Heauton Timorumenos characters Chremes
Act one
Menedemus, a wealthy farmer, explains to his neighbour Chremes why he is punishing himself by working hard in his fields. Menedemus explains that he had reproached his son Clinia for his having a relationship with a penniless girl, and had held up his own youth as a soldier as a virtuous contrast. Clinia, shamed, has taken Menedemus more literally than he intended and has gone to live as a soldier in the East. By coincidence, immediately after Menedemus exits, Chremes encounters his own son, Clitipho with Clinia, who has returned from the East. Clitipho begs Chremes not to tell Menedemus, as Clinia is still afraid of his father's wrath. Chremes agrees for the moment but adds that a father's duty is to be severe. Once alone, Clitipho swears he will never be a tyrant in the mould of his father.Homo sum, humani
The most famous line in the play is line 77:
homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.
The line was quoted twice by Cicero (Leg. 1.33 and Off. 1.29–30) and later by Seneca and many other writers. St Augustine (Epist. 155.14) recounts that he had heard that when it was spoken "whole theatres burst into applause (theatra tota ... applausisse)".
In its original context it is a defensive reply by the busybody old man Chremes to his neighbour Menedemus, who says "Have you got so much free time as to concern yourself with other people's affairs which have nothing to do with you?", to which Chremes replies, "I'm human: nothing human is not my concern".
However, in later centuries, it received a much wider interpretation:
Some would see in it, as Michel de Montaigne did, a man's confession of his emotional and spiritual weakness. Others, like John of Salisbury, perceive an expression of Christian charity. Others again make it a disavowal of intolerance and prudery in regard to human behaviour. Most would say that it had to do with being 'humane' in some very positive sense of this much used word...
Among English authors who quoted it was Henry Fielding in Tom Jones (1749, Book XV, ch. VIII) who applies the quotation to his hero: “He was one who could truly say with him in Terence, Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto.”A shortened version of the line, HVMANI NIHIL ALIENVM, is used as the motto of various institutions, such as the Law Society of Scotland and the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
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