mind when occasion demands it.
—Terence
Topics: Wisdom
Many a time from a bad beginning great friendships have sprung up.
—Terence
Topics: Friends and Friendship
I believe because it is impossible.
—Terence
Topics: Belief
How often events, by chance, and unexpectedly, come to pass, which you had not dared even to hope for!
—Terence
Topics: Chance
How often things occur by mere chance which we dared not even hope for.
—Terence
Topics: Chance
There is nothing so easy but that it becomes difficult when you do it reluctantly.
—Terence
Topics: Difficulties, Attitude, Difficulty
I am human and let nothing human be alien to me.
—Terence
Topics: Humanity, Humankind
When the mind is in a state of uncertainty the smallest impulse directs it to either side.
—Terence
Topics: Uncertainty
Lovers quarrels are the renewal of love.
—Terence
Topics: Quarrels, Fighting, Fight
Nothing is as valuable to a man as courage.
—Terence
Topics: Courage
I am human, and I think nothing of which is human is alien to me.
—Terence
Their silence is praise enough.
—Terence
Topics: Praise
They who love dancing too much seem to have more brains in their feet than in their head.
—Terence
Topics: Dance, Dancing
He makes a great mistake… who supposes that authority is firmer or better established when it is founded by force than that which is welded by affection.
—Terence
Topics: Authority
What a grand thing it is to be clever and have common sense.
—Terence
Topics: Common Sense, Cleverness
While the mind is in doubt it is driven this way and that by a slight impulse.
—Terence
Topics: Mind, The Mind
It is possible that a man can be so changed by love as hardly to be recognized as the same person.
—Terence
Topics: Love
I hold this as a rule of life: Too much of anything is bad.
—Terence
Topics: Excess
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