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
To touch a sore is to renew one’s grief.
—Terence
Words gain credibility by deed.
—Terence
Topics: Procrastination, Inaction, Getting Going
We are all of us the worse for too much liberty.
—Terence
Topics: Freedom
I believe because it is impossible.
—Terence
Topics: Belief
Immortal gods! How much does one man excel another! What a difference there is between a wise man and a fool.
—Terence
Topics: Wisdom
No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
—Terence
Topics: Aging, Age, Experience
How often events, by chance, and unexpectedly, come to pass, which you had not dared even to hope for!
—Terence
Topics: Chance
He who cannot do what he wants must make do with what he can.
—Terence
Topics: Realistic Expectations, Acceptance
Children should be led into the right paths, not by severity, but by persuasion.
—Terence
Topics: Children, Teaching
You can take a chance with any man who pays his bills on time.
—Terence
Topics: Debt
Fortune favors the bold.
—Terence
Topics: Luck
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
I hold this as a rule of life: Too much of anything is bad.
—Terence
Many a time from a bad beginning great friendships have sprung up.
—Terence
Topics: Friends and Friendship
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
They who love dancing too much seem to have more brains in their feet than in their head.
—Terence
Topics: Dance
There is nothing so easy but that it becomes difficult when you do it reluctantly.
—Terence
Topics: Difficulty, Difficulties, Attitude
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
Nothing is as valuable to a man as courage.
—Terence
Topics: Courage
When the mind is in a state of uncertainty the smallest impulse directs it to either side.
—Terence
Topics: Uncertainty
You believe easily what you hope for earnestly.
—Terence
Topics: Belief
Their silence is praise enough.
—Terence
Topics: Praise
Nowadays those are rewarded who make right appear wrong.
—Terence
Topics: Appearance
That is true wisdom, to know how to alter one’s mind when occasion demands it.
—Terence
Topics: Wisdom
When we are well, we all have good advice for those who are ill.
—Terence
Topics: Health
How often things occur by mere chance which we dared not even hope for.
—Terence
Topics: Chance
How unfair the fate which ordains that those who have the least should be always adding to the treasury of the wealthy.
—Terence
Topics: Justice
While the mind is in doubt it is driven this way and that by a slight impulse.
—Terence
Topics: The Mind
You believe easily that which you hope for earnestly.
—Terence
Topics: Belief
As a person is so must you humor them.
—Terence
You’re a wise person if you can easily direct your attention to what ever needs it.
—Terence
I do not give money for just mere hopes.
—Terence
Topics: Chance
None of us is ever satisfied with what we are.
—Terence
Topics: Opportunities, Reality
It is possible that a man can be so changed by love as hardly to be recognized as the same person.
—Terence
Topics: Love
Nothing is said which has not been said before.
—Terence
Topics: Plagiarism
Lovers quarrels are the renewal of love.
—Terence
Topics: Fighting
What harsh judges fathers are to all young men!
—Terence
Topics: Fathers
So many men, so many opinions.
—Terence
They are so knowing, that they know nothing.
—Terence
Topics: Knowledge
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