TERENCE, or Publius Terentius, acomic poet of great celebrity, was born at Carthage in the year 192 before the commencement of the Christian era. At an early age he became a captive, and was sold as a slave to Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, to whom he appears to have been indebted for a learned education. His manners and accomplishments recommended him not only to his master, but likewise to other men of rank, whose names have been recorded. Having been manumitted, he attained to great eminence as a writer of Latin comedies. He was honoured with the friendship of Laelius, and of Scipio the son of Paulus Aemilius; and his dramas are even supposed to have derived some of their chief beauties from their patrician pens. Such insinuations have not been uncommon in various eras of literary history; but some doubt may reasonably be entertained whether Scipio or Laelius could have produced even the second-rate scenes of Terence’s comedies. They exhibit a uniform vein of elegant simplicity, in which we discover no reason to suspect a divided property. His plots are derived from Greek sources, chiefly from Menander; but the terse Latinity and graceful diction are peculiarly his own. Caesar considered the want of pungent humour, the vis comica, as the chief defect of his dramas.

Lenibus atque utinam scriptis adjuncta forat via Comica, ut acquato virtus polleret honore Cum Graecis, neque in hac despectus parte jaceres.

The comedies of Terence appear to have been very successful on the stage, but he did not long continue his prosperous career. According to Eusebius, he died in Arcadia; and Suetonius refers his death to the consulship of Cn. Corn. Dolabella and M. Fulvius Nobilior, that is, to the year 159 before Christ. According to this chronology, he must only have attained the age of thirty-three; but the latter writer states that he had not completed his thirty-fifth year. The circumstances of his death are variously related, and one account ascribes it to shipwreck. He left an only daughter, who became the wife of a Roman knight, and inherited a garden of twenty acres in the Via Appia.
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He had a tawny complexion, with a slender frame, and a moderate stature.

Of the six comedies of Terence, the editions are very numerous, and not a few appeared before the termination of the first half century of printing. The editio princeps, a folio without date, is supposed to have been printed at Strasburg by Mentelin. Seventeen editions, the first in 1517, proceeded from the Aldine press. Of the earlier editions, the most important is that of Gabriel Faërnus, Florent. 1565, 8vo. Faërnus was a man of taste as well as learning, and, being himself a very skilful versifier,^[1. See a very elegant volume entitled “Gabrielis Faërni Cremonensis Fabulae centum, ex antiquis auctoribus delecte carminibusque explicate, et ejusdem Carmina varia.” Parmoe, 1793, 4to. ] possessed some eminent qualifications as an editor of Terence. To his text many succeeding editors have chiefly adhered. Another valuable edition was published by Lindenbrog, Paris. 1602, 4to, Francof. 1623, 4to. Passing many others, we arrive at the edition of Bishop Hare, Loud. 1724, 1725, 4to. It was speedily followed by that of Bentley, Cantab. 1726, 4to, Amst. 1727, 4to. Another elaborate edition, differing however in many respects, was about the same time published by Westerhov, Hag. Com. 1726, 2 tom. 4to. There are many subsequent editions, some of a very recent date. One edition was professedly published for men of taste; “in usum elegantiorum hominum edidit F. H. Bothe.” Berolini, 1806, 8vo. A good translation of Terence, into blank verse, was executed by the elder George Colman, Lond. 1765, 4to.